Come Marching In

While casting about for a subject that I might write about, somehow I got to thinking about parades. It occurred to me that I haven't been to many in my life. I can think of one that I've definitely attended, although there may be more that I can't think of. Parades are not something that were of tremendous importance to my family. I think maybe there's a narrow range of town size where parades are of interest. I was in too big a city and not big enough of one for parades.

When I was a boy, I recall that the Phoenix Suns held a parade after what we called their "Silver Season" of 1992-93. They had gone to the NBA Finals and met their match in Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls, but they held a parade after it was over anyway. I watched that on television. I did not do so when the Chicago White Sox held a victory parade upon winning the World Series, nor did I even attend. I was about a block away shooting a student film at the time.

I did, not so very long ago, attend some kind of Chinese heritage parade here in LA. If it was Chinese New Year, than it was an entire year ago, which is rather disheartening. The parade was interesting enough, although I could see in it one or two areas for improvement. One would be tightening the gaps between floats, and another would be not putting one band right behind another. It's easy to Monday morning parade-plan these guys, though.

Maybe more interesting than attending a parade would be participating in one. I would have no interest in being part of a marching band, but I could ride on a float easily enough. That would probably be a trying experience, waving to people over and over for hours. It would be nice that they wanted me to, though. I just would have to have a float and not being riding in some regular car. That would just be like suffering through traffic, and who wants that?