Despite the Protests, the Doo Dah Parade Is Back : Pasadena: Merchants say it’s bad for business. Last year’s change of format was a flop. But the event is returning for ‘94, love it or hate it.

The Doo Dah Parade is a type of ritual activity called a “rite of reversal,” which anthropologists have found to occur in many societies. . . . Through caricature and parody, standing the world on its head, participants playfully convey serious messages at which observers may not legitimately take offense.”

--1982 study by Denise Lawrence, director

Center for Visual Anthropology, USC

The Doo-Dah Disaster is a pathetically unimaginative hodgepodge of thrift-shop assemblages providing a background, and excuse, for a mawkish exhibition of public cavorting by welfare beneficiaries who should be seeking employment. --Letter to the Pasadena Star-News, 1979

Not everybody loves an anti-parade.

Since 1978, Doo Dah Parade founder Peter Apanel has single-handedly put together an annual spoof of the Rose Parade that refuses to die, even though some people wished it would and thought it had (may its Lost Sock Brigade find its way to that great dryer in the sky).

Not even its Church of the Ornamental Lawn Decorations entry--dedicated to pink flamingos--was thought to have a prayer. . . .

But wait.

Hold the bugler’s taps--there’s a funky drum roll on the horizon. Or is it the faint heartbeat of a wounded animal, tired of being shot at and ready to strike again?

Doo Dah--by the seat of its too-loud pants--is ready to march forward, even though it makes no money, a group of Old Pasadena merchants circulated a petition against it and last year’s switch to a smaller, ticketed event near City Hall was a bust.

All this led to premature speculation about its demise.

“Right now, the biggest issue we have is getting people to know we’re back,” said Apanel, a 43-year-old South Pasadena resident. “A lot of people thought last year was the end . . . Clearly, it didn’t work (last year).”

This year’s event is Doo Dah redux, part II, starting at 11:30 a.m. next Sunday. The parade will move in a new, faster format, free-of-charge and back in the streets of Old Pasadena, with a post-event festival from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Memorial Park.

The Light-Bringer Project, a Pasadena nonprofit arts organization, is co-sponsoring the parade and festival as part of an effort to recruit more local entries and bolster Doo Dah’s community spirit, Apanel said.

Old favorites will be back, such as the Torment of Roses and in-drag West Hollywood Cheerleaders. New community entries will come from several sources, including Caltech, the Art Center College of Design and King’s Village housing project.

Sometimes Apanel shakes his head at the absurdity of it all--the divisiveness over an event that was conceived on a bar stool and then grew into a monstrous undertaking, with 40,000 spectators and live TV coverage in its heyday.

“It’s just a parade,” he says in those moments.

Whatever it is--and for whatever anthropological reasons--Doo Dah evokes a love-it-or-hate-it reaction at the drop of a rose petal.

Some merchants say it’s bad for business and provokes antics such as spectators throwing tortillas at paraders, a Doo Dah tradition gone awry.

“We feel it’s been pushed down our throats,” said Mark Matrese, manager of Cityscapes furniture store on Colorado Boulevard. “We feel it has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever. . . . This parade has not generated any money for local businesses. It litters. It (creates) traffic problems. It’s out of hand. . . . I’ve seen flying tortillas slam off the (store) windows.”

Other merchants say they do business like gangbusters on Doo Dah days.

At Market City Caffe on South Fair Oaks Avenue, co-owner Chipper Pastron said Doo Dah is his biggest day of the year, busier even than during the World Cup, Rose Bowl or Super Bowl.

“(Spectators) get done with the parade, and they patronize the local businesses because they know them,” Pastron said. “In my opinion, the Doo Dah Parade is everything we want in this area. It’s a Pasadena event. It was created here. It’s a family event. . . . The most important thing about this is just the idea of a parade, something fun and funky and home grown.”

Somehow, along the way, the parade--which Apanel describes as Little Rascals meets Fellini--turned political.

“This has been the worst year ever in terms of politics and financial hassles,” groaned Apanel, who runs the parade as his full-time job and occasionally takes on part-time work to make ends meet.

After last year’s bust at City Hall, many thought Doo Dah was done and overdone--stick a fork in it. That was fine with some merchants in Old Pasadena, who said it killed not only business but the area’s tony image as well.

Reaction was swift and vehement among anti-Doo Dah forces when word got around that the parade was back.

Apanel didn’t get his parade permit until last week--only two weeks before show time--as he and city officials wrangled over details such as requirements and fees for security, cleanup and street closures. City officials tried to keep the merchants’ objections in mind, said Robert Baderian, recreation and parks director.

About 100 members of the Old Pasadena Business and Professional Assn.--one-third of the group--had signed a petition asking the city to deny Apanel a parade permit, said Ray Leier, association president.

But Apanel contends that only a few conservative merchants are against him and that many told him they were pressured to sign the petition or misunderstood what they were signing.

The association and Apanel accuse each other of refusing to compromise and work together.

Among the objections, for instance, is the parade’s timing, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

Apanel denies that Doo Dah is bad for business and that the post-Thanksgiving weekend is as big a shopping weekend as merchants say it is. Doo Dah, he said, is traditionally held on that Sunday, and regulars anticipate that date every year.

In an April meeting, Apanel said he offered to negotiate the date with association officials, but they refused to listen. But Jack Smith, a past association president, said it was Apanel who refused to listen.

“He should have made plans and worked with merchants a long time ago,” said Smith, owner of California Basket Co. on Raymond Avenue. “Peter’s here one day a year. I’m here 365 days a year.”

Countered Apanel: “What they really want is a segregated, high-end theme park in Old Pasadena.”

Now that the parade is going forward, Leier said, the association wants to make peace and forge a working relationship before plans for a 1995 Doo Dah get under way. In fact, the association’s radio ads for Old Pasadena’s Holiday Open House even plug Doo Dah as part of the area’s Thanksgiving weekend event schedule.

“If you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em,” said Leier, a former Doo Dah Parade participant himself. “Now I say, do we continue to fight? Or do we say, ‘Let’s make it a good parade and let’s try to deal with (concerns) next year.’ ”

Apanel says he has tinkered with Doo Dah’s format in response to the merchants’ concerns.

In recent years, the parade’s free-wheeling spirit had prompted a few spectators to get out of hand. Some have thrown marshmallows and mucked up the streets with stringy aerosol spray foam. In 1992, the City Council passed the “Silly String ordinance,” aimed at banning such behavior.

Last year, in an effort to gain more control, Apanel decided to charge admission, limit attendance to 5,000 and cut the number of parade entries in half to 50, having them march in a loop around City Hall Plaza.

But his plan backfired. The parade drew a disappointing 2,500 spectators and 30 entries. Admission was $7 in advance and $10 on Doo Dah day, but revenue was barely enough to cover expenses, let alone make up for the loss of KCOP-TV’s contract fee to broadcast the parade. (The TV station had opted not to televise the parade in its new format; Apanel declines to say how much money was involved in that contract.)

This year, to push the event along faster, Doo Dah will be more of a Renaissance Faire-style procession, with the entries moving together as a group rather than as a consecutive parade.

It will end at a party in Memorial Park, with performance artists and musicians, including Dread Zeppelin, a reggae band with a lead singer dressed as Elvis.

Observers are expected to join in the revelry. Streets will close only when the entourage passes, rather than for the duration of the parade.

That way, the theory goes, crowds will leave less of a mess and block storefronts for only a short time. At the same time, Apanel’s expenses will be reduced because fewer police officers and portable toilets will be required.

Also, with more local entries, Apanel said, the event is less likely to get out of control. In the past, he said, a few outsiders with no regard for the community have misinterpreted the parade as an excuse for mindless partying.

Apanel contends, however, that Doo Dah’s wild reputation is unfounded. In 17 parades, there has not been a single arrest, he said.

Pasadena Police Lt. Rick Law said records are unavailable on whether police have made any arrests during Doo Dah’s entire history, although he said he does not recall any arrests in the parade’s last couple of years.

Until now, Law said, police have kept with the parade’s generally good-natured spirit. This year, however, police will no longer tolerate illegal activities such as drinking in public and throwing tortillas.

“We need to curtail and quell some of those activities,” Law said.

About half of this year’s 75 entries come from community groups, including a children’s entry from King’s Village, a federally funded, low-income housing project in Pasadena.

The project’s entry includes a stuffed dragon--made of tin cans, old material and pasteboard--and a drill team, said Ralph Poole, the project’s program coordinator. The children are so excited that they are rehearsing on Saturdays, he said.

At first, Poole said, he was wary of Doo Dah’s raunchy reputation, but he was happy to be included once he heard about the community emphasis.

“For my children who live in King’s Village, there’s a sort of alienation, of always being left out,” he said. “If you think about it, the chances of any of these kids ever participating in a Rose Parade is a long shot at best. . . . We don’t have to be involved in the raunchiness, but we can still be part of the fun.”

Doo Dah is a chance to meet neighbors and be goofy at the same time, a Main Street-of-the-’90s vibe, said Thomas Coston, director of the Light-Bringer Project, the event’s co-sponsor.

“Not to cast spears at the Rose Parade, but (Doo Dah) is participatory. . . . People want to feel part of something. It’s a connecting force,” said Coston, who was an urban cowboy in the first Doo Dah, playing Jimi Hendrix tunes on an accordion.

Doo Dah started out as a simple little venture that Apanel dreamed up with friends in a bar in 1977 as a Rose Parade alternative--no theme, no judging, no prizes.

Apanel, who has a degree in political science from Cal State Los Angeles, decided to do just that, organizing the first event in his spare time after working nights as a hospital orderly. After a few years, the parade started taking up so much time that Apanel quit his job to work on Doo Dah full time. Soon, Doo Dah-style parades sprung up nationwide in such places as Washington, D.C.; Columbus, Ohio, and Ocean City, N.J.

Nonetheless, Apanel, who is single and lives in a studio apartment, said he barely broke even the past couple of years and never made more than $20,000 for a year’s work on the parade. This year, he expects to lose money.