GREG GETS A GLIMPSE OF SPAIN IN CLAREMONT
LE CORDON BLEU SAYS ‘AU REVOIR’
WINNER FOR BEST CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN MONROVIA ANNOUNCED
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monroviaweekly.com
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MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015 - DECEMBER 27, 2015 - VOLUME 20, NO. 51
Fiesta Parade Floats: Transformations of Ideas to Award-Winning Floats BY J. SHADÉ QUINTANILLA On New Year’s Day, thousands of excited spectators will line up early morning in Pasadena and TV viewers will tune in to catch one of the most anticipated events of the year--the Tournament of Roses Parade. With 44 floats sponsored by sports teams, California cities, and medical organizations, the Rose Parade will be an unforgettable spectacle for thousands around the world. This year, one of the leading float building companies--Fiesta Parade Floats-- will have 11 of their floats featured. From a float sponsored by Real California Milk with adventurers rowing through milk on a boat made out of pizza to a float created for ABC’s “The Bachelor” depicting beautiful bikinied women on a tropical island, the company has a lot in store for the Rose Parade. While each float is created with the goal of being shown off on a parade route just a little over five miles, a lot of thought and hard labor is put into each of Fiesta Parade Floats’ creations. According to Tim Estes, president of the Irwindale-based company, floats can take more than nine thousand hours of work until they are ready to make a debut on the parade route. The process of designing, building, and decorating a float can take up most of a year with designing occupying the
Fiesta Floats in Irwindale create spectacular and amusing floats for the 2016 Rose Parade.
Monrovia Enters Into Agreement for Santa Fe Depot Rehab
BY SUSAN MOTANDER The Station Square project, Monrovia’s single largest civic project, is nearing completion, but at its center, the historic Santa Fe Depot is still in disrepair. To remedy
this, the city council entered into an agreement with Samuelson Fetter (doing business as Daylight Limited, L.L.C.) last Tuesday to rehabilitate the Depot, while the city staff moves ahead with plans for the dedication of
the park on Jan. 23, 2016. The city’s agreement with the local developer gives Samuelson Fetter a 55year lease for the property and the $1.5 million necesSEE PAGE 16
- Photo by Terry Miller
beginning of the year, construction starting in April, and decorating in late November and all of December for some of Fiesta’s floats. Catering to different clients, many of them returning clients over the years, Fiesta Parade Floats starts their building process by first going over ideas for designs of potential floats. In-house designers talk with clients about what they want to emphasize or what kind of feeling they want spectators to get from their float. Designers then take these ideas and draw out different sketches of possible floats. Although some clients are easier to please than others, the process of just coming up with the final sketch of the float can take anywhere between three weeks to three months. Once the design is decided on, the company begins to construct the float, sometimes as early as April. The first step in the construction process is doing the steel work, which serves as the foundation for the float. Estes, who has overseen the construction of more than 500 Rose Parade floats, compares the structure of a float to the makeup of human bodies. “It’s kind of like building a human body,” he said in an interview. “Here’s your bones, which is kind of like the main structure of the body, so that’s got like SEE PAGE 14
Riverside Man Charged for Conspiring to Provide Support to Terrorists Enrique Marquez Jr., a longtime friend of Syed Rizwan Farook, the male shooter in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, was charged today with conspiring with Farook in 2011 and 2012 to commit crimes of
terrorism. Marquez was also charged today with the unlawful purchase of two assault rifles used in the deadly shooting two weeks ago. A three-count criminal complaint filed this afternoon additionally charges
Marquez with defrauding immigration authorities by entering into a sham marriage with a member of Farook’s family. Marquez, a 24-year-old SEE PAGE 5