Rose Parade Blooms Late : Celebration: This is the 16th time in its 106-year history that the Tournament of Roses falls on Jan. 2 instead of New Year’s Day. Result: a mellower crowd.
You could look at it as splitting up the merriment between two days . . . or making the fun last twice as long.
Along the Tournament of Roses parade route, people did both.
The parade, usually a sidewalk celebration and football orgy for New Year’s Day, comes one day later than usual this year because New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday. It is the 16th time in the tournament’s 106-year history that the parade and game are being held Jan. 2.
So while the rest of the world’s New Year’s show went ahead on the first day of the year, crowds expecting to celebrate their holiday today staked out prime viewing spots on the parade route along Pasadena’s streets Sunday afternoon in anticipation of an entertaining overnight vigil--and honored their own traditions.
Some began a quest to achieve the perfect drunken state. Others pelted police officers with marshmallows, a recent innovation. Still, the parade’s timing seemed to bring a bit of civility to the sidewalk spectacle.
“They are more docile,” said Pasadena Police Sgt. John Thomas. “They are partied out.”
In the spirit of moderation, Mike Armstrong, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory technician from La Crescenta, left at home the big-screen TV and VCR he had brought to the parade route last year. This time, there were just a few things to get him through the night: a 12-inch TV, a portable generator, an electric coffee maker.
“If things get real bad, we can use our cellular phones to call for backup,” Armstrong said as he watched a televised pro football game from a grassy spot he and a friend had claimed along the parade route for nine family members who would arrive later.
Clinging to her choice free spot near the parade grandstands, Cheryl Culbertson, down from Apple Valley, hoped that the stakeout for the next-day parade would be more mellow. Last year, fights kept breaking out around her. The truly drunk were hauled away by police. Others pelted passing cars with water or marshmallows.
“There was so much belligerence you had to walk down the middle of the street to avoid it,” said Culbertson, who this year brought her daughter, Rachael, and two of the girl’s friends.
Culbertson has come to the parade every year since she was a little girl--not for the sidewalk sideshow but to revel in the floats, the choreographed routines, the spectacle of flowers that begins to move along Colorado Boulevard at 8 a.m. today.
As in previous years, parade-goers weren’t allowed to plant themselves on the route until noon the day before the parade. “At noon, it’s like the big Oklahoma land grab,” said Sgt. Thomas. Using couches, tents and ladders to claim territory is verboten. Each person is permitted to reserve spaces for no more than 20 empty chairs.
Faced with the barrage of rules, bored parade-goers have turned to an aerosol spray foam known as Silly String, and to hurling tortillas and marshmallows to liven things up. A city ordinance makes it a misdemeanor to “drop, roll, throw, toss, squirt or propel any gaseous, liquid, semi-solid or solid substance or object” toward a participant in the parade--or toward law enforcement officers.
“A couple of years ago, they started throwing marshmallows at the cops. We put up with it for a while. Then we take them to jail,” Thomas said. The punishment: up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The tradition of a Monday game and parade when New Year’s is a Sunday was set in 1893 by tournament officials who feared that the flower-decorated buggies and pageantry would spook horses tethered outside churches and interfere with religious services.
Parade organizers say they notice a difference when the event is held Jan. 2. For one thing, the morning-after New Year’s reprieve boosts TV viewership around the globe. About 450 million people in 90 countries are expected to watch today, a higher number than when the event is held Jan. 1, says William B. Flinn, associate executive director of the Tournament of Roses Assn.
Along the parade route, though, most shops were closed for two days--Sunday and today--some of them boarded up and fenced off from today’s anticipated sidewalk crowds.
Only restaurants, food stores and a few souvenir shops remained open Sunday. Businesses along Colorado Boulevard weren’t thrilled with the scheduling. But at Goldstein’s Bagel Bakery, sales were bustling. Manager John Scott was happy that the extra day gave out-of-town fans extra time in Pasadena. “The home-team fans wouldn’t be out here two days in a row,” he said.
This year’s parade theme is “Sports--Quest for Excellence.” Professional golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez will ride as the grand marshal of the 5.5-mile, two-hour trek that begins in the heart of well-to-do Pasadena on what was once called “Millionaire’s Row” and then moves through the city’s commercial district.
The parade boasts 54 seed- and flower-adorned floats--each costing about a quarter-million dollars--23 bands and 29 equestrian units. A golf-playing astronaut tries to putt on the moon in the lead float, “An American Pastime.”
The 81st Rose Bowl, beginning at 1:50 p.m., matches the second-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions and the University of Oregon Ducks.
There is little chance it will rain on the parade. Meteorologist Curtis Brack of WeatherData Inc. said a storm off the California coast probably won’t move inland until Tuesday or Wednesday.
Parade day looked to be partly cloudy and in the mid- to upper 60s.
* BOON TO BUSINESS
Snaring a Rose Bowl team and its fans is a hotel marketer’s dream, but the coup requires a game plan. D2
