Parade Crowd Takes Theme of Fun Seriously : Pageant: Thousands enjoy stream of floats and marching bands at 102nd Tournament of Roses event.

The rollicking botanical extravaganza that annually turns the streets of Pasadena into a world-class New Year’s party rolled through town again Tuesday atop a carpet of smashed marshmallows, Silly String and confetti.

The theme for the 102nd Tournament of Roses was a less-than-daring “Fun ‘n’ Games,” but it was taken to heart by hundreds of thousands of spectators who lined up, as many as 30 deep, along the parade’s 5 1/2-mile route.

Many braved a frigid night huddled around portable stoves and barbecues, as they sipped illicit champagne, swayed to thumping dance music and fired a continuous barrage of food and plastic goop at the bumper-to-bumper cruisers along Colorado Boulevard.

By morning, when the sun burst on cue through alabaster clouds, they were cheering wildly for the bands, sometimes scantily clad drill teams, equestrian units and ornate floats, which included a 40-foot basketball player making the world’s largest slam dunk and a chrysanthemum-covered purple people eater that yanked passengers out of a yellow bus and popped them in his mouth with a scaly claw.

“This is totally excellent,” said Duane Scissons, 29, of Hollywood as he chugged a beer from a plastic foam cup. “It definitely beats TV. You don’t even have to adjust the color.”

In the breathless spirit of the event, a child was born. Ada Reyes, 20, of San Pedro delivered a healthy baby girl, with the help of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, in a parking lot just off Colorado Boulevard at 9:50 a.m. The 6-pound, 12-ounce infant, named Guadalupe, was believed to be the first birth in the parade’s history.

“We checked every record we could find and don’t know of any other along the parade route,” said Tournament of Roses spokesman Ken Veronda. “We may have a rosy baby.”

Police reported 124 arrests, mostly for public drunkenness, which represented a sharp decrease from previous years.

However, the parade was marred by several violent incidents, including a drive-by shooting death on the nearby Foothill Freeway and a stabbing that left a 20-year-old man in critical condition.

Authorities said John G. Hernandez, 25, of Hawaiian Gardens was killed about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday when someone in a passing car shot him while he was a passenger on a friend’s motorcycle. Hernandez had been seen on the parade route earlier, but officers did not know where the conflict originated. No arrests have been made. The motorcycle driver was not injured.

“We don’t think it’s gang-related,” said Pasadena Police Lt. Jerry Schultze. “But we don’t know if it’s random, or if it’s something that might have occurred earlier on the parade route.”

Parade officials also stuck to their standard, if apocryphal, estimate of 1 million spectators, despite the fact that Pasadena Police Lt. Gregg Henderson conceded that, even from a helicopter, it is virtually impossible to count.

“There is no formula,” Henderson said. “You go up in the air and you take a look down, and it’s like, ‘Yep, a whole lot of folks down there, probably about a million.’ ”

Certainly, many more watched the pomp and whimsy from the comfort of their couches. The television audience was estimated at more than 400 million in 85 countries, including first-time broadcasts to U.S. embassies in Beirut, New Delhi and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as well as to U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.

“It’s exciting to know all my relatives back East are watching it on TV and I’m seeing it live,” said George Stone, 39, a Postal Service employee from Los Angeles. “It’s like we’re really sharing something together.”

As always, there were stalls and stumbles involving parade floats and participants.

A 40-year-old decorator injured his back when he fell 12 feet inside the Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream float, a mammoth likeness of a pirouetting Miss Piggy.

One of the more than 800 white-suited volunteers, known aptly as “White Suiters,” was hospitalized after complaining of chest pains.

Five floats had to be towed or push-started after spilling radiator coolant, losing traction or blowing a fuel pump.

At the officially sanctioned speed of 2.5 m.p.h., it took the 22 marching bands, 60 floats and 275 equestrians nearly five hours to all arrive at the parade’s finish line.

“It’s amazing the ingenuity that goes into making something so beautiful,” said Dona Lundin, 61, one of more than 90 semi-retired farmers who rode buses in from South Dakota. “I’m so awed by the fact that these are all living things.”

Grand Marshal Bob Newhart, known for his dead-pan comic delivery, rode in a rose-covered car with his family.

Rose Queen Cara Payton Rullman, a 17-year-old cheerleader at San Marino High School, shivered in 50-degree weather as the procession got under way. She blamed the cold and nerves for her state, saying: “It’s a little bit of both right now.”

By 10 a.m., the sun was out in full glory and it was clear that the parade would easily pass its 36th consecutive year without rain--the longest dry stretch since blossom-covered carriages first tempted Easterners with winter warmth back in 1890.

“I’ve watched it on TV and wished I was there on a 70-degree day,” said Mac Sockwell, 37, a Tupperware sales manager visiting from New Jersey. “Now, here I am on a 70-degree day. I can’t get over it.”

The Sweepstakes Trophy winner was the float “Fun ‘n’ Games in a Winter Wonderland,” FTD’s frilly scene of three white horses, covered in carnations, orchids and coconut, pulling a sleigh above the spiral rooftops of Russia. With an occasional slip, four ice skaters managed to perform at the back of the float amid snowdrifts of cattleya orchids, irises and camellias.

The Grand Marshal’s Trophy for excellence in creative design and concept went to “The Wizard,” a General Motors/United Auto Workers entry that featured a towering sorcerer pulling out a dove and ringed planet from his sleeves.

The California Institute of Technology thought it had a hit with “For Every Action . . . a Reaction,” a tribute to Rube Goldberg featuring a 23-step chain reaction that the Pasadena college hailed as one of the most complicated animated floats in tournament history.

The judges overlooked the entry, however. Some spectators, unaware that the falling apple at the end of the float was aimed at 17th-Century scientist Isaac Newton, proudly pointed to the “Johnny Appleseed” float.

“It was Caltech,” explained Doug Smith, one of the college’s publicists, “so we wanted to do something Caltech-ish.”

Over the years, the college’s students have been noted for their New Year’s pranks, including toying with the Rose Bowl stadium scoreboard and doctoring formulas for stadium card stunts.

In the end, the parade captured that curious mixture of wholesome fun and raucous mischief that comes when Pasadena invites the rest of the world to come party in its streets.

There was a barrel-chested rap singer with a huge sombrero dishing out rhymes; a pajama-clad roller-skater guiding himself with ski poles; a young woman handing out flyers indicating that Bart Simpson is a follower of Jesus, and a wrinkled man who seems to appear every year waving a sign with the baffling statement that “Magnets Stop Pain.”

“This is the fun part,” said 14-year-old Kevin Summers, who brought bananas, peanuts, marshmallows and Silly String with which to plaster passers-by. “Forget the parade.”

Yet there were also people nearly moved to tears by the floral sights and smells, downright gushy over all the pageantry and splendor.

“This really is wholesome,” said Connie Scolinos, who helped serve pastries, fresh fruit and hot cocoa to nearly 300 friends at her husband’s Colorado Boulevard law firm. “That’s a priceless commodity in the society we live in.”