Originally flower decorated horse carriages were entered in the parade. Floats, built by volunteers from sponsoring communities, supplanted most of the carriages over time. Currently, most are built by professional float building companies, and take nearly a year to construct. Some communities and organizational sponsors still rely solely on volunteers. Working on a Rose Parade float has been on my pal Marc's bucket list for more than a few years. His neighbor Marny works for Phoenix Decorating Company, one of the professional float builders and encouraged him to volunteer but for one reason or another, it never seemed to work out. This year it did and I got to get in on it too! We drove up to Pasadena on the Tuesday before the parade and wandered around one of the barns where about 6 to 10 floats were in various stages of development. We finally found Marny, Marc's neighbor and got our assignments..--more-->>
We were assigned projects for the City of Anaheim's float. We washed palm fronds for the palm trees on the back of it and cut carnations for the City of Anaheim signs and applied them to the outside of the letters. I did an 'm' and we got to take part in the pomp and circumstance of the work progress judging..--more-->>
It was difficult to see what some of the floats would look like because many of them were folded down to fit in the barn. The Honda float was obviously a pirate ship of sorts with the masts and sails folded forward and back. The Trader Joe's float was too whimsical to discern what the parts would look like when they were raised into position. There's a freeway overpass towards the end of the parade and the hydraulics on the floats are necessary to get them under it. I found some of the early artist renderings and some video of the floats on the streets and put them together with my photos..--more-->>
Fun Factor Nine.
