Love, Dedication–and Talent

Over Coffee® is on holiday hiatus.  Please enjoy our rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes of 2019, as we count down to Pasadena's 131st Rose Parade®, on New Year's Day!

Top award-winning float builder Fiesta Parade Floats is in the midst of final preparations for Pasadena's 2020 Rose Parade®.

This week is "Deco Week".

For float builders, that's a race against the clock.

It's time to decorate the Rose Parade® floats for their New Year's Day appearance.   Floats leave the barn for the parade route on New Year's Eve.

But, decorating work must be done with precision.

Pasadena Tournament of Roses® requires float creators to cover every inch of Rose Parade® float surfaces with organic materials.

That can translate to some extremely painstaking work by several shifts of volunteers.  Think "mosaic creation with seeds" (or coffee beans, rice, limas or otherwise).  Now, think, "glued on one at a time", and you'll be on the right track.

According to their website, Irwindale-based Fiesta has created eleven of the floats we'll see in the 131st Rose Parade®.

In September, we had the opportunity to talk with Fiesta Project Manager Beverly Stansbury.

Beverly talked about the float construction process, and where the floats were at that point.  She also offered a look at what's involved in getting those incredible floats ready to wow everyone on New Year's Day.

Here's what she said about the process--and here, for your enjoyment, are some of the pictures we took, on Sunday, December 29th, of the floats in their final "deco" stages!

On this edition of Over Coffee®, you will hear:

What drew Beverly into choosing float building as her life’s work;

A mini-preview of what Fiesta Parade Floats has been creating, for the 131st Rose Parade®;

Some of the engineering considerations involved in creating a larger float, like The UPS Store’s 2019 “Books Keep Us On Our Toes”;

Ways in which the float building industry is changing, and how those changes present a challenge with float design and decoration;

The cost of having a float built for the Rose Parade®–and why that figure really isn’t a lot of money for what's provided!

Perspectives on keeping the Rose Parade® going in a changing world;

How Fiesta Parade Floats involves the community in decorating their floats;

The magic element of float building which Beverly, despite her experience, still finds “amazing”;

The work schedule involved for float builders like Fiesta, through the year;

What’s involved in “test driving” the floats, prior to the parade!;

How Beverly and the team deal with “Murphy’s Law” on the way to the parade route;

Where she finds creative inspiration, each year, for the new floats;

What Fiesta’s work schedules are like, as the Rose Parade® gets closer (and afterwards);

A common float builder’s nightmare!