104th Rose Parade Has Many Jumping for Joy : Entertainment: Spectacle offers a sense of well-being to many after a year of economic and racial pain.

Bungee jumpers plunged from the sky, a school bus full of kids magically disappeared, hippos crooned and the Three Musketeers charged down Colorado Boulevard on Friday as the 104th Rose Parade rolled along in nearly flawless fantasy.

Hundreds of thousands of spectators, many of whom weathered a nighttime chill in the low 40s to stake out good viewing positions, were treated to a variety of imaginative floats that lived up to the parade’s theme of “Entertainment on Parade.”

After a year in which Southern California absorbed unprecedented jolts of economic and racial pain, this Rose Parade was largely sheltered from the political and technical glitches that have intruded in past years.

To some, the sight of marchers falling into formation and floats rolling past in full flower inspired a sense of well-being and familiarity after tough times.

“I suppose there’s a kind of absurdity about the amount of energy that went into all of this, about the thousands and thousands of hours that went into it,” said Gail Wetmore, a writer from South Pasadena. “But getting it all to happen--there’s something about it that makes community.”

Dan Stockwell, a Cal Poly Pomona architecture student who slept along the parade route Thursday night, thought he noticed a rush of emotion sweep through the crowd when midnight struck.

“For an instant, all the pain, the problems and the hatred around the city were swept away,” Stockwell said. “It was like I wasn’t an individual but part of a whole group.”

The weather, following the dictates of history, cooperated.

For the 38th consecutive parade it was dry, a small window of good fortune with rainfall predicted by Friday night or this morning.

The only demonstration occurred when a small group of animal rights activists jumped onto a float sponsored by a car company that uses animals in crash tests.

Two minor mechanical breakdowns occurred.

One of them plagued the parade’s most eye-catching float, “Bungee Fun at the Big Top,” sponsored by Nestle USA Inc., in which bungee jumpers were to dive 100 times along the 5.5-mile parade route from an 83-foot-tall tower of chrysanthemum, carnation and marigold clowns.

For several minutes, as the float moved forward, the jumping had to cease because one of the jumpers was left dangling in midair, suspended by the heavy rubber cord attached to his waist, unable to return to the floral barrel atop the float. The industrious bungee jumpers eventually fashioned a rope-pulley system to haul each other back to the top after the end of each jump.

The float--which barely made it to the parade route by starting time because of its bulk--nevertheless won the Judges’ Special Trophy for showmanship and dramatic impact.

Malaysia’s “Fanta-sea on Parade” float, a blend of chrysanthemum crabs, strawflower, coconut clam shells and rose coral reefs, won the Sweepstakes Trophy as the parade’s most beautiful entry.

It was a day of several parade firsts:

The bungee float was the tallest in Rose Parade history. Another float, sponsored by the Elks, featured the biggest clown ever seen--55 feet long, clad in a floral tweed suit, riding a tricycle. Another, “Prestidigitation on Parade,” sponsored by Arco, gave the parade its first magic trick: a 75-foot rabbit who made a yellow school bus disappear inside a colorful box, thanks to the 15 young bus riders, who pushed “safety buttons” in unison to trigger and retrigger the disappearing act. Alas, what was magic was not perfect. Halfway along the route the machinery for the trick stopped working and the kids in the bus simply kept waving to the crowd for the rest of the parade.

The parade also marked the first use of solar energy. Southern California Edison’s “More Than Magic” float featured a huge sculptured magician who held before him a crystal ball that rotated through the energy created by photovoltaic cells on the outside of the ball. Parade officials waived the rule requiring that every visible surface be completely covered by flowers or other natural materials.

And for the first time, China joined the worldwide television viewing audience of 300 million.

Standing along the sidewalk, perched on walls and huddled under blankets along Colorado Boulevard were ladies in fur coats, men in John Birch Society caps and teen-agers in hip Cross Colours garb.

Some clutched memories.

Dicksy Bosco of El Monte, who lost her job as an accountant last year, said the passing spectacle was allowing her to “relive a moment of glory and honor.” She had once marched in the Rose Parade as an alto horn player with the Long Beach Community College Band.

“It was 1955--the last year it rained,” she said. “Did it (the rain) bother me? When you’re in the band, you’re oblivious to that. The adrenalin kicks in.”

James Jones, 15, of Altadena had come Thursday afternoon to reserve a spot on Colorado, continuing a Rose Parade family tradition that his grandmother, Addie Jones, started in 1956.

“I missed it in 1958 because that was the year my son was born, two days before the parade,” Addie Jones said.

Last year her family bought her a seat in the bleachers, but she was happier watching from the street.

“You can see the expression on people’s faces and you can smell the flowers down here,” she said. “This is the best spot.”

The grand marshal, Tony-award winning actress and “Murder, She Wrote” star Angela Lansbury, was ebullient but exhausted at parade’s end.

“I never had to hold up my arm for two hours before,” she said.

The most charming moment for Lansbury came when a group of several hundred grandstand viewers serenaded her with the song “Mame,” the Broadway production in which she starred.

Pasadena’s studiously casual mayor, Rick Cole, rode the back of an elegant Moon Continental limousine in a plain blue shirt. Underneath the shirt, Cole, a frequent critic of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Assn., wore a T-shirt issued by a local black organization saying: “Tournament of Racists.”

Cole and others have criticized parade organizers for their overwhelmingly white male leadership. Last year, after the tournament named a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus as grand marshal, Cole said the decision reflected the “aging white men” who head the organization. Black Pasadenans have recently criticized tournament heads for vowing never to use affirmative action techniques to increase minority membership.

Cole flashed the T-shirt occasionally along the parade route, but afterward he downplayed its significance. “This is going to be a year when we work together,” he said of the tournament.

Rose Queen Liana Carisa Yamasaki was enchanted by the spectacle.

“It was neat seeing people I didn’t even know, shouting my name,” she said after the parade, still coolly regal in her white gown.

Not all the shouting was adulatory, added Princess Stacey Veronica Croomes.

“Some people ask for your phone number,” she said.

About 40 minutes into the parade, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals climbed aboard the “Entertainment on Wheels” float sponsored by General Motors, repeating a protest they made at last year’s parade against the company’s use of animals. Police arrested seven people and booked them on a misdemeanor charge of interfering with a city-permitted event.

GM is the only car manufacturer that still uses dogs, pigs, rabbits and other animals in crash tests. The company contends the tests lead to safer cars. Opponents contend the use of live animals has been rendered obsolete by the use of computer simulation, dummies and cadavers.

The usual amount of misbehavior occurred along the parade route overnight.

Pasadena police arrested 102 people by the time the parade began, most of them for public drunkenness and 10 on suspicion of felonies, including one person for assault and another for firing a weapon.

Most of the overnighters were simply seeking an off-beat evening.

“We come because of the nighttime environment,” said Lori Patterson of Lancaster, who camped out for the sixth consecutive year and has grown fond of the marshmallow fights and cherry bombs that fly from one side of the street to the other.

Pasadena officials had grown so concerned about parade messiness that a new ordinance was passed making it a misdemeanor to use an aerosol string spray, which had turned streets and cars into a mess before and during recent parades. Thursday night, as marshmallow fights escalated, police began to confiscate marshmallows.

Pam Volpone of Palmdale was peeved when police took a bag of marshmallows away from her daughters, Jennifer, 15, and Amanda, 7.

“They got into trouble for throwing marshmallows, then people were getting ketchuped and egged while they were sleeping and nothing happened with the police. Marshmallows don’t hurt anybody, but eggs do,” Volpone said.

By 6 a.m., Susan Hinrichs of Riverside was up frying bacon and eggs on a Coleman stove on Colorado Boulevard, her husband and son still groggy under layers of blankets.

“I made my husband promise he would spend the night out here once and he says he’s just keeping his word,” she said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It’s cold, but it’s worth it.”

Marisol Olivares was up before the sun to roll strips of bacon around 150 hot dogs, slice buckets of onions and bell peppers and get all her supplies together for her second annual hot dog stand at the parade.

As Olivares grilled hot dogs on a portable stove, wafts of bacon grease and fried onions floated up to parade enthusiasts on Colorado Boulevard. Marisol, who usually sells hot dogs out of a truck in Los Angeles, was swamped with requests for her $3 dogs and said she expected to make more than twice the money she does on a normal day.

“I’ve never had a hot dog with bacon before. . . . Is this considered healthy?” asked New Jersey native Peter Brown, ordering a dog with extra peppers and onions.

The marchers who appeared most relieved at the end of the parade were members of a high school band from Orange City, Iowa, called the Dutchmen.

Band members all wore Dutch wooden shoes, which, contrary to longstanding myths about their comfort, are painful to wear, several band members said.

“The secret,” said clarinetist Michelle VanBruggen, “is to put pieces of carpet on the bottom and sponges on the tops. And wear lots of socks.”

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer Bob Baker.

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