Santa Barbara Solstice

A few weeks ago I spent my final weekend in Santa Barbara. I went up there to move the rest of my stuff out of my old apartment, help the guys clean, hopefully get the better portion of our security deposit back, and, in general, say goodbye. It just so happened that the weekend of our departure from Santa Barbara was the weekend of the Summer Solstice Parade.

The parade is in many ways, underwhelming. All of the floats are homemade. About an eighth of the parade is made up of groups with choreographed performances. The rest are a hodgepodge of people who just thought it would be cool to dress up and be in a parade, many of whom, we suspected, were hippies who live in the hills and have tons of spare strips of fabric.

This guy (above) is a great example of the home-made costume. He is a jellyfish, or more accurately, the tentacles of a jellyfish. He achieved this taping a couple hundred fake flowers to his body. The problem came when he was making the body of the jellyfish, which is a giant net filled with balloons attached to a hula hoop. He got halfway done filling up balloons with helium and thought "Forget it, I hate balloons now and am going to use trash bags."

The parade organizers (kind of like the IOC of Santa Barbara) tried to give this year's parade some type of cohesiveness with a theme. We couldn't quite figure what that theme was but my best guess is "Late 18th Century Jungle Where White People of Confused Religious Background Celebrate the Sun." 

It is by far the most pagan thing I have ever seen.

Giant half-a-watermelon float. Why not? Seriously though.

This guy. THIS GUY. He kept poking people with his giant stick and as if that were not enough, as if the green horns and orange feathers are not enough, those furry purple pants...

are not pants but ass-less chaps. He and his girlfriend had on purple fur ass-less chaps.

It ended with a giant inflatable watermelon with spikes, a tail and baby watermelon nipples. Inside were two aerial dancers who were dying of heat stroke and instead of dancing on the ropes, were just lying on the floor as two dozen people pushed this monster up State Street.

What a great afternoon.