Alhambra, San Gabriel Are Birds of a Feather for Parade

After breaking off discussions with Monterey Park over the second Chinese New Year parade, the city of Alhambra has formed a new partnership with San Gabriel, its neighbor to the east, to bring in the Year of the Rooster in January.

Amid yellow and red balloons emblazoned with roosters--the Chinese symbol of the coming year--Alhambra and San Gabriel city and school officials, along with Chamber of Commerce representatives from both communities, announced Wednesday that they will join to present the second annual New Year’s parade and festival.

Alhambra chamber officials, who are planning next year’s parade, started looking for a new sponsoring city last month after disagreements surfaced with officials of Monterey Park, which had jointly sponsored the first parade.

Monterey Park City Council members and Chamber of Commerce officials had raised a variety of objections to their sponsorship of the parade, which traveled along Garfield Avenue in the two cities last February.

One Monterey Park council member complained that merchants said they lost business during the parade. Another complained about potential use of cigarette, liquor and gambling firms as parade sponsors.

There was controversy over the first parade even weeks before it was held. A Bell Gardens card parlor, the Bicycle Club, had proposed a poker-playing demonstration as part of the festival and to sponsor a float too. However, parade organizers shuddered at the notion of fresh-faced high school bands marching alongside a glittering float promoting gambling. The idea was rejected.

However, alcoholic beverage companies were allowed to be sponsors in spite of some objections.

Avoiding any mention of the controversy, the Alhambra and San Gabriel officials declared Wednesday that January’s parade and subsequent three-day carnival will be bigger and better than the first, which was billed as a suburban alternative to the parade that for years has taken place in Chinatown in Los Angeles.

The Jan. 30 parade will go along Valley Boulevard in Alhambra and San Gabriel. In addition, about two-thirds of a mile of Valley Boulevard west of the route is to be blocked off for a daylong festival.

The budget for the coming year’s parade will be about $250,000, more than double the first year’s, according to parade co-chairman Paul Talbot, acting executive director of the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce.

The two sponsoring cities will provide only in-kind services as their share of the parade and festival costs, Talbot said.

Although the city of Monterey Park and the Monterey Park Chamber of Commerce won’t be participating directly as co-sponsors, Talbot said the businesses as well as officials from the city have indicated that they will be a part of the festivities.

In addition, volunteers on the parade’s organizing committee will come from cities throughout the San Gabriel Valley and from Los Angeles, he said.

Parade organizers said they expect that tens of thousands of spectators and hundreds of floats and parade units will join in the festival. And all of this translates into good business for the western San Gabriel Valley, they said.

Through events such as this, parade co-chairman Raymond Cheng said at Wednesday’s press conference, “we can all learn to respect our cultural differences and learn to live and work in harmony.”

And Alhambra Mayor Talmage V. Burke said, “We know this is a tradition that is going to continue.”

In formally approving its sponsorship of the parade on Tuesday, the San Gabriel City Council extolled the event as a boon to the city and its dealing with Alhambra.

San Gabriel Mayor Dominic S. Polimeni said the city’s sponsorship of the parade will help the municipal government fulfill its goal of stronger relations with the Asian business community.

Referring to the nation’s current difficult economic times, Cheng said the rooster is an apt symbol to help spur a financial revival. As one of the Chinese zodiac symbols, the rooster represents, Cheng said, “deep thinking, industriousness, aggressiveness and ambitiousness.”