Today, the Macy's Holiday Parade. Yes, I know its the day *after* Thanksgiving and this is not New York City. Not *that* Macy's parade, this is the one that used to be affectionately known as the Meier and Frank Holiday Parade.
No giant balloons floating, this one is more about marching bands, and they do have giant floating things that are driven by inside people. Now that would be a fun job - driving a giant floating Christmas tree down the streets of Portland.
When big bad Macy's moved in (not my opinion, I actually *like* Macy's, but then, I'm from the East coast, so they didn't betray my memory or anything, in fact, they brought my home back to me here on the west coast. Long live bi-coastalism!). Well, when Macy's bought out Meier and Frank, they tried to subvert the local traditional post-holiday parade.
Tried to make it into some sort of competition to The Rose Parade or something - banned middle school bands from participating. A righteous hue and cry resulted. Myself among them. Did they think we would get on national TV or something?
Our way was more about having breakfast at the local tavern with the family, and standing out in the rain and snow or whatever, and cheering the bands. The 6th grade bands were the hope of future high school bands, of course, so they deserved a lot of cheering!
Skip ahead to today: I was happy to see many 6th grade bands participating. About half a dozen from various Oregon and Washington middle schools. Rah! Some of them sounded really good! So Macy's now really does have a clue!
On the high school level, mixed results in this endless recession.. Whereas in past years, Portland city high schools didn't have enough marching band kids unless they "pooled" them together into one mixed band. So they would dig up old uniforms and have a mottled group all in one band. OK. I felt a little sad that at their schools they didn't seem to have enough kids or interest to have their own band.
Different story this year - both Madison and Franklin had their very own bands. Uniforms, drumline, the works. Very cool! Rah Portland!
Across the great river however, up in Vancouver, where unemployment is higher than anyplace in Oregon, anyplace in Washington. The once very great and powerful Vancouver bands, that had the most amazing field shows you have ever seen in your life - very sophisticated (read: very expensive) and always it was Evergreen or one of the others that took top place. Well this year only a half dozen kids from Skyview - on a very long flatbed truck doing some sort of tropical marimba music. Fun, but these bands used to have like 100 or more kids - each.
Happy to report Camas, Century, Hilhi- at full strength. Go Century!
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