Floats’ Encore

In an annual holiday role reversal, floats from the 109th Tournament of Roses Parade were parked Friday as spectators marched around them for a last look.

The “post-parade” gives locals and tourists a chance to take a long look at the floats that otherwise pass quickly by on the parade route or their television screens.

Since Thursday afternoon, about 100,000 people have stopped by the exhibition area in front of Victory Park in northeast Pasadena.

“The post-parade seems to be a tradition for many people who come,” said C.L. Keedy, chairman of the Tournament of Roses post-parade committee. Keedy said many of the visitors he meets come every year to the close-up viewing, including a couple from Holland he met Friday morning.

Though he and his family were visiting the floats for the first time, Ray Larkins, 34, said, “This will probably become an annual affair.”

Larkins, who lives in Corona, was touring the floats with his wife, Bonnie, 35, their three children and a niece visiting from Santa Maria. He said he was fascinated by the use of fruits and vegetables to decorate parade floats.

“There are coconuts, lemons, limes, eggplants, beans,” he said as he examined a float featuring polar bears whose coats were made of coconut shavings and white strawflowers from South Africa.

About 70,000 people are expected to view the floats today from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The floats have held up very well this year, since it hasn’t rained and temperatures have been cool, Keedy said. Rain often washes off the plants attached to the floats, and heat wilts them.

Some who turned up Friday were returning after long absences. Fusae Masukawa, 78, of Los Feliz was back after 25 years. “I used to come here when the kids were babies,” she said.

Masukawa’s daughter Eleanor Kato, 53, said she normally works after New Year’s Day, but this year got Friday off from her job as a librarian and decided to visit the floats with her mother.

Getting to within a couple of feet of the floats makes it possible to appreciate the fine details one might miss on television, said Kato, who lives in Fountain Valley. “Seeing all the flowers, and all the effort put into them, it’s impressive in so many ways,” she said.

Masukawa said the current practice of displaying the floats along half-mile, blocked-off stretches of Sierra Madre and Washington boulevards is an improvement over the old days when floats were stationed in Victory Park. If it rained, visitors would have to slosh through mud to see the floats, she recalled.

One thing she misses, though, is free admission.

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“They didn’t used to charge $2,” she said. Masukawa said that, as she was in line to buy tickets Friday morning, she saw another person who apparently hadn’t been to the post-parade in many years. The man angrily walked away when he realized there was an admission charge.

“He turned around and was cussing as he walked off,” she said.

The Tournament of Roses began charging admission to the event 11 years ago to offset the cost of staging the parade, officials said.

This year, the $1 ticket price went up to $2. Post-parade organizers point out that the tickets cost far less than $40 parade route seats.

The post-parade crowds are also far smaller than the throng of roughly 1 million that crowds the sidewalks on parade day.

Sheryl Garaza, 24, said coming to the post-parade is much easier than making a pre-sunrise trek from her home in Riverside County to watch the parade itself.

“It’s too cold to come out that early,” she said.

After the last of the float-watchers departs this afternoon, the floats will be towed back to warehouses where they were built to be dismantled.

Their chassis will be saved for next year’s creations, and their flower, fruit and vegetable coverings will be shipped to a compost pile.

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Viewing the Floats

Rose Parade floats will be on display for the last time today from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.at Sierra Madre and Washington boulevards.

Special viewing for senior citizens and the disabled will be from 7 to 9 a.m.

Admission is $2; free for children under 3.

Parking is available on the streets and for a fee in several church and school parking lots.