Light Up Orlando!
So that last post about the death of Church Street Station inevitably led me to thoughts about Light Up Orlando, another cultural icon of Orlando in my formative years that has just died on the vine. The story of the city’s most identifying event for a period of time in my opinion can best be summed up by doing a Google for light up Orlando. It shows a sad tale of an event that no longer exists (as evidenced by the dead URL when clicked), but whose mishandled shadow still exists in the description of the site in the search result.
You see, the event went away due to some major attempted social overhaul by past Orlando administrations, apparently people having fun was not in the desired civic image of some people. But, a few years back an attempt to revive the event was made, which was semi-successful, but never followed up. It just died again, like it didn’t matter in the first place. It was a sad second unceremonious wimper of a death not befitting an event that was the only true cultural on-going tradition this city has ever known. This wasn’t Disney’s event or even Universal’s, but it was ours.
The basic history, and I could be wrong, as I was fairly young then and prone to make up stuff, can be drawn back to a columnist by the name of Bob Morris. He came up with the idea of the Queen Kumquat Sashay, the unofficial parade that kicked off Light Up Orlando. This parade was a parade for and by the people. No floats, no entry forms, just show up in a parking lot with something ridiculous to wear and away you went down the parade route. It is important to note that the last attempt to revive the Light Up Orlando event did not include the Kumquat Sashay, which illustrates that the architects of the event knew nothing of its true meaning and history. So after some good fun of either being silly or laughing at silly people, everyone hung out downtown where we blocked off Orange Avenue and most of the side streets between oh, I don’t know, South to maybe Washington. There were bands, small locals, semi-large fair type acts, maybe a headliner or two at various stages, lots of fair food, and lots of beer stations. Later in the evening the mayor would get on a stage and make a speech and then throw a big OUC branded power switch that would light up the city’s official giant holiday tree, hence, Light Up Orlando. This event was held in September or maybe November, just before Thanksgiving it seems, because why else would we be lighting the tree? Anyway, that’s how I remember it, and I like my version because it makes sense, has a point that is not too overly serious and is just fun. Basically just a big round about way of lighting up our tree and taking a moment to say we are the city of Orlando, not just an adjunct of Disney.
So, what say you Orlando? Why don’t we be a city again and make a serious concerted effort to take back our identity and revive and restore a tradition that we can enjoy with our kids, grandkids and so on! I think before we try to look into things like new civic centers and arenas and gigantic condo towers that will never get sold, we should take a small piece of the budget and our time to treat ourselves to a little simple civic minded partying.
You can see the decline from March to June, but I would expect to see July rise when the next statistics are released since that is such a heavily traveled vacation month, especially for families.
Bio-diesel, which has been approved for use in trucks, buses, tugboats and other general diesel equipment with little or no modifications to existing engines, is a blend of 80 percent petroleum diesel and 20 percent renewable domestic resources such as soybean and restaurant waste oil, which are cheaper to process and use, as opposed to regular diesel fuel.
