Rose Parade

Group Unveils 1998 Rose Parade Float Design

By Robert Price
Californian staff writer
May 1, 1997

Bakersfield's $100,000 entry in the 1998 Tournament of Roses Parade will feature a carousel with 30-foot-tall farm animals, live characters in turn-of-the-last-century costumes and, waving to 450 million television viewers, a celebrity of some national renown.

Whether that celebrity turns out to be football Hall-of-Famer Frank Gifford, country crooner Buck Owens, Owens' protege Dwight Yoakam or someone else remains a closely guarded secret. Negotiations with the mystery celebrity are said to be ongoing.

That detail was secondary at Wednesday's float-design unveiling. Members of the Bakersfield Centennial Committee were introduced to Rick Chapman of Festival Arts, the Azuza-based float construction company that will build the 35-foot-long party-on-wheels, and Donald Davidson, whose La Canada-Flintridge company, The Design Collaborative, came up with the float's design. The float's simple theme: "Let's Celebrate".

"We looked at 'Let's Celebrate' as a generic thing," Chapman said. "Now we're out to do our darnedest to see that it speaks to Kern County." The float's characters include a lamb, rabbit, ostrich, duck, frog and two chicks. About 10 people in 1890's garb are riding on the animals' backs. The Bakersfield Centennial Committee plans to sell those 10 spots to sponsors interested in a once-in-a-lifetime carousel ride.

The going rate for a 5 and-a-half mile, early morning ride down Pasadena's Colorado Boulevard: $1,500. That fee is intended to offset a portion of the cost of the New Year's Day float.

An estimated $30,000 of that cost will go to the float's hydraulic component.

The parade's normal float height limitation is 17 feet, but hydraulics will permit operators to raise portions of the float to 30 feet during key stretches of the parade route and lower it for freeway undercrossings and other obstacles.

"There's only one overpass on the parade route, but countless telephone wires, that sort of thing between the staging area and parade route," said Chapman, who is working on his 32nd Rose Parade. "It's a gauntlet."

Chapman said the 18-foot-wide float will be essentially completed by October 1. The finishing touches will begin sometime between December 26th and 28th, depending on the weather. That's when volunteer workers begin adding colorful flowers, including specially bred, Kern County-grown "Centennial Gold" roses to the float. Seeds and other organic material, possibly including Kern County-grown cotton, may also be used.

"A parade is a fantasy," Davidson said. "You can make an onion fun if you work at it."

Jim Darling, chairman of the Centennial Float Committee, said he hoped to have his celebrity nailed down soon.

He reported having received correspondence from the unnamed person's management group Wednesday, and said a representative attended that evening's reception at the Bakersfield Museum of Art.

"But until the name is on the contract," he said, "we don't want to say anything."

Bakersfield celebrates 100 years of continuous incorporation in 1998.