The 2009 Portland Rose Festival Parade Celebrates the Theme of Oregon's 150th

As do most parades in America, the Portland Rose Festival in Oregon always has a theme that represents something either significant or just a simpler gesture of goodwill and charm celebrating the essence of the state. Two years ago, the Rose Festival Parade celebrated its centennial with a collection of floats representing a century of the stunning floral majesty this parade always conjures that's equal if not sometimes better in comparison to the Pasadena Rose Parade. Since Oregon is turning 150 years old this year, the Rose Parade has another opportunity to take the creative level of the floats in new directions when anniversaries always enhance the creative possibilities. And since interactivity has become the newer method in the presentation of history, having a concept of living history on a parade float shouldn't necessarily be automatically thought of as campy.

If you've ever seen the Portland Rose Festival live or on TV, you'd know that it's stayed as technologically relevant as the Pasadena Parade with sophisticated animated characters and effects blending in seamlessly with the stunning natural materials. That'll be taken to a unique level this year as Oregon's important historical figures of the last 150 years get placed into the floats in a way that makes them bigger than life...literally.

When you deal with the term "living history", museums generally equate it with actors portraying historical figures that break the fourth wall of the present and interact with tourists. This even means getting them involved partaking in tasks those who lived before the 20^th century had to endure before the industrial and technological revolution took hold. But, of course, having that on a float in a parade isn't really applicable. Instead, most parade floats feature enlarged versions of real historical figures and made out of either synthetic or natural materials.

For this year's Portland Rose Parade, you'll be able to see ones made naturally and at least one intriguing example of history come to life through a real notorious person who made up part of Oregon's history. No, it won't be an actress (or the real deal) playing Tonya Harding. Think 25 years before the Harding Era.

Within the realm of creating historical figures on the Rose Festival floats, almost all of them will look stunningly real, except for the fact that those real-looking skin tones will be made out of something natural. In case you thought all Rose Festival floats were nothing but roses, roses and more roses, most to all of the floats are made of every known piece of natural flower or miscellaneous plant grown in Oregon. It consistently impresses me every year how they make skin tones when depicting a human being. Yet if you visit this year and see it up close, you'll see the evidence of how real it looks, even from a short distance.

Because of Oregon's 150^th, the parade will have a special theme separate from another called "Small World; Bridging Continents" celebrating our cultural connections--including Portland's sister city, Sapporo, Japan. The Oregon 150 theme will be called "Our Oregon; Bridging Centuries" where the usual suspects of our history will be revived through the above-mentioned natural construction.
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If you're familiar with Oregon's history, then John McLoughlin and Native-Americans will come to mind first. McLoughlin started the first fur trade business in Astoria, Oregon less than 20 years after Lewis & Clark discovered the area. Native-Americans tribes in the state are responsible for making sure Lewis & Clark (and company) went back home with a detailed map of the U.S. Northwest. Both of these representations of Oregon's history will be designed in living floats. Be warned, though, that since McLoughlin's mane of hair was akin to Albert Einstein's, it might look a bit intimidating seeing this giant creation up close. Or, it could look highly majestic.

Other floats will depict the pioneers, trappers and various mountaineers who came out to Oregon's wild to forge a new way of life in the mid 1800's. I only wish I could give you a preview of what these will look like ahead of time, but they'll likely be breathtaking in design when the creative team behind the floats always step it up when depicting something emotional. The story of the pioneers alone should make its featured float an award winner.

Beyond the floats, also keep an eye out for an interesting connection to the past with the present. Every year, Portland's reigning Rose Festival Queen gets featured prominently on a particular float that also features all of the Rose Festival Court (high school girls picked from prior months) riding aboard. To represent when Oregon turned 100 in 1959, the entire Rose Festival Court and Queen from that year will ride through the parade concurrently with the current Rose Festival Court and Queen.

But what about that earlier-mentioned historical figure who will be depicted by an actor? While unconfirmed as perhaps only a float, someone may be dressed in the guise of D.B. Cooper--or at least in the way his infamous pop-cultured FBI sketch showed us for the last 38 years. Some may find it in bad taste to depict an infamous skyjacker running through the parade like an escaped criminal. Nevertheless, Cooper became branded to Oregon's more recent history based on the idea that notoriety places you in the history books. It's looking fairly clear, too, that the person behind the D.B. Cooper moniker has been scoped out recently in death and finding out the late man was a local resident for years after the crime.

You can't get any more compelling notorious history than that in a parade that otherwise celebrates natural beauty. Be thankful at least that Tonya Harding wasn't depicted in this year's Portland Rose Festival. Or, if you decide to attend a Portland Rose Festival in fifty years for the state's 200^th birthday, don't be surprised to see a float depicting Harding planning out the knee whack of Nancy Kerrigan.
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Should you want to see all those floats up close after the parade, be sure to head down to the Waterfront Village down, appropriately enough, along the waterfront at SW Naito Parkway. At one time, you could see the floats post-parade at the Rose Garden Arena commons, though having them down by the waterfront allows them to get more hydration than in the sometimes dry and hot environments within the middle of town.

Here, you'll be able to see the details of the creative magic in how history can be brought to life using nature rather than CGI...

Official site for the 2009 Portland Rose Festival:

http://www.rosefestival.org/events/grandfloralparade/