Artists are hard at work preparing floats for Saturday’s 52nd annual Summer Solstice Parade in Santa Barbara.
The Summer Solstice Celebration is set to kick off Friday at Alameda Park, 1400 Santa Barbara St., and will continue through Sunday with music, food, vendors and more. The highlight of the celebration is expected to be the parade along Santa Barbara Street on Saturday.
Artists and volunteers have been working for weeks at the Community Arts Workshop on Garden Street to build floats and create costumes.
It is Irene Ramirez’s fourth year designing a float. With this year’s theme “Wave,” she’s creating a float that’s a cactus cat waving to the crowd.
“I thought about the theme wave, and I thought about the New Year’s kitties that wave, and I’d been toying with the idea of some kind of house plant, and I just sort of combined the different ideas to come up with that,” Ramirez said.
The thing that keeps Ramirez coming back to the Solstice Parade is the “unbridled creativity” it unleashes.
“You’re just making things up as you go along, and everything is useful,” Ramirez said. “It’s all very collaborative, and you get to work with all kinds of people, and you create something that’s like a gift to the community.”
As people line Santa Barbara Street on Saturday to feast their eyes on the vibrant floats and costumes, Ramirez said she hopes people can appreciate the art and creativity and leave the parade feeling better than when they came.
Stephen Meade, a Solstice advisory board member, spoke at Tuesday’s Santa Barbara City Council meeting to remind the public about the parade.
“It is unique,” Meade said. “That unique moment that we bring, we celebrate across the world, but who has a parade for it? We do.”
He added that the event is free for the public, but its big economic impact may not be as noticeable with it tucked among UC Santa Barbara’s graduation weekend, Father’s Day and the Fourth of July.
“If we didn’t do it, would Santa Barbara be as cool as it is today? Not a chance,” Meade said.
Claudia Bratton, a former executive director of the Solstice Celebration, is working on a Queen Neptune float inspired by one she remembers from the 1982 Solstice Parade.
“I really enjoy the creativity,” Bratton said. “I like the inspiration of it, too, and how people will create things out of odd stuff and make it work.”
Her float includes a gold throne that she will be sitting on, ocean waves, and a bubble machine that will be on during the parade. She’s also creating T-shirts with an octopus on the front to be worn during the parade.
When people see her float, Bratton said she hopes it brings them joy.
“I want them to giggle,” Bratton said. “I want everybody that day to have been inspired by the art and be giggling and not be worried about what’s going on.”
The three-day celebration will kick off from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday in Alameda Park and will continue Saturday, starting at noon and ending at 8 p.m. The last day of the event will be Sunday, from noon to 7 p.m.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Solstice Celebration will feature Funtopia and a kids zone, including games, workshops, live music and art installations. The celebration also will include food trucks and a beer and wine garden for attendees age 21 or older.
The parade will kick off at noon Saturday on Santa Barbara Street starting at Ortega Street and traveling to Sola Street.
