David Feng, a medical professor from Hangzhou, China, watched the Rose Parade on television for 20 years. But on Friday he stood along the Pasadena parade route for the first time and snapped shots of riders’ expressions and floats decorated with flower petals.
Jane Rohrs, an acupuncturist from North Tustin, brought Feng to the event and said other friends from Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan and Guangzhou also attended the parade.
“It has become an international celebration,” she said.
“It is a dream come true for me to be here,” said Feng, now relocated to Fullerton.
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Laker girls with the team’s float, “Every Second is an Adventure,” during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Trader Joe’s “Fearless Flyer” (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Mira Mesa High School Sapphire Sound, San Diego, Calif. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Kareem Abdul Jabbar waves from the Los Angeles Lakers “Every Second is an Adventure” float. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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Led by Sheriff Jim McDonnell, The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department marches down Colorado Boulevard with 20 sworn personnel (Mounted Enforcement Detail) on horseback.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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“Soaring Over Paradise” float (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Nathan Sleade travels on a zipline across the Dole Rose Parade float Jan. 1 in Pasadena. This photo was taken with a remote camera placed at the top of the zipline.
(Marcus Yam and Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
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The Bachelor float during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Theme Banner float “Find Your Adventure” at the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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United Sikh Mission “A Sikh-American Journey” during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Lutheran Laymen’s League/Lutheran Hour Ministries “Jesus is the Light of the World” float during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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The queen and her court during the 2016 Rose Parade on January 1st, 2016, in Pasadena, Calif. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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City of Los Angeles “Discover Los Angeles” float during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Mira Mesa High School Sapphire Sound of San Diego, Calif. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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City of Torrance “What a Purr-fectly Paw-ful Adventure” float. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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City of Torrance “What a Purr-fectly Paw-ful Adventure” float. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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City of Los Angeles “Discover Los Angeles” float during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Mira Mesa High School Sapphire Sound of San Diego, Calif. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Theme Banner during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Disneyland Resort “Diamond Celebration” float during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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The Iowa Marching Band (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Albany State University Marching Rams (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Downey Rose Float Association”Exploring the Everglades.” (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Union Bank and the American Heart Association, Western States Affiliate “Union of Hearts” float. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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The Stanford Marching Band (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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The Stanford Marching Band (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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2016 Royal Court float (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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The New Buffalo Soldiers (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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Kaiser Permanente’s float “Helping Mother Nature Thrive” during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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The 2015 Grand Marshal, Ken Burns, and family ride down Colorado Boulevard in a 1925 Yellowstone Touring Bus during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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Albany State University Marching Rams, from Albany, Georgia. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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A majorette with the Pasadena City College band during the 2016 Rose Parade. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Disneyland Resort’s float, “Diamond Celebration.” (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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The Millennium Falcon rises over the crowd for Disneyland Resort’s “Diamond Celebration” float.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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“Let Your Imagination Run Wild!” float during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Royal Court float.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Rose Parade Grand Marshal Ken Burns during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Union Bank and the American Heart Assn. Western States Affiliate “Union of Hearts” float.
Burbank Tournament of Roses Assn.’s “Are We There Yet?” float during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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Public Broadcasting Service’s float “Downton Abbey: The Final Adventure” during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Detail of PBS’ float, “Downton Abbey: The Final Adventure.”
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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A flyover by the Air Force B-2 Spirit during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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The U.S. Marine Corps West Coast Composite Band during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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The Western Asset Management Co. float, “Let Your Imagination Run Wild!,” during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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The South Pasadena Tournament of Roses Assn. float, “Fishing Follies.”
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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One of the Wells Fargo stagecoaches.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Farmers Insurance Group float “Along for the Ride” during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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South Dakota Department of Tourism “The Great Faces and Great Places of South Dakota” float.
(Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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South Dakota Department of Tourism’s float, “The Great Faces and Great Places of South Dakota,” during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Miracle-Gro’s float, “Life Starts Here.”
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy patrols during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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The queen and her court during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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The New Buffalo Soldiers during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Allen Eagle Escadrille of Allen, Texas, during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Allen Eagle Escadrille of Allen, Texas, during the 2016 Rose Parade.
(Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Some attending the parade expressed trepidation because of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Most, however, seemed to have put any concerns on hold.
“You can’t keep millions of people away from a tradition,” said Rohrs’ husband, Chris Rohrs, a music coordinator at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana.
The overall mood was buoyant.
Before sunrise, a man yelled at sleeping campers — something about Jesus and repentance.
“Jesus would let us sleep,” a woman yelled back.
The opening float, Honda’s “Nature’s Hope,” featured scenes from national parks in the U.S. and Japan. Susan Piper posed for her husband in front of the 120-foot-long, 24-foot-high float’s menacing grizzly bear, made eerie by the early morning darkness.
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“I wanted to get up close,” Piper said. “So this is perfect.”
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich wore his Tournament of Roses-issued white suit to greet parade goers and show them to their seats in the grandstands.
“This is a wonderful tradition,” said Antonovich, who said he’s been associated with the parade group for 35 years.
Donaly Marquez was among the princesses who rode on a rose-covered float with the Rose Queen. As a child, Marquez had been taken by authorities from her mother, whom she described as an abusive drug addict. She and her siblings spent time in a group home and foster care before being adopted 11 years ago.
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During the run-up of almost 100 events leading up to the parade, Marquez, 17, had told girls at a child welfare agency, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, you can do anything as long as you set your mind to it.”
Up in the commentators booth, Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards narrated their final Rose Parade. They are retiring after more than 30 years of describing the magic of celery seeds and white coconut sparkles, and explaining to national audiences the charms of “really neat” towns like Sierra Madre and Glendale.
Down in the crowd, Jose Vasquez was also broadcasting, with a laptop, a Wi-Fi hot spot and microphone. A Costa Mesa resident, Vasquez said he describes parade highlights in Spanish to listeners of Radio Adventist Los Angeles each year.
“They love this stuff” Vasquez said. “They may be far away or may be near. Traffic shouldn’t prevent them from hearing how we start the New Year.”
Eddie Lovell, 53, a Los Angeles County worker from Azusa, stoked a big fire in a pit he had fashioned from the barrel of a washing machine.
Lovell said he has been coming to the parade for 22 years. He said his daughter Taylor, 15, experienced the parade for the first time five days before she was born, courtesy of her pregnant mother.
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This year, Lovell said, there are definitely “more police and less people.”
Nichole Scales said she and her husband, Corey, and their son Daniel were inspired by the hopeful atmosphere.
“The weather is perfect, everyone is so cheerful,” Nichole said. “It’s a perfect day for the family, especially after we’ve had so much terror.”
Daniel, 9, especially liked the presidents’ faces towering over him on a Mount Rushmore float. “It’s really cool,” he said.
Laker fans may be having a bad year, but on the NBA team’s float the Laker Girls danced and cheered exuberantly. Katy Oestreich, 34, came down from the stands where she had been sitting with friends and fellow Iowa fans and danced along.
“I want to share my energy with them if they’re sharing it with all of us,” Oestreich said. “Sitting up by a tree wasn’t going to work for me.”
By the parade’s end, people were peeling off their puffy jackets as a Miracle Gro float passed, blaring: “Here comes the sun.”
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With the Iowa caucuses only a month away, presidential politics also barged in on the festivities.
Dozens of supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders followed the floats carrying a papier mache likeness of the Vermont senator and shouting, “Feel the Bern!”
Overhead, a small plane filled the sky with white puffs of smoke. First the skywriter spelled out “America is great.” Then “Trump is disgusting.”
Before the parade began, a car struck a woman running in a group on Colorado Boulevard and knocked her unconscious. She was taken to the hospital with a head injury and was described as stable, according to Pasadena police Lt. Kelly Evans.
The driver, Yuki Horne, 40, of Los Angeles was arrested on suspicion of felony drunk driving, Evans said.
Hailey Branson-Potts is a Metro reporter who joined the Los Angeles Times in 2011. She reports on a wide range of issues and people, with a special focus on communities along the coast. She grew up in the small town of Perry, Okla., and graduated from the University of Oklahoma.
Taylor Goldenstein is a former reporter with the Los Angeles Times Data Desk. She has previously written for the Chicago Tribune, Tampa Bay Times and the Arizona Republic, among other publications. In early 2014, she was a visiting fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Originally from a suburb of Chicago and a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she now looks forward to checking weather apps. She left The Times in 2016.
Anh Do, deputy editor for culture and talent, helps manage our internship, fellowship, recruitment and training programs. Before this job, she worked as community engagement editor, and as Metro reporter covering Asian American issues and general assignments for 11 years. Do has reported for the Seattle Times, the Orange County Register and Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese publication in the U.S. Born in Saigon, she is a graduate of USC with degrees in journalism and English. Her writing on culture and trauma has won awards from Columbia University and AAJA and she received Yale’s Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. In 2016, she was part of the Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, and in 2024, part of the team named a Pulitzer finalist for breaking news coverage of the Monterey Park shootings. Her passion is dog rescue, having volunteered on missions around the globe.
