Holiday Parades Are Just Around Corner

You’d better watch out. . . .

Almost wherever you are in the Los Angeles area Sunday, there’s a parade coming your way.

Yes, it’s callithump time in and about the City of Angels, and whether you prefer the traditional, the eclectic or the absurd, you’ll have your choice of pageants. Two of them, in fact--the Hollywood Christmas Parade and the East Los Angeles Christmas Fantasy Parade--will be coming into your home via television. (The Hollywood Christmas Parade was first televised in 1948.) So if you can’t get out, you won’t miss out on everything.

Old Pasadena’s annual Doo Dah Parade will not be televised, but then nonconformity has always been it’s raison d’etre. Of course the Doo Dah Parade is not technically a Christmas or holiday pageant, either. It’s a tongue-in-cheek answer to the upcoming Rose Parade.

This is the 57th year of the Hollywood Christmas Parade, and it promises to be quite an event. Actor Tony Danza (“Taxi,” “Who’s the Boss?”), who last Monday received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, will lead the parade as grand marshal. Danza follows in the footsteps of grand marshals such as Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Danny Thomas and Mickey and Minnie Mouse (who in 1986 became the only non-human celebrities to serve in that post).

Mickey and Minnie will be back this year, ice-skating on a special Disney float.

Also, for the first time, that debonair bull terrier Spuds MacKenzie will attend the parade in person, arriving in his limousine, accompanied by the Spudettes. MacKenzie will ride in an open convertible along the parade route. The entire pageant will lead off with the 225-member Cardinal Marching Band and the Cardettes, from Athens, Tex., a Rockettes-type group of high-kickers dancing to band music.

Gene Autry, who has been very visible the past few weeks, will join in, too.

Gold Medalist

Janet Evans, the Southland teen-age swimming champion who brought home three gold medals from this year’s Olympic Games in Seoul, will be riding on the Toys for Tots float. The holiday spectacle will also include more than 100 other celebrities, 15 bands, 23 floats, antique cars and a silver-saddled equestrian unit. Also this year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has organized a laser show to seasonal music.

Johnny Grant, honorary mayor of Hollywood and executive producer of the Hollywood Parade, said: “It’s my 11th year as producer, and I just think its a beautiful sight to see all those families come out on parade night and enjoy themselves. It’s what I call a real love-in.

“I’m happy to be associated with something that is, incidentally, Hollywood’s biggest event,” Grant said. “You know, it’s the time when something big actually happens in Hollywood--the Oscars and Emmys take place somewhere else. It gives the world a chance to see the family side of Hollywood. I mean, well, it’s Christmas!”

The parade begins at 6 p.m., at Sunset Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue, and ends at Hollywood Boulevard and Bronson Avenue at about 8 p.m.

A peculiarity of the Hollywood Christmas Parade’s history bodes well for all the other events this Sunday: It has never rained on the Hollywood parade.

For a pageant with a distinctively Latin American flavor, the 14th East Los Angeles Christmas Fantasy Parade will start down Whittier Boulevard from the corner of Eastern Avenue on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Garfield High School math teacher Jaime Escalante and singers Celia Cruz and Maria Antonieta de las Nieves (known as “La Chilindrina” throughout Central America) are co-grand marshals, and they will lead an event featuring celebrities, dancers and musical groups.

Among the participants this year are Tina Yothers of “Family Ties,” Esai Morales of “La Bamba” fame, and cast members of the hit movie “Stand and Deliver.”

Musicians and Dancers

Lively music and dance entertainment will be provided by 19 Eastside high school bands, the African New Mandinka Dancers, the Silhouettes Baton and Drum Corps and the Ballet Folklorico Juvenil of Pico Rivera.

Seventeen gaily colored floats, the Wells Fargo Stagecoach, the American Legion Post 72 . . . just about everyone in East Los Angeles has a place in this event, which last year drew more than 250,000 spectators. Concession booths along the parade route will provide a variety of ethnic foods, and the entire shivaree will wind up in front of Garfield High School on Atlantic Boulevard.

The parade is organized by the East Los Angeles Jaycees and will be broadcast live on KMEX Channel 34 from 1 to 3 p.m.

Meanwhile, in Old Town Pasadena, the 11th annual Pasadena Doo Dah Parade kicks off at noon at Fair Oaks Avenue and Union Street--rain or shine.

The Doo Dah is the parade of choice for iconoclasts, autodidacts and people who have nothing much else to do. Begun in 1978, the Doo Dah Parade has, in the words of its perennial organizer, Peter Apanel, “no theme, no judging, no prizes, no order of march, no motorized vehicles and no animals.”

It does, however, have plenty of other attractions and has grown into one of the region’s most popular public events.

Where else can you see a synchronized briefcase drill team, --a three-piece-suited cadre of men and women who march with their briefcases, or enjoy the lively rock music of the official Doo Dah band, Snotty Scotty and the Hankies?

Of course, this year’s honorary Doo Dah Parade king and queen will join the estimated 100 other local groups expected to participate. The completely arbitrary selection of the Doo Dah king and queen was made last week by Apanel at a ceremony of sorts at Toes Tavern. The Sunday parade ends at Central Park after wending its way north on Fair Oaks Avenue, east on Holly Street, south on Raymond, west on Colorado Boulevard, south on Pasadena Avenue, east on Green Street and south on Fair Oaks.

The official password for this year’s event, proclaimed by honorary King Bill (The Fox) Foster, is “Ziggy-Sokky, Ziggy-Sokky Hoy Hoy Hoy!”