Rose Float Decorating at Rosemont Pavilion

You found this. Be the first one here.

Every rose on every float has to be put there by a person, one at a time, by hand, in the three days before the parade. That is not a charming fact — it is a logistical emergency that happens every single year, and it is why the barn doors stand open to anyone who wants to walk in and look. Inside, the smell hits first: wet flowers and glue and cold concrete. Volunteers on scaffolding press petals into wire mesh. Someone is on their knees gluing seed by seed into a dragon's eye, because the rules say every surface must be natural material, which means beans, bark, coconut, ground coffee. The floats are enormous and unfinished and look like nothing from the ground, and then you find the photograph of last year's version and understand what you are watching get built. Pasadena and Irwindale sites, December 28 through 30, nine to five. Wear shoes you do not mind ruining.