West Seattle Grand Parade 2010, report #4: The starting line

Before the 75-plus entries in today’s two-hour West Seattle Grand Parade rolled, roared, marched, glid and strolled down the route, they gathered at/around the starting line, which is California/Lander – unpacking, arranging, in some cases, even posing for photos (particularly the most famous of the entries, like JP Patches). On assignment for WSB, Edgar Riebe of West Seattle-based Captive Eye Media roamed around behind the scenes in the pre-parade hours – the video above is the result! ADDED EARLY SUNDAY: And from inside our electric car as the parade began, here’s the first minute (shot by WSB editor TR) as we got the go-ahead to start rolling:

One thing we noticed, riding in a vehicle for the first time – people yelled and waved as they saw the signs on the side of the car, not the banner on the front (so the audio you hear doesn’t synch with the video – we had the camera pointed forward most of that minute). Thanks again to everyone who came out to see the parade; our coverage – before, during, after – is in the WSB West Seattle Grand Parade archive, newest to oldest.

LAP July 24, 2010 (9:40 pm)

What a great day for a parade!!!! During my reign the parade was at night….which was also very special because the floats have such beautiful lighting for the evening parades. Thank you everyone who worked so hard to make this a wonderful event….West Seattle’s Hi-Yu Parade has been in existance longer than Seafair….West Seattle rocks!!

sillygoose July 24, 2010 (9:53 pm)

What a beautiful day for a parade, we enjoy this parade every year especially seeing the community all gathered together supporting the various organizations, it really is a great way to start the day. With that said we are curious what has happened to all of our neighboring towns that use to enter their beautiful floats in our parade every year? Every year the amount of floats from other communities gets less and less. We love seeing the floats and it seems they are a dying fade.

Jim July 25, 2010 (11:45 am)

Sillygoose… Float operations are expensive. less communities have floats. Those who do have floats, have curtailed operations except to contractual commitments. The Hi-Yu Festival is not part of Northwest Festival Hosting Association.

About 15 years ago Seafair put a week between race and parade. That pushed West Seattle a week earlier in July, from the weekend they had held since 1934. So West Seattle ends up the same day as Olympia’s Capital Lakefair Festival 5 out of every 7 years (Olympia is part of the NW Festival Hosting Association). And the other two years we are now competing with Renton river days for participants.

So despite the best efforts of Hi-Yu and their traveling parade float, many floats just can’t make it to West Seattle anymore.

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