Grand Floral Delusion, or “Parade Perfect”

(Originally written June 13, 2006)

Have you ever wondered how a float is decorated? I had this happy image that the sponsors of a float would recruit people from the workplace and everyone would gather and happily decorate the float. Boy, was I wrong. It is insanity until the last minute with glue and coconut/seed/parsley/flower petals flying all over the place (and much of it landing on you!)

The floats were decorated in very old buildings up in the industrial area of NW Portland. All the floats are packed into two buildings with about a million people running around. Most of the work that goes into the float construction is done by a company that specifically decorates floats for parades all over the US. They make ‘em then ship ‘em. The paid workers reminded me of carnies at a circus…a ragamuffin group, but they get the job done. I felt like they all wanted to be actors, so their way in the door was the become set designers or something. In addition to the paid people, there were many, many, many volunteers. KATU put out a call on the noon news Friday to anyone who wanted to decorate the floats was to…just show up! I thought it would be a fun thing to do, so after my 4 hour volunteer shift at the radio station, I volunteered 8 hours with floats! Yep, 8 hours of glue, coconut, frantic-ness, and getting to know many knew people (I went there not knowing anyone).

I was put to work decorating this float in the shape of an “S”. It was to be a Mexican rug, complete with plenty of color. The float wasn’t large, but did it take a lot of work! There were so many colors on the float. Colored coconut: pink, green, white, black, red, purple; Petals: yellow; Colored lentils: orange. What made this float tricky was the changing of colors after you covered your 6 1-foot-by-6-foot panels. Oh, AND the panels were vertical, so there was lots of falling-off of coconut and lentils…oh, the lentils. After you painted one panel halfway with glue, you had a styrofoam “paintbrush” that swept the coconut up the panel. You essentially piled your “paintbrush” with coconut and as you moved the “paintbrush” up, the coconut attached itself to the glue. With your other hand you held a box to hold the coconut stock/catch residue. The big thing to worry about was not contaminating the colors. The glue was stored in huge metal drums that were about 4 feet high…huge!

By the time 10 or 11 rolled around, there were only two people left on the float…me and another guy who also randomly showed up to help. He was a director who had moved here from Los Angeles. He decided he didn’t like the LA scene, so he came to Portland, which has a burgeoning indie film scene. I was able to pick his brain about movies to add to my movie night! By 11.30 pm it was crunch time for the float. Our “adviser” for the float said that the float only needed to be “parade perfect”: it only had to look good from 20 ft away at 5 mph. Too funny! I must remember “parade perfect” from now on.

So if the floats are made in NW, but the parade starts at the Rose Quarter, how do the floats get from point A to point B? Or, more interestingly, which way do the floats travel to get over the river? By the Fremont Bridge, of course! Which is naturally the tallest and windiest bridge in Portland, but has the most direct route. At 1 am the floats line up and traverse the bridge for the start at 10am the next morning. What a romantic sight…20 or so floats silently crossing one of the most beautiful bridges in Portland by starlight. If only I could have had a camera at that time!
Even with all my hard work, I didn’t go see the parade the next day. I excitedly watched for my float on tv the next (same?) morning. I even called my parents so they could look out for it. My best friend was jealous of my float decorating experience…next year, I told her.

So where are the pictures you ask? On film. One of these days I’ll scan them in. =)