Antonio de Jesus Lopez pushes a red cart through the Fiesta Parade Float Warehouse in Irwindale with two large signs from his first Rose Parade of 2020.
The warehouse around him was filled with the whir of circular saws and the flashing sparks of welding tools as his colleagues dismantled floats from the iconic Rose Parade of years past.
DeJesus Lopez said that in the early days of the company, he enjoyed working with designers, decorators, engineers and welders, many of whom were Latino and Latino, and developing his artistic skills. He said the friendships make it a pleasant place to work.
“It feels like you’re working with your uncle or grandma,” DeJesus Lopez said. Now, he said, “everything looks bleak.”
Brittany Smith works on the Caesar float for the Rose Parade at the Carnival Parade Float on December 26, 2023 in Irwindale.
(Irrfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
It’s been a difficult fortnight for the 18 employees of Fiesta Parade Floats, one of the main float manufacturers for the Rosetta Parade Championships. After nearly 40 years, Fiesta is closing Pasadena Rose Society Championships. It severed ties with the company, saying it no longer met established standards for buoy builders.
Pasadena Tournament of Roses CEO David Eads said in a phone interview that criteria include maintaining financial responsibility, insurance coverage, floral suppliers, a physical location and experienced workers to build and operate the floats. . He declined to say which standards the Carnival parade floats did not meet.
Eads said the ban was “not a decision the association made quickly or lightly”. He said it was the first time in recent years that float builders were unable to compete.
Eads said the Rose Parade is grateful for the company’s “decades of service” and award-winning work, including a float recognized by the Rose Parade Association Guinness World Records The heaviest and longest single chassis parade float of 2017.
Tim Estes, owner of Carnival parade floats, said the association’s decision was a hard blow.
“I feel terrible,” Estes, 68, said. “I feel terrible for my workers. I feel bad for my customers who rely on us to build beautiful floats…I feel like I’ve let them all down.
Estes said his company has been struggling financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was forced to temporarily close and lost about $3.2 million. He said 85 percent of the company’s revenue comes from floats built for the Rose Parade.
Victoria Boyd, 79, has flown out from a small southern Illinois town every Christmas night for the past 36 years to decorate the annual Rose Parade with friends. Boyd works on a Carnival parade float in Irwindale on Dec. 26, 2023.
(Irrfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
He said he also took a financial hit when he was involved in a motorcycle accident that left him with a fractured skull, seven broken ribs and multiple surgeries. He said he had been hospitalized for nine weeks.
Estes said he began to fall into debt when he fell behind on rent and utility bills at a warehouse he rented from the Tournament of Roses Assn. There are two warehouses.
Things are slightly better when the Rose Parade returns in 2022.
Estes said the number of floats the company is building has been cut in half from about a dozen. Then inflation hit. Soon, he said, the price of a sheet of plywood rose from $16 to $66. The cost of everything from flowers to labor has gone up.
Estes said he always makes sure his workers get paid first. He said he was making progress in paying off his debt for unpaid rent and utilities when he received a letter from the association saying his company was no longer in good standing to build floats for the Rose Parade. .
Estes said his company has been building floats for three clients, one for the city of Torrance and another for One Legacy, a Southern California nonprofit that helps recycle from deceased donors Kidneys, livers and other organs are transplanted.
Eads said Fiesta Parade Floats is one of three companies authorized to build floats for the Rose Parade over the past eight years. At one point in the association’s history, there were as many as 10 builders, but the floats back then were much smaller, Eads said.
Eads believes the last two float builders will be able to handle the increased workload and does not expect the loss of a float builder to have an impact on future parades.
City of Torrance spokesperson Kim Chun said it was unfortunate that the Carnival parade floats would be closed. He said the association is connecting the city and elsewhere with other float builders.
“We look forward to another successful and award-winning Pasadena Rose Parade in 2025,” Chun said.
Estes said he is still grappling with the closure of the company he founded in 1988. He said when he was 8 years old, he helped decorate his first float and played around it with friends.
Tim DeJean (left), Elsa Goodman and other volunteers on the Carnival parade float building the Torrance float for the Rose Parade.
(Irrfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
“I always loved crawling among them as a kid,” he said. “I was fascinated by the way they were built.”
He said that although he ultimately struggled financially, he was extremely proud of his employees, who were “great workers” who contributed to the company’s long-term success. Currently, the warehouse has approximately 18 full-time employees, some of whom have been with the company for more than 20 years.
He said that in the past three years, 17 of the company’s 18 floats have won awards.
Estes said he informed workers of the association’s decision on June 21.
“Oh my God, this is murder,” he said. “To stand there and tell them what’s going on and that they’re going to be out of a job soon… it’s a terrible feeling.”
Estes said he hasn’t been able to sleep since then. He was worried about the welfare of his workers and how he would clean up the entire floating construction warehouse.
He said that he had moved three times before, and each move cost hundreds of thousands of yuan and took about three and a half months. He said he has two weeks to vacate the building.
He wasn’t the only one suffering from sleep deprivation.
Maricela Arámbula, 61, said she hasn’t had much rest at night since learning her company was closing and she would lose her job.
“As you get older, you know, it gets harder and harder to find a job,” she said.
Maricela Arámbula cuts the edge of a float at the Fiesta Rose Parade Warehouse in Irwindale on Thursday.
(Michael Blackshear/Los Angeles Times)
On a recent Thursday afternoon, she was cutting the mesh off a floral sculpture, tossing it into a plastic bag and stacking the sculptures for the next business.
Arámbula said she has been with the company since its existence.
“My son was two years old when I started working,” she said with a smile. “He’s 40 now.”
Arámbula said she started in the floating construction business in 1986, and five years later she came to the United States from Mexico, where she made a living making paper flowers.
She said this skill helped her land a job at the company, learning to place silk screens on metal sculptures and then decorate them with flowers, petals, spices and seeds. She said her time at the company allowed her to learn other skills.
“I absolutely love this job,” she said. “I don’t think I would have worked as long as I did if I didn’t.”
She said working in the company not only helps her raise her son and daughter, but also helps her support her parents back home in Mexico.
When they visited a few years ago, she took them to see the Rose Parade. It was raining heavily, but her parents were enjoying the parade too much to care. She said she remembers pointing out the float to her mother that she helped make.
Ivan Villegas, 32, of Duarte and Vicente Avila, 60, of Pasadena (right) on December 29, 2022 The Life Donation “Supporting Each Other” float is being made for the Carnival parade float.
(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)
“I would say, ‘Look, Mom, I painted those flowers on the float,'” she recalled. “My mom would say, ‘Oh, this looks so good, honey.'”
She paused to raise her glasses and wipe away her tears.
“It’s all over now,” she said. “This is sad.”
Marcus Pollitz, 60, who uses a metal cutter nearby to turn bird sculptures into scrap metal, said it would be devastating to destroy a work of art that many workers like him were involved in.
Marcus Pollitz works on the initial stages of a float at the Fiesta Rose Parade warehouse on Thursday.
(Michael Blackshear/Los Angeles Times)
“We always cut things out at the end of the year and put the best stuff aside, but now, we won’t see it anymore, which is very sad,” he said. “Everything you see here was sculpted, painted and decorated by welders to look like concept drawings.”
Pollitz said he felt a sense of emptiness when he heard Estes tell employees the company was closing.
“It’s not going to work miracles,” Politz said. “No one is going to pick us up behind us and take us to the next step. Instead, we have to prepare to close.
The sound of chainsaws, forklift engines and the sound of metal falling to the ground echoed throughout the warehouse Thursday afternoon. The workers shouted loudly as they heard Vicente Fernandez’s songs blasting from speakers mounted on the ceiling.
Welding sparks flew as workers took apart old floats, some of which swept across the floor.
As closing time approached, Estes walked out of his office and walked around the 80,000-square-foot warehouse, stopping to talk to workers and occasionally light a cigar.
“I want to work for another four or five years instead of retiring,” he said. “But now, it seems I have no choice in the matter.”
