They Love a Parade : County Caravans to Brave the Crowds in Hope of Another Rosy Trip to Pasadena

It requires rising before dawn, sometimes shivering in weather chill enough for gloves and wool caps, and either fighting for curb space or shelling out $21 to $100 for a grandstand seat.

Or you can go the night before in your RV, plunk down $150 or so for a parking space, set your chair out at the curb just after midnight and stay vigilant to make sure no one steals (a) the chair (b) the space (c) both.

Meanwhile, you will be dodging drunks spewing beer and whiskey, weaving down Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard.

And if you haven’t forgone the chance to party till you drop New Year’s Eve, you are probably also dealing with a hangover so bad that the “Guinness Book of World Records� is interested. Now you’ve got a 2-hour parade to witness before heading for your car and jousting with a half-million other autos on the road home.

And for what? The parade is on TV. The floats will be available for viewing the next day.

And although you can turn the folks back East green with envy as they watch a Jan. 1 parade where the floats don’t need snow tires, how many more Easterners do you want visiting out here, anyway?

And yet people go to the Tournament of Roses Parade each year. Maybe a million of them, especially this year for the 100th parade. And they love it.

For one, there’s Bonnie Scott of Huntington Beach, a University of Oregon alumna.

“I went in 1958 when my alma mater went to the Rose Bowl,� Scott recalled. “I came down and sat on the street, stayed all night, did the bit.�

A student then, Scott said that “I mostly remember the Oregon float because it had the (mascot) duck on it and it was really neat.�

The game was good too, she said, even though at this point she can’t remember whether Oregon tied or lost. (The record book shows a 10-7 loss to Ohio State.)

She went again in the late 1960s while living on Balboa Island. “I was dating a fellow whose mother worked for a guy who ran the parade. We got really nice tickets and got to sit there and go to the game afterward.�

In later years, she said, “I really wanted to go, but my husband didn’t want to battle the crowds and try to find a place to stand.� Last year she compromised, going to Pasadena after the parade to view the floats. That hooked her.

“It was so nice having people explain how they made the floats,� she said. “You don’t realize what that color comes from until you get so close and see it.�

Those who have seen the floats, decorated with flowers of every description and limited to creations from nature rather than artificial fibers, agree that there’s no comparison between seeing the spectacular creations in person and watching them on TV. A 21-inch screen just doesn’t do them justice.

So this year Scott took some time off from work Feb. 1, when the tickets went on sale, then traveled to the official parade ticket office in Pasadena, stood in line for 4 hours and picked up enough for herself, her husband, her 12-year-old son and a few extras to sell. She paid $35 a ticket and sold some of her extras for $100 each.

Parade tickets are sold through Sharp Seating Co. in Pasadena. The company’s general manager, Cindy Anderson, said tickets cost $21 to $35, with the higher-priced ones near the start of the parade route. Some buyers who got good tickets and wanted to make a few bucks offered them for resale in newspaper ads, generally at $100 each.

Anderson said 100,000 grandstand tickets go on sale Feb. 1 and are normally sold out in November or December. This year they sold out in July, she said, though some people on a waiting list got tickets later because of cancellations and returns.

Sharp also sells parking spaces, charging $10 for a car and $45 for an RV or bus, with the space usually within a block or two of the parade route or a buyer’s seats. Private RV parking can cost up to $150.

Buying tickets through an agency, of course, is more expensive. For instance, Stuart Duatrich, 28, a computer systems engineer from Westminster, paid $80 for each of two tickets for the parade for himself and his mother. The price also includes transportation to and from the parade.

Veteran parade-goers say showing up after 6 a.m. usually means you are not going to get a spot along the curb to watch the parade, so if you don’t have grandstand seats by now, forget it.

But after the parade, the floats are displayed at Victory Park in Pasadena, at Sierra Madre Boulevard and Paloma Street from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Monday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, with a special showing for seniors and disabled people from 8 to 9 a.m. Tuesday.

“I love parades,� Scott said. “We live in Huntington Beach, and I go to the 4th of July parade every year. I’m a people person anyway. I love to watch the other people at parades. . . . I love airports too.�

Even Richard Huddy is going to the parade this year, despite his problems the last time.

Huddy was one of 10 people wedged into a 25-foot motor home Dec. 31, 1985, as the RV pulled into Pasadena to await the dawn and the Tournament of Roses Parade.

“It was quite hectic,� said Huddy, who lives in La Mirada. There were problems with officials “changing times of when you could move chairs out by the curb, guarding the chairs, drunks coming down the street and spilling beer on your chairs. Now my son (goes and puts up with it) and he doesn’t mind. But I’m a different person. I wasn’t too fond of it, to the extent that I wouldn’t do it again.�

What Huddy means is that he wouldn’t do it exactly the same way again. But he is doing it one more time, all right. In fact he pulled out for Pasadena 2 days ago. But this time he and his wife were in their own 34-foot motor home, leading a cavalcade of eight motor homes whose members belong to Huddy’s “Mandarins� club of RV owners in Orange County.

The Mandarins are joining members of a national club of RV owners in taking over two Pasadena parking lots near the parade route. Members can sign up for tours of the Los Angeles area, swap yarns with other RV owners and watch entertainment specially provided for them at night.

Despite the rowdiness problems, Huddy said he and his wife “enjoyed ourselves, we really did� 3 years ago--enough so that they decided that when it came time for this year’s 100th Rose Parade, they would be there.

Bob Patton of Irvine, meanwhile, is ahead of Huddy in numbers of parades attended by, oh, 16 or so.

Patton, an accountant who lives in Irvine, will be at the parade this year for the 18th time in 20 years. He skipped last year to make a holiday visit to his native Ohio but has the RV loaded for this year.

In the old days, “we would just go on the morning of the parade,� Patton said. “After we had purchased our motor home, that became our base. We would tend to go up a couple of nights before and enjoy the tailgating, which was very rewarding. We develop a lot of rapport there with out-of-town people.�

Although “there was a little lull there when the kids didn’t go,� his two daughters now usually accompany Patton and his wife, Alice, and sometimes bring their boyfriends as well. Alice Patton’s parents have been known to drive their own motor home in from Phoenix and join the gathering. Other friends get invitations as well, and sometimes the expedition totals four motor homes.

Even though this year’s parade will be Jan. 2, not Jan. 1, and thereby gives New Year’s Eve revelers an extra day of coffee and aspirin, police and experienced parade-goers say there is no reason to expect a great diminishing of hilarity and shenanigans.

“On the eve of the Rose Bowl, (the atmosphere is) heading toward the younger people kicking up their heels,� Patton said. “It starts out kind of sedate . . . peaks at midnight, then it gets down to the younger people doing their thing.�

Patton saw his first Rose Parade in 1969. “We had just moved here from Ohio, and obviously that parade had a very high priority,� he said. “We always watched on TV, and I was extremely elated that I could go see it in person.�

Since then, he has “not even remotely� considered not going, if at all possible. In fact, “I’m getting all excited talking to you� about the parade, he said.

Estimates of those who watch the parade in person are usually around the 1-million mark, defying skeptics who say it just isn’t possible to get that many people along the 5 1/2-mile route. Last year, cold weather cut attendance by about 100,000. Beaming the hullabaloo overseas as well as across this country resulted in a TV audience estimated at 300 million.

Last year also brought 457 arrests, 401 of them for public drunkenness. Pasadena Police Lt. Gregg Henderson said most arrests occur from 6 p.m. the night before the parade to 6 a.m. on parade day.

“We want people to have a good time,� Henderson said, but “if you get a group of people getting intoxicated and (annoying) a group out there just waiting for the parade to come by,� police will become unhappy.

“Public intoxication is illegal,� Henderson noted. “An open container (of alcohol) on the street is illegal.�

Henderson said police also keep an eye out for people putting out couches and chairs along the route to mark their spaces, then taking off. “If people don’t stick around, we remove the stuff,� he said.

One way to avoid the scramble for good spots along the route is to get reserved tickets for the grandstand.

Max Morgan made sure to be near the head of the line at Costa Mesa City Hall in August when the city, one of many in Orange County that sell package tours to the parade, put tickets on sale. Morgan snapped up 36 tickets at $40 each and put together a group from St. James Episcopal Church of Newport Beach. Members will meet at 6:30 a.m., sip coffee and munch doughnuts, then board buses. When the parade is over, it is back on the bus to return to Costa Mesa.

Morgan saw his first Rose Parade when he was 20 years old, driving out from his home in Fargo, N.D., with his father in 1949. “I think the thing I enjoyed most was seeing live roses and being able to sit on the curb for more than half an hour without freezing to death in the wintertime.�

He went again last year and now believes that “you’ve got to see it in person. It’s too dramatic (for TV), seeing all those flowers live. The colors are so great.�

In the last 40 years, “the floats have become more dramatic and more spectacular. . . . They use all different types of flowers. The variation in the colors and things were spectacular (last year). And the bands were neat. I’m a guy who loves bands. . . . And of course this year, with (the University of) Michigan’s band, it’s going to be terrific. They’ve got one of the best bands in the country, and of course USC has a great band.�

Barbara Mulligan also has seen the floats become bigger and more lavish since she rode one as the Rose Parade queen in 1954--the first time the parade was televised in color.

“They’re taller, wider, more massive,� said Mulligan, who lives in Corona del Mar. “They’ve had swimming pools and ice-skating rinks, a lot of wonderful things on the floats that they’ve designed. It’s quite amazing through the years what they’ve done, the beautiful orchids and roses, the great imagination they use.�

Mulligan admitted to having occasionally missed the parade, however, in favor of a New Year’s Eve party. But if she skips the parade, she is sure to get to the Rose Bowl game, she said.

This year she will be certain to make both parade and game: Because it is the parade’s 100th anniversary, all the parade queens that can be rounded up, 40 or more, will be riding one of the floats. The queens have already been through dress fittings, viewings of parade memorabilia and a tea for queens and their daughters.

“This year it’s very, very special,� Mulligan said.