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Silly in the sun: paisley mermaids? Prancing ovens? It has to be Santa Barbara's Summer Solstice Parade - Travel - related article: Solstice strategy

Sunset, June, 2003 by Sheila Schmitz

Every June, Santa Barbara celebrates summer with a spectacle that invites you to check your adulthood at the door. The Summer Solstice Parade, held on the Saturday closest to the longest day of the year (June 21 this year), is the city's homegrown freewheeling answer to Mardi Gras.

The parade has decidedly iconoclastic rules: No vehicles or motor-powered floats. No animals. No corporate logos. Deprived of the usual parade standbys, participants must rely on eye-popping invention: paisley mermaids in place of a homecoming queen, a whale-size goldfish for the mayor to ride in.

One year, a pink oven the size of a small house wobbled up State Street, stopping now and then to release dancing baked goods onto the pavement. This year's theme is "Silly," but to be honest, that could pretty well describe every parade since the event began in 1974.

A long, carefree day

The day is a triumph of collaboration as well as creativity. For six weeks, artists and volunteers work to turn donated wood, cardboard, paint, and fabric into mobile art and performance pieces. The sense of communal participation continues even after the parade has begun its 90-minute march along State Street. Massed on the sidewalks, spectators cheer on friends dressed as papier-mache zebras and applaud a truck-size percussion instrument made of salvaged metal. Sidewalk vendors sell garlands, fairy wings, masks, and festival posters.

By the end of the parade route, the distinction between paraders and spectators has almost disappeared. The crowd funnels into Alameda Park, where food, music, and festivities await. High above, the sun hangs in the sky, motionless. With so much light comes time to soak in the day. Grownup concerns can wait until later. Much later. After the sun goes down.