Doo Dah Parade Moves Out of Old Town
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times
The birthplace of a long-revered off-beat copy-cat of the Rose Parade no longer suits the message behind the annual Doo Dah Parade, so it’s pulling up stakes and going to a more suitable neighborhood.
It was in Old Town Pasadena that an irreverent parade named after a campy British rock group known as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band was born. And for the last three decades, it’s where the Doo Dah Parade has stayed, drawing thousands to watch the offbeat and flamboyant entries — the BBQ & Hibachi Marching Grill Team, the Church of the Ornamental Lawn Decorations, Human-Powered Cupcakes and Martinis in the Morning.
But on May 1, those hoping to join in the customary crowd tradition of tossing marshmallows, tortillas and neckties along the parade route will have to head east to the Lamanda Park district, a quiet side of Pasadena that, unlike Old Town, has seen little revitalization.
Although the parade has often varied when it comes to date, route and regularity (it’s sometimes been held twice a year and sometimes not at all), it has never strayed from Old Town. Organizers, however, say the crosstown move is a chance to return to the indie roots of what began as an impish reply to the pomp and extravagance of the Rose Parade.
Started out of the now-defunct Chromo’s Bar by a group of friends, the first Doo Dah Parade took place Jan. 1, 1978 — a date the Rose Parade would have dominated were it not for its “Never on Sunday” policy that pushed it to the following day.
“It was a collective-consciousness kind of thing,” recalled one of the original organizers, Corky Peterson, 62. “We worked this whole thing from the bar’s pay phone. People called up wondering what was going on. The parade was like a way to let off steam.”
But a couple of years ago, the current parade’s producers said, they began to feel that the festivity and its setting had lost some of its organic appeal. With a growing Doo Dah crowd and Old Town now a commercial shopping mecca where consumer favorites like Abercrombie & Fitch and the Cheesecake Factory dot the background, they believed the spirit of the parade was getting lost.
It also appeared to be heading toward becoming the very thing it had hoped to parody.
“We were on the cusp of predictability, and that’s something the parade was not about — it was about being spontaneous and improvisational,” said Tom Coston, president of Light Bringer Project, a nonprofit arts organization that produces the Doo Dah Parade.
“By moving it, we’re peeling a few layers away so it becomes less of an entertainment vehicle and more of a public art event,” Coston said.
Coston said he thought Lamanda Park, an eclectic neighborhood with antique stores, auto body shops, family-owned boutiques and old-time ambience, could benefit from a high-energy event.
Shauna Novotny, owner of Novotny’s Antique Gallery, said she would welcome the Doo Dah Parade in front of her East Pasadena business, even if attendees weren’t interested in patronizing her store.
“I think it’s a great idea to move it to this direction and give people a chance to mingle in this area and see what we’re all about,” she said. “It puts a new perspective on things.”
The parade could also help with name recognition of the neighborhood. “It’s not necessarily known as Lamanda Park but is known as that stretch of Colorado with trees and the little stores,” said Paul Little, president of the city’s chamber of commerce.
“It’s a really nice area and has a unique personality — it’s sort of what it probably felt like back in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, except the cars are newer.”
Old is new again
Indeed, this stretch of Pasadena certainly differs from the gentrified environs of Old Town, even if the architecture of both can be traced back to similar periods. This area is still struggling to get a foot in the door from a retail perspective, although the old craft shops selling hobbie tools have been replaced with more contemporary retailers. However, the model trains stores may be gone, but there are still a couple of pretty good dive bars in the area.
Architect Dale Brown, whose firm moved to Lamanda Park a few years ago, said the artistic nature of the parade would fit the area. “We’re not a real shirt-and-tie kind of place,” he said.
Despite complaints from some that Old Town has lost some of its urban verve, Steve Mulheim of the Old Pasadena Management District said the 21 blocks that make up Old Town shouldn’t be generalized as mainstream.
“The side streets are independent restaurants and shopkeepers, and a lot of very artistically driven people, so that component is most definitely still here,” he said. “We’re certainly a much more polished environment, but we still are very organic.”
Many Old Town businesses were disappointed to hear of the Doo Dah Parade’s departure and said they will miss the spike in revenue that came with the event.
“It was one of our big days of the year,” said Aaron Powell, manager of Old Towne Pub on Fair Oaks Avenue. “We counted it almost like a holiday, like St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s.”
Peterson, who hasn’t attended the parade he helped create in years but will serve as this year’s grand marshal, said he’s in favor of the change in venue.
“I think it’s going back to the people,” he said.
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My Take: Frankly, I’m glad to hear about the moving of the Doo Dah parade out of Old Town and into an area far from the promotional golf shirts and custom cutting boards from Crate and Barrel. Don’t get me wrong: I am all about contemporary gifts and fun promotional products. I even understand that in order to find really nice, suitable personalized gift items these days, you’ve got to be close to trendier shops. But Old Town truly has outgrown the funky and fun Doo Dah revelers’ idea of a parade. This is an off-beat, crazy and sometimes outrageous take off of the more gentile Rose Parade that also traverses the streets of Old Town on its way east on Colorado Boulevard each NewYear’s day.
But the thing is, the Doo Dah doesn’t really fit the trendy Old Town anymore, with its fancy retailers and shoppers cruising up and down the street in everything from Hause of Howe clothing
to Ed Hardy. No, this is no parade for Mek Jeans and Gucci sunglasses. The Doo Dah Parade is a beer swillin’, rock-n-roll throwback to a much more bohemian time in Pasadena’s storied cultural lineage and to move it further east, where the neighborhoods and the retailers are less bourgeois and more Woodstock, simply makes good parade sense for a parade about good old nonsense.
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