Parade

DOWNTOWN — Amid a local economy sacked by underperforming tax revenues, slumping home values and high unemployment, the biggest winners in the Rose Bowl and BCS National Championship Game in Pasadena won’t be taking the field. The 121st Rose Parade and two post-season college football games are expected to produce an economic impact of $350 million to $400 million for greater Southern California, according to the Pasadena Tournament of Roses and past economic studies.

Two Girl Scouts will have the best seats in the house when this year’s Tournament of Roses parade heads down Colorado Boulevard on New Year’s Day. Anna Stapelseldt, 17, of La Crescenta, and Kaitlyn Ross, 17, of Burbank, will be carrying the banners for the trophy-winning floats. “This is really exciting to represent my community,” said Anna, who is a senior at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena. Kaitlyn had always watched the parade on TV, but she’ll get an even closer look, she said.

George Tisdale, an aging military veteran, bounced around a room of roses, orchids and tulips Tuesday, eager to display various techniques he’d learned in his nearly two decades of volunteering as a float decorator for the Burbank Tournament of Roses Assn. Every winter for the last 17 years, the 86-year-old retired U.S. Marine drives the 75 miles from his home in Redlands to Burbank. Still, he said it’s difficult to describe the exuberance displayed in the final days before the float makes its way to Pasadena.

It’s crunch time for the Burbank Tournament of Roses Assn., with legions of volunteers expected to descend on the downtown warehouse this weekend to decorate the “Barnyard Aces” float. “It’s a thrill to see the things come together through rough sketches to a color rendering to the build,” President Robert Hutt said. “When the flowers get applied it’s just amazing. And I am always so proud of the volunteers — they just start to blossom.

In 1889, a Pasadena businessman, philanthropist, conservationist and sportsman by the name of Charles Holder had a thought. ?In New York, people are buried in the snow,? he told members of The Valley Hunt Club. ?Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let?s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.? The following New Year?s Day, Holder and his fellow club members did just that by staging a cavalcade of horse- drawn carriages covered in flowers to establish what would become The Pasadena Tourn- ament of Roses parade.

Six photographs of Burbank’s float entries in the Tournament of Roses parades have been getting a face lift and are ready for their close-ups, thanks to a group of residents. The six photographs are part of a pictorial tribute of past floats starting with 1947 on view to the public along the second floor hall of the Burbank Central Library on Glenoaks Boulevard. Since February, several people have been working on a project to digitally restore the color in four of the photographs at the John Burroughs High School photo department, said Sharon Cohen, library services director.

A tour of backyard water features will offer a touch of Zen for guests while raising funds and awareness for such charities as the AIDS Service Center in Pasadena. A $20 ticket gains admission to the Parade of Ponds, which is actually two tours planned for May 30 and 31 — the Crescenta Valley tour including homes in Glendale, Burbank and La Crescenta, and the San Gabriel Valley Tour. Proceeds go to AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, which serves the Glendale and Burbank areas; Five Acres, an agency that prevents child abuse; and the American Red Cross of the San Gabriel Pomona Valley, which provides disaster relief.

Santa made an appearance It looks like your Burbank on Parade reporter needs new glasses (“Parade goes Hollywood,” April 29). How could he not see the smallest “float” in the parade? Thousands of kids and adults saw good old Santa in his electric wheelchair. And they waived to him! Boy was his arm tired from waving back to his multitude of fans, both young and old folks too. That arm had to keep on waving for the entire parade route. Seventy-five-year-old Santa flew in from the North pole (OK, so it’s Burbank)

I’ve never liked parades. It may have something to do with that one time in the ’80s when I spent New Year’s Eve on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena with a few thousand other witless folks awaiting the Rose Parade. What a miserable night. Since then, the greatest parade I ever saw was the Rose Parade of 2006. That was the year it rained monsoon-like through the entire parade. I sat at home with a warm cup of coffee, my fleece snuggy and a good night’s sleep behind me, watching participants and onlookers get soaked to the bone.