Patch Blog: South Pas TOR 2013 Float Design

It feels like the 2012 Rose Parade where we won the Fantasy Award for our float entry was only yesterday. In reality it has been five months, and what a busy five months it has been! No sooner than we finished tear-down on our 2012 entry, we were back in meetings to select our 2013 design concept.  

The goal during design selection is to try and find a concept that is either "build ready," or—with a little tweaking—can be made to fit the parade theme for the upcoming year. We try to pick a concept based on several factors that will help us to narrow the field of submitted design ideas.

First, the concept has to fit the Rose Parade’s theme. Secondly, we factor in
the potential expense and the overall ability to build the concept. Overly elaborate
designs can not only be costly in dollars and cents for an organization that depends on community donations to get the job done, but in labor/man hours for our all-volunteer construction and decoration team. In the end, we choose a design that we think has all of these factors and the ability to be a winning float.

For the 2013 Rose Parade, we were tasked to find a design concept that tied into the theme "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" that 2013 Tournament of Roses President Sally Bixby had chosen. Using the theme helped to narrow the field a little more
by eliminating concepts without a clear destination or journey in them.  

We had two exceptional designs chosen and were looking for a third to bring to the whole committee for approval when something clicked with all of us on the design team. A concept we really liked, but had passed over, got a little rework from our resident artist Eugenia Chen of C2C Studio. Once this reimagined design was shown to the design team, it immediately became our number one pick.

Our entry depicts the adventures embarked upon, the imaginations that are sparked and the quests for personal excellence that are driven by the love of books. Be it history, literature or your favorite bedtime story, all of our lives are influenced and molded by the lessons and knowledge that books impart upon us. "Sailing The Sea of Knowledge" is an early sailing vessel like those used to
discover the New World, cresting "waves" that are composed of pages
from an open book of nautical maps.

"Sailing The Sea of Knowledge" is the winning concept that was submitted by South Pasadena resident and current college student, Matthew Whaling. We strongly believe that this float fits the 2013 Rose Parade theme of "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" seamlessly and we hope you agree.

Your South Pasadena float is the oldest "self-built" float (built and decorated entirely by volunteers) in the annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade that traverses Colorado Boulevard on every January 1st. Over our 123 years we have learned many lessons with float building, and forgotten many others. But one lesson that stuck with us after last year’s winning entry is to start construction early. Last year’s float construction was started in June, this year we started in April. Our goal is to have a substantial portion of the float built for the annual on July 4th.

We also have our Golf Tournament fundraiser coming up on Saturday, June 23rd at the Arroyo Seco Golf Course. 8:00 AM shotgun start with lunch, awards and drawings to follow the tournament.  For information on how to enter the tournament, see the flier in the photo section of this post or contact Alan Vlacich at (626) 799-7813 or Cell (626)233-5570.

For more information on how you can help make this year's entry a reality, please email info@sptor.com. If you are interested in participating with this year's construction, please email sptorconstruction@gmail.com. More “up-to-date” information, schedules and photos of this year’s entry can be found here here on our facebook page.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you at the float site adjacent to the War Memorial Building on Fair Oaks.

Chris Colburn, SPTOR Construction Chair 2013-2014