It is New Year\’s Eve, and the time is up for the preparation of the floats for the 126th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade with will begin at 8:00 AM on January 1, 2015. I began my day by heading back out to Irwindale and Fiesta Parade Floats, the leading award winning float-builder in the Tournament of Roses Parade.
I lucked out today as I happened to arrive at Fiesta Floats after they had begun removing some floats from the building they were built in, giving me the ability to take some photos without dozens (or hundreds) of people vying for position to take their photos. If you have been following the progression of the float construction you can see that the Torrance entry dedicated to hometown hero, Louis Zamperini, came out very nice. It will be one of the first floats in tomorrow\’s parade. Continue reading
These photos are of the floats of the 124th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade which was held Tuesday, January 1, 2013 in Pasadena, CA. As I took far too many photos to be viewed easily in one gallery, I broke the photos up into two groups; the floats of the parade and one of the people of the Rose Parade which includes the marching bands and equestrian units. This gallery includes all the floats as well as the cars transporting the Grand Marshal, President of the Tournament of Roses, Hall of Fame Inductees and others of that type. Due to the number of photos, you might find it easier to use the slideshow feature.
There were about 40 floats entered, several of which had been covered in my previous articles. I would like to once again thank the following for helping me gain access to watch the floats being built over the last month: Fiesta Parade Floats, Pollack PR Marketing Group and California Cut Flower Commission. The watermarks on the photos have been purchased by Got Web Host, who has been hosting web sites for personal and commercial use since 2002. The other half of the photos were watermarked as a donation to the Rheumatoid Patient Foundation, the only charity for victims of Rheumatoid Autoimmune Disease (RAD), also known as Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). If you know someone that suffers from RA, please tell them about the Rheumatoid Patient Foundation; they will appreciate it. Continue reading
These photos were taken Saturday, December 29 at Fiesta Parade Floats in Irwindale, CA as volunteers hurried to add the organic items to nine of the entries to the 124th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade. After my last visit to Fiesta Floats on Christmas Eve I happened to notice that Fiesta Floats was tweeting my articles about the float preparation at their location, so I contacted their social media person via Twitter and asked if they would be able to assist in my getting in to photograph the actual decorating of the floats. I was put in touch with the Vice-President of The Pollack PR Marketing Group who was more than happy to help me come back in with my camera.
This was my third visit to the warehouse at Fiesta Floats and the first thing I noticed was that this time it smelled great! Of the 10 floats built by Fiesta Floats, nine of them were set up with scaffolding around them and the floats were covered with people adding flowers, seeds and whatever other finishing touches needed to be completed by Monday. To me, some of the more interesting tasks were performed by those adding the small details to the floats; items such as books or butterflies that required each individual seed to be added, one by one; or the people underneath the floats that would pull the flower holders down to ensure that only flowers would be seen on the topside. Continue reading