Organizers of the annual Anaheim Fall Festival and Halloween Parade are celebrating the 100 years the community event has brought neighbors together to partake in a carnival, costume contests and to see original parade floats around downtown.
This year’s festival and parade will be Oct. 28, with the festival beginning at 11 a.m. along the Center Street Promenade downtown and the Halloween parade at 7 p.m. It will launch at Broadway and Anaheim Boulevard and end at Broadway and Manchester Avenue.
The fall festival is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, while the Halloween parade will have its 100th edition in 2024.
Organizers say the festival, which goes until 6 p.m., is about building community and getting out to meet neighbors. There’s a kiddie costume contest for children ages 12 and under and a costume contest for dogs, as well as games, entertainment and food.
After the festival, the crowds spread out to line the streets and watch the parade.
Volunteers have been putting the finishing touches on the parade’s collection of floats. One of the new floats for this year is an old shuttle bus inspired by a space-age-themed hotel once open in Anaheim with a cartoon martian face. Volunteers have also been recreating a rocket witch parade float that was in the 1951 edition of the parade and a big-wheel steamboat for the kiddie costume parade.
“The rocket witch is actually the second incarnation of that; it’s gotten bigger and better,” said Keith Olesen, an organizer for the event. “We have a downtown resident who rides on the float and sings.”
Through Nov. 5, the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center is hosting the “Hallowe’en Greetings” and “Tricks, Treats, and Traditions” exhibitions in the Carnegie Building. The exhibition explores the story and iconography behind the popular holiday festivities in Anaheim.
The first Halloween parade was in 1924 with Babe Ruth serving as its grand marshal. The parade became a staple in Anaheim for decades, but began a decline in the 1980s. Olesen said he and others were watching the parade one year and were disappointed in it, which led to a revitalization of the event beginning in 2011.
“We realized that we could complain about it or we could try and make it better so we decided to volunteer and try and make it into what we thought it should be,” Olesen said.
This year, the event is honoring longtime Anaheim volunteer Sally Feldhaus as its hometown hero. When the city dropped funding for the event in the 1980s, Feldhaus and her husband, Frank, a former councilmember, stepped up to keep the tradition going, said Jody Daily, president of the nonprofit Anaheim Fall Festival.
The organizers try to make the event feel charming and whimsical each year, she said, and get inspiration for looking at old photos in the city archives.
“It was important when we got into this,” Daily said, “to make it feel like it was never forgotten.”
Source: Orange County Register
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