A ‘Tornado’ Sweeps Through Old Pasadena, and the Doo Dah Parade Has a New Queen

The Doo Dah Parade may not be happening this year, but nobody told the contestants. (According to parade organizers, the parade will be a party in Memorial Park at 11 a.m. on Sunday, November 22.)

But Sunday evening, the Old Town Pub in Pasadena was packed and 25 hopefuls of various ages, genders, and degrees of exhibitionism had assembled to compete for one of the city’s least conventional honors: Queen of the Doo Dah Parade.

The afternoon began in a state of utter confusion and proceeded with remarkably little improvement.

Which, of course, was perfect.

The parade itself, which was previously shelved in 2025 following the Eaton Fire, has been sidelined by an inability to secure the necessary permits. But the Doo Dah faithful, never especially troubled by such bourgeois inconveniences as organization, decided that a coronation and a party were perfectly reasonable substitutes.

And so the auditions began.

There were costumes. There was music. There were performances that defied easy description, and a few that probably should have remained undescribed. At least twice, discretion suggested leaving the room.

One woman un-ironically mimed Tim Curry’s performance of “Sweet Transvestite” from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” in which he was dressed in drag leather hose and heels (See what she did there?).

Another arrived with oversized sunglasses, a veil and an unmistakable commitment to eccentricity. Feathered shoulders, tiaras, fishnets and glitter,  tech problems, beer and smoke competed equally for attention beneath the pub’s reddish stage lights.

A live band provided musical accompaniment, while the assembled crowd cheered, laughed and occasionally appeared as bewildered as the participants.

But eventually, from this swirling carnival of cheerful lunacy, an actual winner emerged.

Enter Hannah Jung-Bauer, an Instagram gal-about-town whose performance brought the competition to a suitably meteorological conclusion.

Wearing a long, black, googly-eyed hoop skirt, Jung-Bauer performed to a cover of Chuck Mangione’s 1978 flugelhorn hit, “Feels So Good.”

Then came the grand finale.

She hoisted the enormous skirt high above her head, transforming herself into a human tornado, and began whirling like a dervish.

It was part dance, part weather emergency, and entirely Doo Dah.

For the judges, apparently, that was enough.

When the dust settled, figuratively speaking, Jung-Bauer had claimed the crown, joining the long and proudly peculiar lineage of Pasadena’s Doo Dah royalty.

“It just feels wild,” she said in a post-coronation patio interview. “I’ve always felt so unworthy at this, because the room is just packed with talent. But I just went with my $3 curtains and my $8 dress, and I did something, “ta-da!”

The crowd had its queen. The queen had her moment. The party had survived another brush with organized chaos.

As for the parade, that remains uncertain.

But in Pasadena, a woman can become royalty by impersonating a tornado, so perhaps the procession itself is beside the point.

Let the madness continue. The Doo Dah spirit, gloriously and defiantly, marches on.

Following its 2025 hiatus brought on by rampant blazes and financial snags, the 2026 Pasadena Doo Dah thing makes its triumphant comeback with a party in Memorial Park on Sunday, November 22, 2026, with the joyful mayhem launching at 11:00 AM. Oh, the humanity.