Street Humor : Madding Crowd Comes From Afar for Annual Rite of the Bizarre in Pasadena’s Doo Dah Parade

On a bright autumn afternoon in Old Pasadena, what waiter/struggling actor wouldn’t want to be dressed to the nines in a gleaming white bridal gown and a floppy hat as he paraded down Colorado Boulevard reciting Emily Dickinson poems?

“When you’ve got legs like these,” 27-year-old Jeff Bowser said Sunday as he lifted his gown to unveil a hairy calf fitted into a black high-top basketball sneaker, “you wanna show them off as much as possible. . . . This is a huge moment for me.”

Don’t ask.

No one else was asking at the 20th annual running of Pasadena’s Doo Dah Parade as thousands of spectators turned out to watch giraffes in drag, human cue balls, giant garlics and dozens of other entrants--most no less bizarre than Bowser--flock through the city streets.

A sort of anti-Rose Parade that has become part community theater, part satirical high jinks, the Doo Dah Parade has struggled in recent years to define its evolving image. It hit its low point in 1993 when organizers charged $10 admission and drew sparse crowds and dismal reviews, threatening to shut down the event altogether.

But organizers rejected the entry fee and the parade seems to have rebounded well the past two years, officials say.

“It’s a lot of things to a lot of people,” said organizer Thomas Coston, director of the Light-Bringer Project, a nonprofit arts group in Pasadena that took over sponsorship of the parade for the first time this year. “Mostly, it’s just an opportunity to relieve some stress. I think people are getting their senses of humor back.”

Not that Doo Dah-ers could be accused of excessive seriousness in years past.

Coston took part in the parade nearly two decades ago, adorned in a tasteful olive green suit and a cowboy hat as he played a barely recognizable version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” He set fire to his instrument when he was done.

The music had changed a bit since then--Led Zeppelin and Frank Sinatra were more in vogue Sunday, with a raucous shot of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” to kick off the festivities--but a decidedly eclectic mix was still on display.

“Every time there’s a parade like this, every freak and their brother comes out,” said Mike Doren, a bartender at Mi Piace restaurant on Colorado Boulevard, where residents turned out a few hours before the noon parade to get a comfortable sidewalk table for the two-hour show. “That’s a good thing. It’s self-expression--we need a little fun these days.”

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There were more than 90 entries in all, everything from fairly traditional school marching bands and drill teams to more offbeat dueling gladiators and ramp-jumping skateboarders.

A band of West Hollywood “cheerleaders” danced the streets in drag, their hair coiffed almost as big as their pompons. A group of “Lounge Lizards,” replete with reptilian heads and tails in 1970s retro plaid and polyester jackets, lip-synced to “New York, New York.” A “grill team” with charcoal bags for hats created their own distinctive back-yard barbecue.

An Elvis impersonator with black tape for sideburns fronted a band of reggae musicians. Preteens in black and orange striped suits buzzed their way through the parade doing bee impersonations that might have made John Belushi proud. And a Pasadena city official, worried that a bout of pneumonia would keep her from walking the route, managed instead to make it through on a flower-adorned wheelchair as the first official “pace car” for the event.

There was no short supply of sexual innuendo and bathroom humor: one man paraded down the 1.2-mile route while seated on a toilet.

Talk-show host Stephanie Miller, a co-moderator for KCOP’s live telecast of the event, said the risque nature of some entrants should answer concerns that the parade was becoming “too PG” as it sought to reach out to a broader family audience. “We may have even gotten up to an NC-17 rating in some spots,” Miller said. “Bob Dole must be in a lather over this.”

But don’t try telling Mary Cavena.

The 65-year-old Pasadena woman remembers taking her children to the parade in the late 1970s, when the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Drool Team drew raves. “It was a lot more irreverent then, a lot raunchier,” she said. But she added quickly: “It’s still lot of fun.”

Of course, nothing is routine at the Doo Dah--even the crowd count.

Organizers reported that about 20,000 to 25,000 people attended the event, topping last year’s turnout. But police estimated the crowd at only 2,000 people.

Not counting giant garlics and cue balls.