Flocking to Float Display

The spectators were on parade Tuesday as a record 50,000 people strolled past massive floral arrangements at Pasadena’s Victory Park for the annual Tournament of Roses post-parade float viewing event.

All 55 of the Rose Parade floats remained stationary on Washington and Sierra Madre boulevards for seven hours, allowing visitors to get a close view of the intricate details and clever artistry that have become signatures of the 107-year-old parade.

Brittany Bird, 6, edged past other onlookers’ knees to get a good view of a float that featured a complex shirt pattern made up of red beans. Brittany has experience with the medium: she and her fellow Palmdale first-graders regularly glue pinto beans onto paper to make pictures, but she said the float builders’ work “looks a lot harder.”

Brittany and her brother, Benjamin, 7, said they watched the parade twice on television Monday--the live coverage and a rerun--but getting within a few feet of the floats gave them a whole new perspective.

“I like looking at the floats here because things are a lot bigger,” Brittany said.

For more than 60 years, the viewing has offered people a chance to “really appreciate what the artists have done,” said Edward Afsharian, vice president of the exhibit. “The parade is exciting, but you don’t get to get up close and see the details.”

For viewers, the display is also more economical than the New Year’s Day event. While parade tickets cost $40 this year, spectators Monday and Tuesday paid only $1 to catch a final glimpse before the floats were driven back to their builders’ shops and the flowers turned into potpourri, Tournament of Roses officials said.

But few people cited the low ticket prices as their reason for coming to the viewing. Carolynn Friedlander, a 1963 Rose Bowl Princess when she was a student at Long Beach Community College, said the display is the best way to see the floats.

“I think when you are a child, you feel like it is a fantasyland, but as an adult I am more interested in the artistic end of it,” said Friedlander, a lifelong Rose Parade-goer. “It is impressive to see [the floats] like this because you can see the work that went into them.”

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Not everyone was as impressed. In the hot afternoon sun, the flowers on the floats held up better than some of the spectators.

Brian Chamberlain, 11, planted himself backward on a park bench, his head wilting over the backrest, as he waited for his mother to finish viewing the floats.

“This isn’t my kind of thing,” he said, “mainly because it is boring.”

Brian has marched in parades near his hometown of San Jose, but he said big pageants don’t really excite him. Organizers called the event a post-parade viewing, but it would take more than the lack of Kermit the Frog to convince Brian: One look at the big crowds, the T-shirt vendors and the long lines at the porta-potties, and it was hard to tell the difference.

Food vendor Brent Harill said the crowd around his pretzel and churro cart at Tuesday’s viewing was as big as the crowd his goods attracted at the Rose Bowl game.

“During halftime there were these big long lines, but during the game, it was kinda like this,” he said, serving six churros to one family.

Still people maintain that the display offers more float-viewing in a more relaxing environment.

“I would never even attempt a parade with children,” said Wendy Bird, Benjamin and Brittany’s mother. “I think it would be more craziness than it is worth. This is a much more controlled atmosphere.”