Rough Times Take Bloom Off a New Year's Rite, the Rose Parade

[FarCenter]

PASADENA, Calif. — With its peppy bands, whimsical floats and flood of flowers, the Rose Parade here has long been a symbol of the hopes of a New Year.

But the sputtering economy and municipal budget cuts are presenting new problems for the Tournament of Roses.

Several cities have had to abandon plans to put up floats for the parade, after doing so for decades. One company that had built floats for 25 years announced that it was going out of business, after its most reliable customers dropped out of the parade. And Occupy protesters threaten to show up 40,000 strong along the parade route to blanket the area with their message that “not everything is coming up roses.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/us/rose-parade-new-years-ritual-faces-rough-times.html

[grasswire]

1. and the corporations can't take up the slack for the starved cities?

Another local industry bites the dust, damn Republicans.

[dtexdem]

2. Well, they could always call it the Second-Hand-Rose Parade.

;-)

Pasadena has a parade, strictly second hand.
Everything is flora, except the marching band.
...

[Hotler]

3. They can make the floats cheaper in China. eom.