|
Chinese New Years Day Parade in San Francisco By John C. Dvorak |
|||||||||||
|
March 2007 |
|||||||||||
|
The last time I went to the Chinese New Years parade in San Francisco was around 1980. Returning this year convinces me that my wait time was ideal and I should probably revisit the show in 2034. I'm reminded of the yearly exercise in mediocrity - the San Francisco 4th of July Fireworks Show. This town is indeed clueless. That said, there seem to be a lot of improvements in the parade. Back in 1980 the show had a different route and kids were freely throwing cherry bombs into the crowded streets and onto the people. I recall one of these devices landing in a woman's large hairdo and exploding with hair flying everywhere. That aspect of the event seems to be minimized. Now the parade itself is the drawback to the event. That and the emcees who are just nutty. Let me tell you a little about San Francisco you may not know. It's essentially a hick town in silk dress and pearls. I can't tell you how often I've been to one of those Broadway road productions they put on in the nice playhouses (two of them) that San Francisco showcases. No matter how absolutely crummy the play, how poor the production and how miserable the acting, the cast and crew gets a standing ovation at the end as if this was the greatest thing in history. It happens every time on cue as if the dumb locals think that is what you are supposed to do when you fed crap. It's baffling. The good old days during the 1800's I am sure the less pretentious audience threw things at the players. Now they get a standing ovation because it's, well, sophisticated, right? Yeah, if you are from Gnawbone, Indiana it might be.
So what's there to see? Not much. I mean there are a lot of grammar schools and a couple of the high schools marching through town jumping around or playing a song from the always off-tune High School marching band. But with the University of California, Stanford and other major schools in the area all with enormous and impressive marching bands who do you think shows up? The University of California at Davis - the Aggies. That's it? Apparently.
None of this would have been annoying if the parade was actually kept as such without huge 5 minute long gaps between one group and another. I was near the end of the parade where the judge's stand was placed and there were three maybe four of these large gaps. That was on top of the fact that the parade which normally hits this area at 5:50 did not even begin until 6:15 with a parade of local politicos nobody cared anything about. That was preceded by some Chinese cheerleader comic who tried to warm up the crowd. When the parade finally began he would share the microphone duties with a woman named Rose who was a real piece of work. This guy was the worst though. He was the main announcer at the judge's stand and didn't seem to know anything about any of the floats or the groups unless he had some personal relationship. He seemed genuinely shocked by which float appeared and when it appeared. He provided no background on anything and incessantly said "check it out!" All you heard was "Kids! Check it out. Check it out. Judges! Check it out. Check it out." This guy needed a thesaurus bad. Then there was Rose, an apparent institution, nee fixture, at this event. She has to have been one of the models for the portrayal of the pan-Asian character Ms Swan on the MAD-TV show. Seriously. She was on the mic as least as long as Check-it-out Charlie. But her act was even more grating. For the entire three hours of the slow-moving parade she aired her personal grievances. She called people out by name who were in the parade. She harangued the Mayor about the Central Subway project. She bitched about her garbage service with the garbage company. She demanded more money from Harrahs for their float. She demanded better loan rates from one of the banks. It was unbelievable. For a minute I thought this was not Chinese New Year's but the "airing of grievances" from Festivus. Of course the locals all considered this as colorful. And, I must say that it was, although if I were Chinese I'd be irked by this sort of unprofessional representation. To tell you the truth I got a mild kick out of it in an eye-rolling sort of way. But still, this parade is supposed to be the best SF has to offer and not the comedy competition. Much of this local attitude and the fact that the Chinese go along with it stems from the miserable history between the local whites and the Chinese coolies in the 1860's. The Chinese were treated like dirt. The result of this whole history was epitomized, as far as I'm concerned, by the mean-spirited and insulting waiter Edsel Ford "Eddie" Fong who used to work upstairs at the Sam Wo restaurant in Chinatown. This guy was a legitimate tourist attraction and people would flock to his floor to get insulted in his sing-song pidgin-English. It would be like going into a soul-food restaurant in the black ghetto and finding a ridiculous Steppin Fetchit character and thinking it was quaint then telling all your friends. I suspect the Chinese have a better sense of humor than the blacks when it comes to this sort of thing or perhaps they all wanted to tell off the customers like Fong routinely did. So now we have Rose as the front-man for pent-up hostility.
I should note that there were indeed some attractive floats as shown here. But these were far and few between. Probably the most over-hyped aspect of the entire parade was the Haight sisters, who practiced something called Wushu and were with the Cirque du Soleil. Essentially they each had a gimmicky looking sword that they spun around like a cheerleader baton while pretending to be in a sword fight. And that was it. It was incredibly dull. They more or less began the entertainment portion of the parade and dull thus became the theme. A shame really. But I have some videos, so, hey "check it out kids!" |
Related links: Backgrounder on area for tourists
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
