With just weeks to go before the Tournament of Roses Parade, the noise level — and stress level — were rising at a warehouse in the foothill town of Sierra Madre, just north of Pasadena.
“I woke up and I was like, in panic mode,” florist and longtime Sierra Madre Rose Float Association volunteer Ann McKenzie said. “(From now) until Jan. 2nd, our world is totally absorbed. We’re in a float-driven world.”
McKenzie is part of the small, core group of year-round volunteer float builders. As lead florist and project coordinator, her job is arguably one of the most important: overseeing the float’s overall floral design and purchasing all of the flowers that will carpet its massive 53-foot long frame.
On this afternoon, amid a din of welding torches, electric saws and booming classic rock music, McKenzie and other volunteers haggled over those design ideas, crunching the numbers on flower purchases and crunching peanut shells for use on the float.
Of the more than three dozen floats covered in flowers that’ll be rolling through the city of Pasadena on New Years Day, only five are built by community groups like Sierra Madre. They’ve been building floats for the parade for 108 years, and this year’s theme is special: the float celebrates first responders and the role they played in protecting Sierra Madre from January’s deadly Eaton Fire.
“The theme this year is the magic in teamwork and that encapsulates exactly what we are, because we are volunteer run and donation driven,” said the association’s social media chief, and volunteer coordinator Hannah Jungbauer.
“We are one of the towns that lost houses during the Eaton Canyon fire, and this is a nod and homage to the brave people that helped put out those fires,” Jungbauer said, adding that the crew is walking a fine line between whimsy and respectful.”
Earlier this summer, the float was still just a raw skeleton of steel rebar, wire meshing and wood framing. But by early December, playfully surreal imagery began to emerge.
On one end of the float, there’s a 9-foot maple syrup bottle with a firehose attached to the top. On the other end, a butter dish the size of a Mini Cooper and a 9-foot stack of pancakes. McKenzie said the faux flapjacks will be sprayed in a flowered shower of faux pancake syrup.
“As it’s pouring out, it becomes floral and it becomes chocolate roses, coffee break roses and different types of mum [flowers]‘s and it’s just kind of flowing over the side,” McKenzie explained. “It’s going to be really beautiful syrup, it’s going to be a lot!”
In the middle of the wide float deck sits a life-sized, replica firetruck built from scrap wood and metal.
“Everybody knows the firehouse pancake breakfast and it’s always a positive fun event,” lead builder Kurt Kulhavy said. We were able to acknowledge our firefighters [with this design] and do it in a very positive and fun way.”
It’s also going to be completely dismantled shortly after the float’s big day on New Year’s morning.
“I tell people it’s the biggest piñata you’ll ever build, that] needs to last for a day,” Kulhavy said. “We tear it down every year! The Rose Parade is the Olympics of float building.”
Among the only parts not scrapped or sold off each year are the float’s engine and chassis. This year’s version is also a bit more ambitious in size and scope than in years past.
Jungbauer says that means more flowers, more flax seeds and other organic materials used to cover and colorize the float. Everything parade watchers see on New Year’s Day should be edible, otherwise you’ll get dinged by Rose Committee judges.
“If you can see it on a float, you can eat it. If it’s not a fresh floral, you can eat it,” explained Jungbauer. “It will be sushi paper for eyeballs, rice with a nice pearlescent to emulate plastic, or it will be silver leaf that we’re cutting up to show chrome. Everything must be 100% covered in organic material, be it dried or alive,” she said.
With Trump administration tariffs leading to spikes in the cost of rose float building essentials like flowers and steel, that’s led to some creative short-cutting. Sierra Madre often trades flowers, scrap wood or other materials with the handful of DIY, volunteer-driven float builders, like the nearby communities of South Pasadena and La Cañada-Flintridge, none of whom have corporate funding or sponsorships.
“Some organizations have endowments that fund them, some have city funding, we don’t have any of that,” Kulhavy said.
He said commercially built Rose Parade floats probably cost around $400,000. He’s heard of other makers scraping pennies together to complete a build for around $120,000.
“We do ours for like $50,000. And so, you use building techniques which are very efficient, (but) still have to hold up,” Kulhavy explained.
“[We] still have to get through the parade, still have to pass all the safety inspections. We get very lean on our materials to make it hold up well, but no extra,” he said.
One of Kulhavy’s trusted mechanics is Justin Roberts. At 19 years old, Roberts is already a float building veteran. His grandparents, who were also volunteer float builders, brought him to the Sierra Madre warehouse as a toddler. Soon enough, he began doing odd jobs like sweeping up the warehouse. This year he’s not only helping build the float from the bottom up, he’s also the co-driver on parade day.
Roberts says he’s grown accustomed to working on the float through New Year’s Eve and into the wee hours of New Year’s Day, until it’s nearly time to embark on the 5-mile Rose Parade route. Then he’d go home, catch a few hours of shuteye, and watch the parade on TV.
“I’ve never seen it in person,” Roberts said. “It’s going to be awesome. You see the crowd along Colorado Boulevard, you know, a lot of people come from far away to see the Rose Parade.”
And given the theme of Sierra Madre’s float this year, Roberts is an inspired choice to take the wheel as co-driver. He’s studying to become a California wildland firefighter, and hopes to begin his career next year.
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