Sunday, April 26, 2009

Manatee County loves this parade

I'd almost forgotten how much our community loves a parade. Sure, the chairs were claiming their positions all week along Manatee Avenue. But not until I drove away from the Herald yesterday afternoon did it come home -- folks were already staked out in those chairs, and it was still three hours until the floats would start rolling.

This weekend certainly cooperated for the 70th annual DeSoto Heritage Festival Parade. Reporter Beth Burger trooped along Manatee Avenue last night for today's story, watching 200 floats glide by in the area’s moving celebration of its historical roots.

Someone must have Googled on the parade yesterday and came across my pre-parade blog from last year. They posted this comment:

"...Going home with plenty of beads and candy for the kids whom are now 7 yrs old and 5 yrs old and they have been talking about going to this parade all week so they are excited if that dont let you know its fun from their point of view then I dont know what fun is. I cant wait to see everyone in town there tonite god bless and have loads of fun..."

From the photographs captured by Tiffany Tompkins-Condie in this photo gallery, it looks like folks did. (Tiffany sent me a warning today of repair bills because one of her cameras had conked out while shooting the parade. I still recall our photo editor convincing me several years ago that photographers always need backup, for that very reason. It's tough to leave the scene for another camera without missing "the" shot...)

There may be some footnotes to the parade this year. Night metro editor Gary Taylor noted that the police scanner was full of post-parade catter:

"The dispersal of the parade crowd sounded (on the scanner) like all heck broke loose: missing child (eventually found), missing person from a float, drunks, two fights, numerous accidents, drivers yelling because of the gridlock..."

We'll check today. But this is a far better image:



-- Joan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To whom it may concern,


The pictures she took arre not of the parade. The only pictures that were of the parade were of the dog and the little boy and the dog and the float, the rest of them were not of the parade.There was a lot more than that to take pictures of.