When the world passes by your door

It’s 48 hours before New Year’s Eve, and the Eaves family of Pasadena already is bracing for the revelry of uninvited guests: The cyclone fence is up around the property, the security guard is posted outside to keep strangers at bay and their party guests are armed with street-access passes to clear police lines. By dawn, Rose Parade marching bands will be tuning up outside their South Orange Grove Boulevard condominium amid neighing horses.

But the inconveniences are worth it to the Eaves, who awake at 4:30 a.m. and fling open the curtains so that their grandkids and guests can be among the first to see three-story floats a stone’s throw away.

“We love it,” said Hayden Eaves. “It’s a great big party out there, and we wouldn’t miss it.”

For the 350 million TV viewers worldwide who tune in to the Rose Parade, the annual extravaganza offers a finely orchestrated spectacle of floats, bands and horses making their way down the commercial stretch of Colorado Boulevard from the residential Orange Grove.

What they don’t see are the monstrous grandstands that go up before Christmas and obscure some properties, the portable toilets that dot neighborhoods and the year-end incursion of RVs that park in front of homes the last three days of the year. Judging from years past, homeowners mostly will barricade their properties and enjoy the festivities, suffering surprisingly little property damage.

“For 24 hours, once a year, I can give up privacy and access,” said Boyd Smith, who lives on a stretch of Orange Grove a couple of blocks from the parade’s staging point. “I’d give a week up. The parade brings a lot to the community.”

And it does bring a lot, like up to 1 million visitors, or 10 times the city’s population. Thousands of early-bird visitors sack out the night before in front of homes that range from $350,000 condos and townhouses to multimillion-dollar mansions. Then there are the hordes who descend on east Pasadena neighborhoods for the post-parade viewing of floats. Parade organizers devote two committees exclusively to the needs of homeowners who live near the staging and end points.

Residents in those areas do enjoy some perks: a pre-parade reception at the Tournament House, the $15-million Wrigley estate that serves as parade headquarters, and free tickets to the post-parade display of floats for residents near the terminus.

When selling a home here, disclosure rules require that information about the parade be given to prospective buyers because homeowners are entitled to the “quiet enjoyment of one’s property,” said Jack Cooley, manager of the Coldwell Banker’s Colorado Boulevard office.

“Our first year here, we didn’t want to stay in town; we thought it would be a disaster,” said Joanne Eaves, who takes her grandchildren and guests for a tour of the floats and a people-watching expedition every year after New Year’s Eve dinner. “But it was great.”

The party atmosphere begins at 9 p.m. on Dec. 31 and lasts until early in the morning, participants say, when die-hard revelers sit in bleachers or lawn chairs in front of their homes to watch the parade.

Preparing the neighborhoods is a monumental task involving hundreds of volunteers, said Scott Jenkins, chairman of the Tournament of Roses formation area committee that secures the parade staging area the night before, places the floats in order and assists residents as they try to navigate the neighborhood before the extravaganza.

“After 114 years, we’ve perfected this,” Jenkins said. “The residents are very supportive; they feel the sense of history and tradition and like being a part of it.”

The first Rose Parade, staged in 1890 by members of Pasadena’s exclusive Valley Hunt Club to showcase California’s mild winter, attracted 2,000 to the town of 391. Many of the early residents were wealthy winter transplants from the East and Midwest who had built huge mansions along what is now Orange Grove and is mostly condominiums and apartments. The city’s current 134,000 residents play host to as many as a million parade visitors.

With the human invasion have come some problems homeowners never dreamed of, said Vince Farhat, a former South Orange Grove condominium resident. The year his homeowners’ association declined to put a fence up due to financial considerations, he walked outside on New Year’s Day and stumbled over scores of strangers on the property’s front lawn, sleeping or barbecuing on hibachis.

Another year, Farhat said, some condo residents found parade revelers using the complex’s laundry room as a public bathroom. Dealing with the intruders was a small price to pay for being in the center of the action. But, he added, “the next year, we put up a fence.”

To ward off vandalism and other damage, owners put up temporary fences at their own expense. One corner homeowner spent $700 for the extra security. Otherwise they are on their own with their home insurance policy, except in the unlikely event that a float jumps a curb, in which case the Tournament of Roses will cover the damage claim. Pasadena handles claims under its jurisdiction.

Location is everything, even in a parade. The Eaves’ condo sits on a choice spot for TV cameras. This year, as in the past, KTLA-TV has put up a fence around the property in exchange for using the area as a staging ground for some parade coverage. The television station, which, along with the Los Angeles Times, is owned by Tribune Co., also supplies a private guard at the complex.

The day-by-day playbook for parade preparations rivals those used by the teams going to the Rose Bowl. From the 1,200 portable toilets placed along the parade route to hot chocolate stands dotting the boulevard, every detail is worked out well in advance, Jenkins said.

Weeks before the parade, committees mail notices to residents who live around the route, informing them of neighborhood restrictions before and during the event. They also give them passes that allow access to and from their streets Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.

Parking is restricted along the parade route and in front of residents’ homes. On Orange Grove, for example, only those with passes can gain entrance to the area once the floats start to line up about 9 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Vehicles that park within a block north or south of the parade route are subject to parking restrictions, including random vehicle searches by the Pasadena Police Department.

But the hundreds of recreational vehicles that flock to the city before the parade are able to park in designated lots and overnight on most other streets, said Janet Pope, a Police Department spokeswoman.

Some homeowners use the event to start traditions.

For four decades the Lamb mansion on Orange Grove was the place for police to down doughnuts and coffee on New Year’s morning during a break in their patrol duty.

Lucile and Lawrence Lamb bought their Victorian mansion, also known as the Denham-Talcott mansion, in 1961 after their kids were grown, but that didn’t stop the extended family from showing up en masse before New Year’s Day every year to help put up bleachers in the frontyard for parade viewing, said Bruce Lamb, 69, the couple’s son.

One year, Lamb recalled, the family let ABC-TV to set up a broadcasting tower in their backyard, which earned them a live interview during the event.

“We helped people out, and they helped us in return,” Lamb said. “The police protected our house from crowds who used to encroach on the property on parade day. They kept an eye on our place.”

Where the parade ends, homeowners face a different onslaught. Damian Washington and Sylvester Walters live on the stretch of East Sierra Madre Boulevard where the crowds line up shoulder-to-shoulder after the parade to view the floats. They’ve grown to tolerate the situation over the years.

“We’re desensitized to it by now,” Washington said. “You get the horns blowing from visiting Rose Bowl teams and thousands of people, but we put up with it. We’ve grown up here and know what to expect.”