Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Pasadena's 45th Occasional Doo Dah Parade on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, was the event's largest ever, with more than 100 entries. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now]
Braving a fusillade of flying tortillas and a swarming shroud of Silly String, the wacky, not to mention zany, 2024 Doo Dah parade marched into history on Sunday morning, making its way south on Raymond, hanging a “guilty right” (look it up) on Colorado, to its conclusion at Pasadena Avenue.
This year, two years after participating in the popular Covid hiatus event, more than 100 entries lined up in formation (sort of) this year, making this Doo Dah Parade the biggest ever.
”This is the largest participation in decades,” said Tom Coston, long-time parade organizer.
Dozens of inventive art cars, mutant vehicles, marching, rocking, and punk bands, and a memorable cast of performance artists, showstoppers, hoofers, crooners, disruptors, miscreants, lactose-indignants, political pundits, satirists, absurdists, lone wolves, float makers, and merrymakers, marched down Colorado, evading the inevitable flying tortillas, which this year made their appearance in both corn and flour varieties.
Sunday’s entries included The Underwater Undead, Space Tourists, Shag Party, Wastelanders, The Million Mrs. Roper March, The Fabulous Sons of Ed Wood and San Gabriel Valley LGBTQ Center. Newcomers take up a good third of the entries this year, like The Beatles Reunited, Bob Ross Painting Lesson, Stop Drop and Disco, Mike Dunn Jazz Funeral, The Flat Earth Society, Society for the Preservation of the Quill Pen (SPQP), California Jones & the Paraders of the Found Snark, and Rocka Chewbacca, an out of this world Wookiee Rock band.
Along with the newcomers were The NextDoors, a local Americana duo, of Russell Mark, and wife Mika Larson, who moved to Pasadena a few years ago from New Jersey.
Just days before the parade however, Mika broke a toe, but that didn’t stop her from bravely rolling down the parade route with her cello firmly mounted to her wheelchair, as volunteers pushed her along.
As Mark recounted, “We watched the Rose Parade for many years, but once we all moved out here, my mother didn’t want to go to the parade anymore. But we love this parade, it’s so fun and crazy.”
Now known “officially” as the “Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade,” the brief but intense procession began as a grassroots one-off in 1978, as an alternative to the Grandaddy Rose parade, and gained national attention for its eccentric attitude and wacky costuming.
The parade has since spawned numerous off-beat imitators across the country over the years, but has remained uniquely nutty here in its home city.
