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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).
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