Bay Area puts unique spin on holiday
from Missouri for the week.
Looking at the dreary weather, they had considered staying in their hotel near Union Square, but decided to bundle up for the fireworks, despite the fog.
“We’re optimistic,” Loomis said. “We bought sweatshirts and jackets.”
The cold weather was a relief compared with Missouri’s scorching summer. “It’s hot and sultry,” Ryan said.
The Fourth of July celebration also brought dozens of entrepreneurs onto the Embarcadero.
One vendor sold Raspados — Mexican flavored ice — despite the chilly gusts of wind. Others sizzled hot dogs, and next to Pier 29½, two people grilled Salvadorean pupusas.
“I’m going to eat my way to dinner,” said one man walking by.
San Francisco’s fireworks display was only one of many Bay Area holiday celebrations.
For some people in the city of Alameda — participants in what may be the Bay Area’s most festive Fourth of July parade — the holiday meant plenty of work.
“It took about four hours, two glasses of wine and a lot of fishing line,” said Patti Cary, standing alongside a Mini Cooper barely visible beneath plastic wisteria, artificial grass and actual white hydrangea blossoms, as well as a sign boosting the local group she’s involved with, Island City Opera. “Our theme this year is ‘Opera in the Park,’ so I figured we go with flowers and greenery.”
The opera and its floral Mini were among the 150 registered participants in the city’s annual parade, a 3.3mile trek that Alameda boosters claim is the nation’s longest. It started at 10 a.m. and didn’t end until nearly 1 p.m. — a procession that managed to embody both the island city’s homey feel and an easygoing diversity.
Two drag revues waved from slowmoving vehicles, one followed by a detachment from the Marine Corps League of San Leandro. A contingent of horseback riders from Castro Valley was led by a charro doing lasso tricks atop a bull. Girl Scouts were on bicycles and the Encinal High School’s marching band played from atop an 18wheel flatbed trailer.
Stores and businesses had floats. Owners of classic cars showed off their treasures, albeit at a startandstop pace.
The parade began on Park Street, with local dignitaries waving from cars at the residents and visitors, many in redwhiteandblue garb, who had set up folding chairs to watch the show. One pickup truck held Alameda’s two poet laureates, Cathy Dana and Gene Kahane. Periodically, one or the other would would use a microphone to read poetry to the onlookers.
A retired English teacher who now works at a local bookstore, Kahane gets a kick from the annual event.
“In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ there’s a parade held to show everyone the people who serve you,” Kahane recalled. “That’s what this always reminds me of. It’s a way of celebrating the community.”
Where the laureates’ “Poetruck” had decorations consisting of swimmingpool noodles sticking up from the cab like a colorful buzz cut, the float prepared by Girls Inc. and Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter pulled out all the stops.
The two organizations riffed off the work of author J.K. Rowling by celebrating “Hairy Pawter” — filling a flatbed with a twodimensional castle (“Pawgwarts”) and illustrations for such schools as “Gryffindog” and “Slobberin.”
“There was a lot of planning by employees to get started, and then girls volunteered to trace and cut and paint,” said Tatjana Bevineau, who helps run Girls Inc.’s summer camp and was dressed as archvillain Voldemort. “We’ve been decorating the truck since Monday.”
This is the second parade entry by the organizations, which are linked by the girls who read to dogs at the animal shelter two afternoons each week. Beyond simple fun, Executive Director John Lipp of the Friends group admitted to an ulterior motive: “We didn’t win the award we wanted last year, so we decided to amp things up.”
Nearly a dozen judges gathered under a tent on Otis Drive to rate each parade participant as they passed by.
They assigned numerical scores in the categories of originality, presentation and enthusiasm. Another set of volunteers crosschecked the numbers. The judges also met in late June to decide the order of the marchers — making sure that, say, a marching band won’t drown out Island City Opera soprano Eileen Meredith, who was singing arias from the Mini Cooper’s passenger seat, or that two equestrian groups won’t trample each other and cause a stampede.
“There’s always a scramble at the end” to make sure all of the details are set, confessed Blake Brydon, who was making sure that score sheets flowed smoothly from judges to tabulators. “But most of us have been doing this for years.” And why is that? “It’s really fun,” Brydon said. “This parade is one of the things that bring people on this island together, and we need that more than ever. It’s what America is all about.”