This Sunday, Nov. 19, the weird, wacky, and wild from across the San Gabriel Valley will converge in Old Pasadena as the 44th Occasional Doo Dah Parade returns to its original route after more than a decade.
The not-exactly-annual satirical parade, known as the “twisted sister of the Rose Parade,” will embark from its Memorial Park staging grounds at 11 a.m. before traveling south two blocks, turning West on Colorado Boulevard and ending at Pasadena Avenue for its first in-person showing since 2019.
“It was time, and people were really clamoring for it,” said Kat Ward, event manager for the parade’s nonprofit organizer The Light Bringer Project. Fittingly, the slogan this year is “Back by Popular Demand.”
The parade began in 1978, after regulars at Chromo’s Bar and Grill in Old Pasadena noticed people camped out for the Rose Parade and saw an opportunity to turn the captive audience into an eccentric tradition celebrating the irreverent. The event has since inspired similar parades across the country and has become a staple prelude to Pasadena’s more well known New Years Day parade.
The Doo Dah parade — which has no marching order and accepts entrants on a first-come, first-serve basis until the day of the event — features anything participants can dream up, from modified art cars and mutant vehicles, to dance troupes, political pundits and even some actual floats.
This year will feature the parade’s largest number of new entrants in its history including participants such as the Million Mrs. Roper March, Hollywood Highsteppers, Coast to Coast Critters, Space Tourists, Bark & Chatter, and Taco Tuesdays Bicycle Club, The Roller Coaster of Life, Urf McGurf, The Eye, Heart of Bok Choy Intergalactic Tossed Salad, The Church of the SubGenius End Times Procession, To the Moon Stinky Feet, Disco Hitched, The People’s Banana, Kittylicious, The Unexplainable Inflatable Tribe, CSChool of Fish, Ocean Commotion, Musicvideodrome Dancers,…
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