October 19, 2009
Contact: Leah Sloan, Cal Poly Rose Float Club
(626) 487-3879 sloan@calpoly.edu
Cal Poly 2010 Rose Float Headed to Pasadena
SAN LUIS OBISPO – Cal Poly's 2010 float, “Jungle Cuts,” is headed for Pasadena to get ready for the annual Rose Parade on New Year’s Day.
The Cal Poly float is the only entry in the annual Tournament of Roses parade that is designed, built and decorated solely by students and volunteers – a tradition that dates to 1949. Students in the Rose Float programs Cal Poly and sister campus CSU Pomona build half of the float, which is trucked to the Pomona campus every November.
Students, parents, alumni and volunteers from each campus put the finishing touches – including flowers – on the float in Pasadena during 'Deco Week' in December every year before the New Year's Day parade.
In addition to tradition, the Rose Float teams learn real-world engineering and manufacturing engineering while assembling the float.
“Jungle Cuts” was chosen as this year's 2010 Cal Poly Rose Float theme from among 60 entries submitted. This year’s winning concept was designed by Andrea Swanson and Rick Stover of Thomas Baak and Associates, LLP.
“Jungle Cuts” takes a classic barbershop scene and sets it in the jungle. It plays off the 2010 Tournament of Roses parade theme, “A Cut Above the Rest,” by depicting monkeys cutting other animals’ hair. The float scene features a lion getting a perm, a giraffe getting a beehive, and a zebra styling it out with a slick mohawk. The animation incorporated into this float includes a toucan flying around a tree, monkeys dangling from trees, a giraffe climbing a tree, and an actual working water fall.
This year the Cal Poly Rose Float will use approximately 15,000 roses. They will Include red roses for the giraffe’s beehive. Pink, orange and green roses will be used extensively throughout the rest of the float. The design also calls for about 5,000 Gerber daisies to be used as a checkerboard barbershop floor beneath the zebra’s feet.
The team in charge of driving this year’s float will include Cal Poly students Mary Young, a fourth year Agriculture Systems and Management student at Cal Poly. She will be the driver. Taylor Hamil, a second year Environmental Management and Protection major, is in charge of monitoring the drive train.
The dimensions of the float are 55-feet by 17-feet wide. The maximum height will be 22.5 feet and the minimum height is 16.5 feet. There are two over-height mechanisms, the giraffe and the tall tree that will have to collapse below 16.5 feet.
This year Cal Poly San Luis Obispo will be moving the back half of the float to Pomona at 6 a.m. on October 24, 2009. Every weekend between Oct. 24 and Dec. 26, the Cal Poly student volunteers will be making pilgrimages to Pomona to complete “Jungle Cuts.”
Details:
The Cal Poly Rose Float Program is a program of Associated Students, Inc. For more details, contact Michelle Broom, Public Relations and Marketing Coordinator, Associated Students, Inc. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 (805) 756-2211, or see www.asi.calpoly.edu.