Onlookers praise Burbank’s award-winning float

On Monday afternoon, Burbank resident Mike Sommer pushed a two-seat stroller around the parking lot on the corner of Olive Avenue and Glenoaks Boulevard in downtown Burbank to show his son and daughter the Burbank Tournament of Roses Assn.’s float, which was on display around the clock Monday and Tuesday.

Titled “Are We There Yet?,” it features an animated raccoon family taking a last-minute vacation on a 1948 Ford woodie wagon and a teardrop trailer — both built to actual size. Mom and dad raccoons hang out the front windows while a son surfs atop the trailer and a daughter sits in a kayak atop the car.

While on display, the float’s animation and sound system were fired up on odd-numbered hours during the day, weather permitting. During the 1 p.m. show, Sommer’s daughter, Delaney, 3, said she liked it “a lot.” The best part, she said, was the barbecue grill on the roof of the car, which appeared to smoke.

“It’s cool,” said Mike Sommer, who said it was better than prior years’ floats he’d come out to see on the corner. “It’s really cool.”

The self-built float, which came together through the work of hundreds of volunteers at a cost of about $100,000, won the trophy for excellence in presenting the parade’s theme, which for the 127th Rose Parade was “Find Your Adventure.”

California’s national parks are all named on the float, whether listed on directional signs, stickers on suitcases or maps. Additional characters include a squirrel, a skunk, a moose and two roadside bears, one lounging in a swinging hammock and another seated in a stream trying to grab a salmon.

To Mike Sommer’s son, Nixon, 1, who pointed at the animals while held in his father’s arms, they were all dogs. Other children and adults ogled, pointed and examined the association’s detailed handiwork — for instance, the woodie’s tires with white-walls made of rice and great northern white beans and the hubcaps finished in silverleaf and rimmed with kidney beans.

Many visitors of all ages took photos or posed for selfies.

The 2016 entry, co-designed by longtime Burbank resident Linda Cozakos — the first “white suiter,” or member of the Tournament of Roses Assn., to design a parade float — and artist Adam Ostegard, who currently lives in Shanghai, wasn’t the city’s first to earn the trophy in the theme category, but it was the first in recent years, said Steve Edward, vice president of the association.

It previously won the theme award in 1947 and 1955.

Edward and other association volunteers, including Steven Moss, who estimated he put in more than 100 hours on the project, were on hand at the display site to answer questions, sell excess flowers and other items as fundraisers and, of course, recruit new volunteers as they prepare for next year’s float.

Entry forms for the organization’s 2017 rose float design contest and a flier for a fundraiser at California Pizza Kitchen, 601 N. San Fernando Blvd., next Wednesday were also available at the display and can be found online at burbankrosefloat.com.

Volunteers are being sought to help dismantle the float on Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. Children 5 years old and older are welcome for the early work, which involves removing the floral decorations and breaking up the foam underneath, Edward said. However, later work, when the steel undergirding will be cut up, will be restricted to teens and older.

There will also be a noon barbecue at the dismantling site, Burbank Water and Power, 123 W. Olive Ave.

Coins are embedded in the foam “as a good luck charm,” Edward said. Plus, they create an incentive for the young volunteers to break up the foam into tiny pieces.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” he said.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland