The Rose Bowl and Me

Last night I went to the Rose Bowl for the first time. I moved to Southern California twelve years ago, but I just never had reason to attend - my college had a football team, but we're not nationally ranked. And I've never done any particular activity that took place there.

But after having spent the last two years watching fireworks from windows or rooftops, my boyfriend and I decided that we needed a decent place to see some real fireworks. After viewing a commercial that extolled how awesome "Americafest" at the Rose Bowl would be, and all for $13, I was in.

Another friend of ours, C, decided to join us. So after spending the day lounging around her pool and bbqing, we grabbed some blankets and headed to Pasadena.

I generally refuse to pay for parking unless I'm running extremely late to something important (like that time I went to an Aimee Bender reading) or if street parking is just not going to happen (like Disneyland). This time, parking was $20, and it seemed ridiculous to charge more for parking than for a ticket. So the three of us agreed that walking would be just fine, and we headed off into the hills.

But Pasadena had us all figured out. There were cops, traffic enforcers and "police explorers" (high school cops) everywhere, along with blockades and street signs. After searching for awhile, we found an unattended, unblocked, unsigned street. We fretted for a bit, but eventually asked a cop if we could get ticketed. He said no sign, no ticket. Spoiler alert: we were not ticketed. Very nice.

But! We had parked two miles away from our final destination. A healthy walk, but the evening was nice and we all had decent shoes. Once actually in the stadium, we bought our dinner and got in line to enter.

And so chaos. We overheard some police saying that The Rose Bowl Stadium had understaffed the event, and while it didn't seem like that was necessarily right, it did seem poorly planned. There were too many people for the amount of seats they had open. In the end, people wound up sitting in roped off areas ... only to have sparks land on them. Kind of a mess, but nothing like San Diego from what I hear.

All in all, I enjoyed my time at the stadium. The fireworks were impressive and in our faces, my teryaki chicken was good, and no one started rioting (though there were a couple of jerks who seemed like they wanted to). Not sure if I 'll go back next year, though if I do, I'm taking the bus.