Happy New Year everyone. It is New Year\’s Eve 2015 and today I went back out to Fiesta Parade Floats in Irwindale with the hopes of being able to photograph some of the completed floats for the 2016 Rose Parade before they were moved to Pasadena. While I have been photographing the construction of the floats over the past week, I have focused a lot on the City of Torrance entry for obvious reasons, but New Year\’s Eve is also the day that I meet up with the representatives of the California Cut Flower Commission (CCFC). Usually I meet up with them at the Rose Bowl, but this year the Miracle-Gro float was also a certified California Grown float, so I went earlier to meet up at Fiesta; it was a good move.
As fate would have it, they were actually judging the floats so all the floats were pretty much completed. That was the thing, when we were last there I mentioned to Tanya that I thought some floats were running behind schedule. Today there were a couple floats that still had scaffolding up for decorating. This was true at the Rose Bowl as well, so maybe the number of volunteers to decorate was down. I do seem to recall seeing more groups in the past.
I was also lucky enough to run into our recently retired chief of the Torrance Fire Department, William Racowschi, so I was able to get a couple photos of him and his fire-fighting buddies by the Torrance float. The City of Torrance thanks him for his service. Continue reading