35th Doo Dah Parade Slated for April 28

By Paddy Hurley and Terry Miller

Now that the streets are safe from RV’s and thousands of football and Occupy fans, it’s that time of year when we start waxing philosophical about the OTHER parade for which Pasadena is so well known ….the Doo Dah Parade where just about any goes and usually does!

This year’s Pasadena Doo Dah Parade will again bring its own brand of raucous eccentricity East, after its successful relocation from old Pasadena last year. The 2012 Parade takes place on Saturday, April 28th, stepping off at 11:00AM in East Pasadena along Colorado Boulevard.

I’m hoping that this year will showcase an homage to the wonderful and disturbed characters who are running or ran away from the GOP nomination. This unprecedented madness seems tailor made for Doo Dah. In fact I vote for Steven Colbert for Grand Marshal….It’s bound to push him over that 5% lead, especially now that Huntsman has packed it in. Perhaps we could have a Romney – Cobert debate at the American Legion post parade on April 28 and former Doo Dah Queen Naughty Mickie ( who moonlights as a journalist for ‘another paper’) could moderate. Now wouldn’t that be a GREAT DEBATE?

Well if that doesn’t happen fear not: Last year, dozens of inventive, if zany, art cars and floats accompanied a legion of frolickers past the mom-n-pop shops along East Pasadena’s shady tree-lined streets, including many first-time entries like the League of Steam, Machina Candeo, Conehead Rocket Sled, Hippie Cream, Easy Acres Chicken Sitters, Wisdom Arts Laboratory, combined bands of the 35th Dragoon Guards, Mile High Bed, Cheesus Chrust Pizza Company, 2011 Queen Red Rosie, Balkan Brass Band, and the Ladies Auxiliary for Cultural Enrichment, among others.

Known as the extremely twisted sister of the highly conventional Rose Parade, the Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade began as a grassroots event in 1978 to gain national attention for its eccentric and, often, irreverent satire.
The parade which has spawned numerous off-beat replicants across the country was named by Readers Digest as “America’s Best Parade,” and was recently featured in the book 50 Places You Must Visit Before You Die!

This year’s spectacle will see the return of such wildly diverse entries as a fleet of motorized Kinetic Pastry Science Mobile Muffins, Captain McHogwash’s Amazing Chundra, a humungous robotic spitting cat named Boo-Boo Kitty, oddly-attired sound inventors known as The Highland Park Thursday Evening Gentlemen’s Society Circuit Bending Marching Band & Ladies’ Auxiliary, and the crowd favorite Disco Drill Team, real American Bandstanders, Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, OC NRML, The Billionaires, Occupy Doo Dah, Quilting Bees, Whistling Diva, The Bra-Ettes, L.A. Derby Dolls, classic, scary clowns, BBQ & Hibachi Marching Grill Team, Hare Kirshna Chanters, Howdy Krishna, and the immortal Doo Dah house band Snotty Scotty & the Hankies, and many more!
-Photos by Terry Miller
Plenty of street parking is available ~ Parade route is also just west of the Sierra Madre Villa Gold Line Station (at Colorado Blvd. and Sierra Madre Villa). City busses go directly to the area.

Official Doo Dah After-Party: American Legion, 179 N. Vinedo St. (2 blocks from Parade at Vinedo & Walnut), immediately following the event. Bands…cheap food and drinks!! $5 cover (supports a Legion charity).

For more information go: www.pasadenadoodahparade.info

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