Florida Flashback: Venice on Parade

The blog is on its travels - shivering in the snow at the moment, so it needs to warm up by remembering that somewhere in the world the sun is shining.
Fortunately I have some photos of the Venice Holiday Parade (in effect a Christmas parade, though it happened the weekend after Thanksgiving.)  It was night but I did my best with the phone. This was the scene before the parade. People were allowed to set out their chairs on the Wednesday evening before the Saturday to claim the best places, just like the early homesteaders.. Did they have a starter's gun?

 

 It was a lovely, balmy night and we walked past where they were setting up. I think this was one of many Santas, with reindeer and gingerbread house.

A lot of local businesses were involved. This from Snook Haven - an "old Florida" dive. Check the link - you might remember it.

This looks like more Santas and reindeer. Funny how even is warm places there has to be a sleigh. Should be a sand yacht really.

Some authentic Christmas cheer from these people.

Now I'm not sure what these horses with clown riders were about but they behaved very well under the circumstances. (They really should have lit it up better). Fortunately the horses went after the little girl gymnasts doing cartwheels and not before.  Someone followed them with a shovel.

Another Santa sleigh.

This is the ubiquitous Smokey Bear, warning against forest fires. A sobering thought, considering poor California.

An inflatable with a difference advertising a martial arts club.

There were plenty of glittering cars.

Sharky's restaurant pulled along a huge shark's fin. They are debating whether to allow shark fishing on the pier. Apparently greedy fishermen chuck all kinds of sanguinary protein off the pier to attract sharks and it's not very nice for the tourists. Neither are the sharks. Shark conservationists and I would constitute a dialogue of the deaf.

These hula dancing acrobats were pretty good.

You can't see much on this photo but I added  it because it's a local croquet club.with illuminated mallets. You never know what you're going to get in Florida.

The ring of fire was spectacular but I'm not sure what it was for. I didn't see any tigers jumping through it. My neighbour tells me they used to have tigers in the Parade - they were from Big Cat Habitat and saved from various circuses. But now I expect political correctness reigns.

Merry Christmas in Paradise - you said it! It was heavenly to be able to watch in T-shirts and not have to shiver through it all.

Dont know what happened here but it's pretty.

I'm not sure if this was the Italian-American club's giant gondola but they did have one.

And here was a bluegrass band

One that almost got left behind.

It was great fun - though there had been some grumblings in previous years about participants being over-ethusiastic in chucking sweets down from the floats. Whether this resulted in life-threatening injuries I can't say. This year the sweet chuckers stayed at ground level. A nice lady shoved a doughnut in my hand.
But there was an even better parade to come.
Watch this space!