With Heaters and Champagne, Party Went On for Blocks

No one even bothered to wait for Tuesday’s Tournament of Roses to step off before letting the “Fun ‘n’ Games” begin.

From spending sprees to marshmallow fights, the festivities early on had a different face on every block.

Meanwhile, around the corner from Colorado Boulevard on Orange Grove Boulevard, the mood took a more serious turn as floats got stuck, ran over curbs and clobbered traffic signals. Nothing, however, was going to stop this parade from rolling on.

For most spectators who decided to reserve viewing places overnight, the fuse ignited at midnight.

“We popped champagne and threw confetti and marshmallows at cars passing by. I can’t believe I’m here,” said Joyce Deibert, a Philadelphia nurse who had grown up watching the parade on television.

At the stroke of midnight, a stranger came up and kissed 17-year-old Erin Zane of Valencia. She already had her hands full trying to keep warm in 30-degree temperatures even though she was bundled in two layers of underwear, thermals, a turtleneck, T-shirt, two sweat shirts and a jacket.

Her friend Mark Jaffe, 16, nursed a hot chocolate for two hours to hold a seat in a restaurant.

“I had no pillow last night,” he said. “I slept with my head on the cement and there were ashes on the curb. It’s not the cleanest of sidewalks.”

Indeed, as dawn arrived it looked as though a parade had already passed. With no public trash cans in sight, people made do. One well-trampled sidewalk nook on the south side of Colorado was heaped with plastic cups, apples, crushed bagels, handouts on an alleged fugitive Pope, empty beer, champagne and vodka bottles, discarded Danish pastry, cigarette butts and an unblemished grapefruit.

Conditions were distinctly more civilized in the camp of Warren and Ginger Dale, who were hosting a Glendale youth group. Their toes were warmed in front of propane heaters. The parade menu included three kinds of quiche, fried potato wedges, vegetarian sausage, fresh fruit and freshly brewed coffee, both caffeinated and decaffeinated. Steaming platters kept it all warm. Their group began staking out their Colorado Boulevard niche Saturday night.

Teddy Lieu, 16, of Norwalk also arrived early--about 11 a.m. Monday, and immediately began cleaning out his savings, a dollar at a time.

By the time the parade rolled past, he had spent $80. The first $45 went for spray cans of party string. Then he treated his buddies to Oriental fast food and paid for a couple of movies at a Colorado Boulevard theater.

He finally sprung for some incense that a street vendor was pushing because, he said, “It was a great deal, 24 sticks for a dollar!” He selected the rose fragrance, of course. He needed no consolation as his aromatic investment burned up in the chilly air. After all, he said, “I still have $20.”

As revelers whooped it up along Colorado, float workers on Orange Grove pinned it down, glued it in place and tested it out.

For a half-hour, the brakes jammed on the Elks float, titled “In the Center Ring.”

“This thing has been working for months,” decorator Joe Merenda moaned.

Unlike most floats, the Elks’ entry was horse-powered, which Merenda had figured would minimize the potential for mechanical disaster.

Carnation’s “Purple People Eater” float ran aground over a curb, even though it was being steered by a train engineer with 16 years of float-driving experience. As it edged free, a tree limb swept off 20 white carnations.

A gnarly bellybutton appeared in the chest of a 40-foot basketball player aboard the ITT/Sheraton float. Decorators plugged it with carnations.

The fixes were not just for show, as float judges made their last rounds well before the full moon gave way to dawn.

The float appraisals took an unprecedented turn, however, just after midnight when a white-haired woman in an expensive fur approached the First Interstate entry, “The Magic of Reading,” reached under the tail of a flower-covered elephant figure, plucked a honeysuckle blossom and ate it.

The woman, who was not a judge after all, had selected one of the few items on the float that is not usually eaten. The bumps on the alligator’s back were avocados, limes and squash. Flax and onion seed provided the shading for the wolves’ faces. The lion’s mane was wheat; the zebra’s white stripes were rice.

“It’s a good thing we were here,” said Merrill Mielke, who was guarding the float with friends, “or she could’ve taken out a whole section.”

Dan Froelich also manned the watch for over-curious passers-by.

“All they want to do is come up and touch the float,” he said, exasperated. “They all want to say, ‘I touched a Rose float.’ ”

Spectator Vicki Lehman saw the issue differently.

“Many, many years ago, one flower fell off a float,” she said. “I ran out and grabbed it. I didn’t pull it off the float. It fell off. A man yelled on the loudspeaker, ‘Would the lady put the flower back!’ He stopped the float and they took the flower. I was so embarrassed.”

For this parade, Lehman had joined a pre-dawn breakfast party at Susan Clark’s home on Orange Grove. When she bought the house three years ago, Clark had not realized that her home lay along the parade route until the floats were nearly upon her.

For the last two years, she has begun an odd tradition, unlocking her doors and inviting strangers with loaded guns into her home on New Year’s Eve, then going blissfully to bed. The “intruders” are the police, who have an open invitation to help themselves to coffee and doughnuts.

Just up the street from the Clark home, as the parade was getting set to roll, someone forgot to lower a parasol atop the Rand McNally float. The oversized shade smashed the traffic signal at Orange Grove and California Boulevard as if it were a puny pinata.

As with everything about the parade, there was a precedent. About six years ago, a float took out a light pole at the corner of Orange Grove and Colorado, said Jack Cudworth, an Arcadia insurance broker working the parade.

“They take that light pole down now,” he said.

Undaunted by the latest mishap, one worker showed the kind of spirit that makes the parade a success, year after year.

“We’ve already hit it,” he shouted. “You might as well keep going.”