The Pasadena Doo Dah Parade: Your Antidote to This Crazy Year

If ever America needed it’s Doo Dah Parade, it’s now.

The 39th annual Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade is Sunday in East Pasadena, and it promises all the strangeness and satire we need and deserve.

What to expect this year? The unexpected, said Tom Coston, President of the nonprofit Light Bringer Project, which runs the parade.

“It’s a lot of fun. There are a lot of marbles on the table, so to speak, and they go off in every direction,” Coston said. “The parade essentially configures itself. It’s kind of a Wild and Willy Main Street. It’s not a marching parade so much as a gumbo of different performing entities.”

The original Doo Dah parade that spawned others across the country, continues to draw favorite long-time performers as well as first-timers.

Perennial favorites include the synchronized briefcase drill team - a bunch of investment bankers who joined the parade on a barstool dare. While it started as a joke, the team has landed a spot in a Discover Card commercial and a Thanksgiving NFL game halftime show.

“Everybody loves them,” Coston said.

Much like the briefcase men, many participants show up on a spontaneous lark. Still others work on their parade entries all year long. Monster cars or ‘car art’ is a big part of the Doo Dah parade with cars transformed into giant toasters, hot tubs, dragons and even a hamster.

This year there will, no doubt, be political satire, members of underground art scenes coming out into the open for a single day, and friends daring friends to do that one funny trick for everyone to see.

“It’s a way for people to tell the story of who they are and where they live. It’s more of a creative communal sharing,” said Coston. “I think it’s a chance for people to let their hair down and come together in camaraderie and smiles on the streets.”

This year, the parade will have more than 85 entrants including Flying Baby SeeSaw Acrobatics, Bearded Ladies Brigade, Erector Set Man, Count Smokula, World’s Tallest Girl Scout, Murrugun the Mystic Sword Swallower and a Big Banana Car. It starts at 11 a.m. Sunday at 2627 E. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, looping along Colorado Boulevard between Altadena Drive and San Gabriel Boulevard. The parade and parking is free. There will be food trucks and an official after-party at the American Legion.

“Bring a lawn chair and be prepared to laugh,” said Coston “After these trying times, hopefully Doo Dah will add a little antidote to all that stress.”

Photos courtesy of Patricia Hurley, Managing Director of the Light Bringer Project