Rodeo Parade Report Card

Fifteen minutes into the Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo Parade, the 6-year old girl sitting on the curb in front of us, turned and asked her mom, ” Can we go home already?” It was not a good sign.

Hair Balls has been to more than a dozen Rodeo parades and they were all pretty much a happy blur of cowboys, horses, poop, and marching bands. This year was a little different. Sure, there were cowboys, horses, poop, marching bands — and there were rodeo volunteers/officials in bright yellow jackets stalking the line make sure the kids kept their feet on the curb and no one accidentally stepped in the street. More officials were driving golf carts up and down the streets, delivering urgent messages to the people in the yellow jackets. (Hair Balls imagines these were something along the lines of “The clowns are fighting a block over, we’re gonna need the medics” and “It seems the trail riders in the next group fed their horses beer for breakfast. Tell the cops to have their tasers ready.”) And street cleaners stirred up quite a bit of dust every time they came by.

Given our 6-year-old parade watcher’s rather unenthusiastic reaction, we decided to work up a report card for the parade and organizers.

First, let’s start with the things the organizers couldn’t control:
the weather, the crowd and the overall parade vibe. As with any parade,
the most important factor was the weather. For the Rodeo parade, it was
cool and sunny. Although Rodeo organizers didn’t have any control over
it, we give them an A for the weather. Next was the crowd, which
numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Because the weather was mild and
there was plenty of room to spread out so that everyone could find a
mostly unobstructed view, everyone was cordial and pleasant (no shoving
for curb space like we’ve see at other parades). Organizers earn a B
for this.

And then there’s the parade vibe, the most intangible of all three
qualities. The crowd was pleasant and friendly, the marching bands kept
the volume well under the ear-splitting range and the trail riders were
almost dust free. (Some of those cowboys clean up real good.) The trail
riders kept things pretty calm, responding to screams and waves from
the crown without being too raunchy rowdy themselves. Cops and Rodeo
organizers were stationed every few feet, so safety wasn’t a concern
(if a stallion went wild, police officers with tasers were just a few
steps away). As a family-friendly, Houston-proud even, the vibe was
another B.

Now here’s what organizers could control: the glut of
politicos at the start of the parade (Hair Balls loved that Sheila
Jackson Lee, who was riding in a horse-drawn cart, did a beauty
pagaent wave to one side of the street and and then did a little
half-bow to the other side when spectators started cheering for her.)
They were also in charge of the parade entries line-up and celebrities.

Spectators
might not realize how very important the parade route is to the success
of the event. It must be long enough to allow people to line the
streets without being too cramped, but not so long as to make the crowd
seem sparse. Or so stretched out that the trail riders and marching
bands are dragging themselves along by the time they reach the end. You
also don’t want too many turns, trail ride wagons and marching bands
sometimes have trouble managing those 45-degree angles. And you want to
have the route end somewhere near where it started (no sense creating two
separate staging areas). The Rodeo parade’s route was perfect. Another
A for the organizers.

Hair Balls thought the mix of trail-riders/marching bands/officials
was a little boring. There’s wasn’t enough variety for us. There were
too few marching show bands (some bands just march along, others do
dance steps, have showy band leaders up front and play updated
arrangements of popular songs — we like the latter). And, while the
politicos were thankfully kept grouped up at the front of the parade,
there weren’t any celebs spread out through the rest of the parade.
Plus, there were entirely too few pom-pom girls. Hair Balls suggests upping
the show bands, increasing drill teams and pom-pom girls. And would it
hurt you to throw in a B-level celebs? (Hey, What’s Lisa Hartman Black
doing these days?) Organizers get a C here.

Total score: B+. Good job Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo Organizers.