Rose Festival starts this weekend!

[ozron]

Love it or hate it, Portland's big party starts this weekend.

Personally, I love the Rose Festival! Portland never looks better. The parades, the festival center, the fireworks on the river! The Navy ties up along the sea wall and there are tall ships on the Willamette! Jake's has the huge inflatable crab on top of the Governer Hotel. This is the time of year that prompted one visitor at the zoo to say, "It's more like a really big theme park than a city!"

The Dead Husband gang is entertaining at the big VIP kickoff party on Friday, and we'll be in the Starlight Parade Saturday night. (I'll be the one in the tux.)
It's going to be a blast!

Happy Rose Festival everyone!

http://www.rosefestival.org

see you at the zoo

ron

[Not Afraid]

I would love to go to this. Sunset had a piece about it this month. It looks wonderful.

[Alex]

Haven't been since 1992 but it has many, many negative associations and I hated being dragged over there every year.

I'd like it now though, I'm pretty sure. Did they eventually solve the gang problems?

[Amberosia]

Having spent a little more than half of my life living in the Portland metro area, (both as a child and as an adult,) I have quite the soft spot for the old Rose Festival. I always knew that when the Rose Festival started, summer was unofficially here. I loved the Starlight parade. Talk about a traffic nightmare trying to get home... but I remember it being a lot of fun.

Do people still camp out a week in advance for their spot for the Grand Floral parade? The last time I saw one was in 2000, and we bought seats in the grandstands to the tune of $100 for four of us. But it was the best view of the parade I ever had!! :)

[blueerica]

I don't get why people would have negative associations unless something really bad happened there.... ?

Sounds interesting that the whole city can be turned out like that!

[Alex]

Because it was always hot (or seemed that way), it was always boring (or seemed that way), and it was always a "you're going to have fun whether you want to or not" type day.

It was crowded. It was drunken. Other than the waterfront fair most of the "events" were of little interest to kids and in my later childhood years you weren't even allowed to have fun at the fun parts because the gang problems were completely out of hand.

The parade (as pretty much all parades are) were boring and when I was dating my first wife in high school I had to walk along the course with her for some reason and if a parade is boring, spending several hours pacing one marching band is not a recipe for excitement.

Because while it has been "revitalized" by "gentrification" in the last 10+ years, that part of downtown used to be a pretty gross area on which a hasty batch of high gloss PR paint would be applied once a year.

For me, as a kid, it was a poor man's Clark County Fair (where at least I was allowed to roam around free).

However, as an adult I'm sure I would enjoy many of the things that I found so tedious back then (but not the parade, parades are still, by definition, beyond lame).

[ozron]

Did they eventually solve the gang problems?

Sometime in the early nineties, I think, the Rose Festival Association made a concerted effort to clean up the Festival Center. A new contractor (I believe it's Funtastic Shows) runs the carnival aspect. It's clean, well lit and much more family oriented. There is the Oregon Marketplace, full of vendors' booths and three or four stages, with a main stage, a comedy stage and a family stage with kid's acts.

Much better than the eighties, when the police had to patrol in groups of ten or more. They do set up a temporary precinct in a nearby parking lot and patrol the center on quads. Any problems are taken care of quickly and efficiently.

ron

[ozron]

Do people still camp out a week in advance for their spot for the Grand Floral parade? The last time I saw one was in 2000, and we bought seats in the grandstands to the tune of $100 for four of us. But it was the best view of the parade I ever had!! :)

The parade is on Saturday morning. People do start setting up their favorite spots mid-week. I've always thought it was a tribute to the people of Portland that you can set up some lawn chairs, chained to a bike rack, or ever just mark an area on the sidewalk with chalk and your claim to the spot will generally be honored.

ron

[cirquelover]

We may head up for the Starlight parade but we generally watch the Grand Floral parade from the comfort of our living room.

Here in Lebanon we have our big Strawbery festival this weekend. The worlds largest strawberry shortcake goes through town! The town gets crazy busy but it's not as bad as when the Oregon Jamboree is going!

[ozron]

Last night the cast of Who Stole My Dead Husband rode in the Startlight Parade. It was a perfect evening for the parade, and for an hour and a half or so we rode a trailer/float decorated to resemble our set and pulled by our hearse (yeah, we've got a hearse) through downtown Portland, singing songs from the show.

On Friday we entertained for a VIP kickoff party on the waterfront. Lots of food and wine before the fireworks on the river.

LOVE this time of year!!

ron

[cirquelover]

Ron, were you sitting down preforming by the guys that were standing? If so I saw you!! The parade was great as always, glad you had a good time!

[ozron]

We took turns. When I was singing I was standing toward the back. When I wasn't it was Mama or Frankie Jr. "onstage".

A good time was had by all.