Disguised Golf Carts on Parade Launch Tourist Season

A Chicagoan by birth, Palos Verdes Estates resident Rita Seiwert has seen her share of parades. But never one quite like this.

It was a sort of Rose Parade in miniature, replete with the usual marching bands and movie stars, drill teams and Tahitian girls, and mothers pushing babies in decorated strollers.

But it was the 62 shrunken, battery-powered floats sputtering along the two-mile route that made this celebration the only one of its kind in the county. In an area with the heaviest concentration of golf courses per square mile in the nation--82 in all of the Coachella Valley--it seemed only natural to hold a golf cart parade.

About 20,000 people lined El Paseo in Palm Desert on Sunday to ooh and aah at such entries as the cart from First Interstate Bank camouflaged to look like a gray Brink’s armored truck. This one provided an audience participation element as spectators leaped from curbs and lawn chairs to scoop up the fake $50 and $100 bills that spilled from money bags along the way.

The parade originated in the 1950s, in the heat of the summer when desert temperatures sizzled between 110 and 125 degrees for weeks. It was called Mid-Summer Madness for a time, later Christmas in July.

But horses dropped from heat exhaustion. Marchers fainted. Bands were unable to make it to the end of the parade route because of the torrid temperatures. So the date was moved ahead to fall, and now each year the Golf Cart Parade officially welcomes visitors back to Palm Desert for the start of the tourist season.

Through the years, film and TV stars participated in the zany celebration begun by actresses Ginger Rogers and Esther Williams.

This year was no exception. Riding on golf cart floats were actresses Linda Gray--the honorary Palm Desert mayor--and Stephanie Powers.

Although weekend temperatures in Palm Desert were in the relatively pleasant 80s, it was still hot enough to call for dozens of young women to walk beside the marching groups, armed with water dispensers for spraying sweaty faces and quenching thirsts.

Winner of the grand prize trophy was the towering Palm Springs High School senior class float entitled “Once Upon a Time.” It took 50 seniors a week to fashion the colorful tissue-paper float of a knight in shining armor slaying a giant purple fire-breathing dragon to protect a fair maiden.

Other entries included a giant Hershey kiss, a gingerbread house, a vine-covered cottage entered by a realty firm and Temple Sinai’s “Peace for all Mankind” float, a huge dove covered with chicken feathers.