Everything Turns Out Rosy for 106th Parade

On a day spared the disruptions that have nagged the street spectacle in years past, a towering carnation-covered astronaut whacked giant golf balls into space from the lunar surface, ancient gods played ball Aztec-style and an elephant tried some hang-gliding as floats in the sports-minded running of the 106th Rose Parade rumbled down Pasadena streets Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of well-behaved people took it all in, gradually shedding their blankets and sleeping bags after a chilly night spent camped out along the 5 1/2-mile parade route.

“This is the biggest party of the year,” said Chris Hamlin, of Woodland Hills, sipping a Bloody Mary from a plastic cup along Colorado Boulevard just minutes before the parade began. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The parade offered a much-needed infusion of fantasy after a trying year that saw the devastating Northridge earthquake, a notorious double murder in Brentwood and financial catastrophe in Orange County.

The rush of colorful scenes offered a sense of celebration and escape. Many were designed around the parade theme of “Sports: A Quest for Excellence,” and builders of the 54 floats, 22 of which won awards, let their sports imaginations loose, creating floats of gondola races, falconry, gymnastics, and a game of Frisbee between an earthling and an extraterrestrial.

And the “Earthquake Kids”--Northridge’s national championship Little League team--were cheered as they walked in uniform alongside Arco’s “Sweet Taste of Victory” float.

The day did see a few hitches, striking with little regard for prestige or power.

The parade’s Sweepstakes Trophy winner, “Defending Home Court”--a smoke-billowing three-headed dragon--broke down briefly before mechanics brought it back to life.

And two classic 1940 Packards carrying Pasadena Mayor Katie Nack and parade President Mike Ward broke down too. Ward owns a tow-truck company, but another operator had to pull his car the last half of the route.

There was plenty for parade organizers to cheer about, however.

Bright skies smiled on the crowd, marking the 40th straight year that the parade has dodged rain. Fewer than 70 parade-goers were cited for public drunkenness, rowdiness or other offenses--about a third of last year’s total. And political disruptions appeared minimal.

In recent years, the Rose Parade--and the cameras that show it to viewers worldwide--has become a magnet of sorts for those with social causes. Native American groups, animal rights activists and others have staged protests.

Last year, a potentially damaging “counter-parade” was averted just weeks before the event when a “Coalition Against Racism” prodded tournament organizers to integrate an executive committee that had been exclusively white and male for nearly a century.

This year, there had been little threat of political protest, and one promised action fizzled when only half a dozen students opposing the restrictions in Proposition 187 ran onto the parade route at the corner of Orange Grove and Colorado boulevards shortly after the parade began, and sat down with their small, hand-lettered signs. Police quickly removed them, but they were not arrested.

Even the parade-goers’ custom of throwing marshmallows and other edible projectiles at the police appears to have died down.

“All I can figure is that the people who come to the parade don’t come to get drunk and crazy anymore,” said Lt. Tom Oldfield of the Pasadena Police Department, which sent out a thousand officers--including many on loan from other area departments--to patrol the route Sunday night and Monday.

“It was really a very quiet day, very comfortable,” said parade spokesman Ken Veronda. “The weather was very kind . . . and there was much less alcohol. It’s the morning after New Year’s Day, so I’m sure many people were already partied out.”

This year, for the 16th time in its history, the parade was held on Jan. 2 because New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday.

That tradition dates back to 1893, when parade organizers feared that the flower-decorated buggies would spook the horses tethered outside churches and interfere with religious services.

And this time, the sports theme was not confined to the Rose Bowl game that ends the event.

Golf was a favorite motif, as roosters in classic plaids and giant astronauts--recreating Alan Shepard’s famous lunar shots during the Apollo 14 mission--teed off on the mobile greens.

Golfing legend Chi Chi Rodriguez, riding as parade grand marshal in a maroon Lincoln, didn’t need any moon balls; he prompted whoops from the crowd just by drawing his putter and engaging in the aerial swordplay that has become a personal trademark.

“I loved it,” he said as his car reached the end of the route. “I thought the people came to see me, but I came to see them. . . . I had as much fun as they did.”

Not everyone appreciated him, though. “Chi-Chi who?” Dan Merino of Sierra Madre asked as he played cribbage with his cousin during the parade.

Many other big sports were represented, too. But the parade also featured some rather untraditional athletes who hadn’t gotten much air time lately on ESPN--including a hang-gliding elephant, a pool-shooting mouse, a Frisbee-tossing Martian. There were also Aztec gods in loincloths and breastplates playing an ancient ballgame and a sumo wrestler readying for a match in front of Mt. Fuji.

A few of the entries--such as a band of self-styled bounty-hunters on horseback from Norco and a troupe of chess pieces straight off the pages of “Alice in Wonderland,” left onlookers wondering if they quite fit the theme of sport.

But no matter; sporting or not, the pageantry proved satisfying enough to many onlookers.

“It’s the greatest parade in the world,” declared Mario Juarez of San Fernando, who showed up just before midnight Sunday with his family of seven, bearing sleeping bags, cots and jugs of hot coffee. Even at that hour, they had to struggle to find a spot at the end of the route.

For 34-year-old Jaylene Valentine of Garden Grove, who camped out Sunday night along Colorado Boulevard with three of her seven children, it was her first trip to the Rose Parade in 14 years.

She hadn’t had much of a chance to make it back before this. “I didn’t stop having babies until now,” she said. “I wanted my kids to see it. It’s great watching it through their eyes.”

Members of the bands that high-stepped down the celebrated parade route awoke at 3 a.m. and began gathering at dawn on Orange Grove, doing stretching exercises and tuning their instruments.

At sunrise, the 165-member Moanalua High School Marching Band from Oahu, Hawaii, moved a little more energetically than most, trying to stay warm in what must have felt like chilly weather to the residents of the Pacific islands.

“It’s a little too cold for us,” band director Mike Englar said of the 42-degree temperature. “But hey,” he added, “it’s the Rose Parade.”

But fans of Rose Bowl rivals Penn State and Oregon, people used to the cold weather, were ready. Some, in fact, had been waiting months for this day.

“I booked my plane tickets in October,” said Alby Snyder, 35, a Penn State fan from Riverside, Pa., who stood along the parade route and watched the free spectacle after having shelled out for the flight and game tickets. “Once we beat Michigan, I figured we were on our way.”

Tim Vian, assistant director of the Oregon Marching Band, had his 190-member group assembled at the parade site before dawn. “It’s going to be a long day,” Vian said.

Even though his band has not had a Rose Parade showing since the Ducks last played in the Rose Bowl 37 years ago, Vian had high hopes for the team.

“I think people underestimate us. But we’re ready,” he said.

Not ready enough, some rivals declared.

“Penn State by two touchdowns,” predicted Nittany Lion, the costumed mascot of rival Penn State, as he led his band in a pre-parade exercise, a block away from the Ducks band.

At the Best Western Hotel on Colorado Boulevard, about a dozen members of the Thomas family from Eugene, Ore., were brewing coffee and sipping vodka and orange juice on a balcony bedecked with crepe paper and balloons.

“Oregon all the way!” Bob Thomas shouted at passersby.

Two rooms over, Derrick Granderson of York, Pa., wrote off his neighbors with a good-natured shrug.

“They might as well party it up now,” he said, “because there ain’t going to be nothing to celebrate later.”

He turned out to be right as Penn State beat Oregon, 38-20.

An estimated 450 million people in 90 countries worldwide watched the parade, but they didn’t see quite everything.

Five floats had to be towed at least part of the way because of mechanical trouble, sidelining the dragon and the Aztec god, a gymnast, an aerial race and a Disneyland show. But parade spokesman Veronda said none of the live TV cameras at the beginning of the route caught the towings.

“That,” he said, “was a big plus.”

Times staff writers Andrea Ford and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.

* PARADE PICTURES: A3-A5

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Floats on View

The parade is over but the floats linger on.

They can be viewed today between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at a staging area on Paloma Street at Sierra Madre Boulevard in Pasadena. The cost is $1 per person.

Shuttles, leaving leave every 10 minutes from Pasadena City College at the southeast corner of Hill Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, will provide round-trip service to the viewing area until 3 p.m.