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One tradition ends with the last parade

By Alejandro Lazo
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

The Lodi Grape Festival Parade is no more.

The tradition that began almost with the festival itself has been canceled this year, and for the foreseeable future.

“It was a very, very hard decision,” said Mark Armstrong, general manager of the Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair.

A decline in participation in recent years is the underlying reason for the parade’s cancellation.

“My theory is, in recent years most husbands and wives work,” Armstrong said. “They probably came out to the festival, then the Kiddie Parade (on Saturday), then by Sunday people are burned out. Plus I think its been the same thing year after year with no excitement and no hype.”

Armstrong said he had not only seen attendance of the parade decline but also entries for the parade itself. Last year Armstrong logged 140 entries compared to up to the 560 floats, bands, and cars that would enter in some years past.

“Quite a few years ago all the wineries would have floats on trucks and tractors,” he added. “That kind of went away. In recent years you didn’t see any of that.”

The Grape Festival’s Board of Directors also tried enlisting new acts and marching bands from other high schools in the surrounding area.

“We even offered money, it didn’t make any difference, as much as we talked to them they weren’t interested,” Armstrong said.

In the parade’s heyday, Lodians would line the downtown streets with lawn chairs the Saturday night before the parade. Last year those chairs were few and sparse in number when compared with previous years, Armstrong said.

The Board of Directors have added a new event to the festival to make up for the end of the parade. The night before the festival begins, there will be a mini-spring wine show, with tickets going for $50 each.

“They’re trying to make it a bit of an upscale event,” said Peter Hefner, a member of the Grape Festival’s Board of Directors.

If the parade had not been canceled this year it would have passed by Tim Vallem’s antique shop on the corner of School and Walnut streets in Downtown Lodi.

Vallem said he remembers the parade and the festival as it was, with all its pageantry and participation. He never missed a year when he was a high school student, but even his interest is waning. Now he attends the festival every three years.

He doesn’t appreciate it as he once did, it’s moved from a small town festival to a more commercial entity, Vallem said.

“The parade ending is the last of what was all of the festivities of the original Grape Festival,” he said. “It’s sad, but it’s just a sign of the times.”