The Chinese New Year Parade

The Economy Hits The Chinese New Year Parade

At times when the economic future is fragile and uncertain, sponsors to the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade, one of the city’s largest and most colorful events, are getting hard to find.

The two-week festival starting the year of the ox will start on Jan. 24, 2009 with the flower fair and end on Feb. 8 with the community fair. The parade will take place on Feb. 7.

As the Chinese New Year Parade Committee is preparing for the event, Karen Eng, the public relations representative to the organization said she is worried because the sponsors don’t get back to them on time.

“It’s hard to make the new sponsors commit as the old ones are leaving,” said Dave Thomas, the float builder for the entire parade. “We’ve lost some really big ones such as Ford, AT&T, and Washington Mutual.”

Some banks are not going to be sponsors for the 2009 parade because they either cut back on their expenses or they merged with other banks as is the case for Washington Mutual that recently merged with JP Morgane Chase.

“We are in a time of transition because we are merging with Chase so it has a lot of impacts on our expenses, and I don’t think JP Morgane Chase is going to invest on the parade at all,” said Washington Mutual Chinatown branch Personal Financial Representative Iris Tseng.

Bank of America used to get the most expensive package and is know debating on whether to keep the booth and the float or simply keeping the booth. “We have been doing that for years and we try to keep awesome,” said Eric Leung, the Chinatown branch manager. “Over here, we are fighting hard to keep it the way it’s been, but the headquarters are in North Carolina, and they don’t know how important the Chinese community is on the West coast.”

On the other side, some sponsors are still able to be part of the parade and won’t change their expenses habits.

‘We’ve always been really conservative on those practices so we’ll be sponsor this coming year as well,” said Hazim Elbgal, a sales manager at Bank of the West. “Our expenses habits have not really changed a whole lot because we are part of a big and stable group.”

Although not the main sponsor of the parade, the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund finances Grants for the Arts which, in turn, gives out $78,000 to the Chinese New Year Parade, according to a report Grants for the Arts publishes every fiscal year. “The economy has affected us a great deal so we have to start prioritizing and lower the amount of money we give to some events,” said Khan Wong, the senior program manager at Grants for the Arts. “For this fiscal year, it should still remain intact.”

According to their report, Grants for the Arts spent $14,779,334 for the fiscal year 2007-2008. “Almost one hundred percent of our funds come from the Hotel Tax Fund, which means from visitors,” said Wong. According to the report, overnight visitors pay a 14% city tax.

Grants for the Arts sponsors 226 organizations throughout the year and Wong said they wouldn’t be able to give the parade more in case the other sponsors don’t make up for the full cost.

Although the parade is not at stake, the Chinese New Year Parade Committee is worried that in future years it will not be as big, said Eng. “It’s more than just money,” she said, “it’s a moral obligation we have to the community.” “It involves so many people – over a hundred volunteers, kids, performers, dancers, artists, etc. – that I can’t imagine disappointing them.

Thomas said that if some sponsors couldn’t afford paying the full package that includes all the TV time, the booth, the float, etc., he would refurbish them from previous years so that the parade wouldn’t suffer from bad economy and the sponsors still have some representation on the day of the event. “They have been so involved for so many years that I think they still deserve to have a float out there,” said Thomas.

“I’m going to retire soon,” said Thomas, “but I don’t want to give my company for auctions because of the civic responsibility so I’m training someone who is going to be able to take over.” “It’s the same thing with the economy; we can’t disappoint that many people.”

However, Thomas and Eng say there is hope that the economy is actually going to help the parade in the way that companies need advertizing in order to get their credibility back. “The economy is bad; companies lost their customers because they were not trustworthy enough, so now they need advertizing to rebuild their market,” said Thomas.

“Some are cutting back slightly, but a few are buying bigger packages because they want to show that their companies are still in good shape,” said Peggy Kennedy, the marketing director for the parade.

The parade’s total cost is $750,000, said Kennedy. “But if there is any, the profits are put back into community groups such as Chinese Hospital, Chinatown YMCA, etc. and are also used to buy new costumes, a new dragon –about $25,000, and other units for the next parade.”


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The Chinese New Year Parade Float Maker Is A… “White Guy”

Dave Thomas was a 21-year-old pre-med student at De Anza College when he was drafted to Vietnam and eventually became a highly-decorated Vietnam War hero who is now making floats for the Bay Area parades, he said.

“I started off as a private and became a captain in 3years,” said Thomas. “That’s pretty unusual.”

Life decided otherwise for Thomas, who never became a doctor and has been making the floats for the Bay Area parades for 15 years. He is now 60 years old.

When he came back from the Vietnam War, he went back to college for year and then left to become a stock broker. He then did “dozens of self-employed jobs –one of them being running an adult bookstore,” he said.

In the 1980s, Thomas became a Kung Fu teacher in San Jose, he said. “I had about 50 students and we would do the Chinese parade but had to cover our faces with golden masks because we were white,” he said. “That’s how I started making things.”

“One day the parade directors called me up for a meeting, and I was pretty sure they were kicking us out, said Thomas. “In fact, they just asked to build a couple of floats and every year I would get more and more.”

Thomas said since there is no float-making school he started off by doing “shameless copying.”
Thomas said that when he started, there were five float making companies in the Bay Area but that he’s managed to be the only one remaining thanks to his business skills. “I try to keep it simple,” said Thomas. “For example, there is only a couple of kinds of screws so that we don’t waste time looking for what we need –it’s right there.”

Being the only one in the Bay Area making floats Thomas said that the parade organizers “couldn’t afford to lose” him.

Thomas said he sees everything as potential floats. “That’s the way I see the world,” he said. “It sometimes becomes very tiring.” “I get up in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. and sit up straight and yell two magic words,” he said. “Those are the words for my next float.”

Although Thomas said he likes his job, he also said “only unicorns can survive [it].” “My strength is my ability to get up every morning and face this stuff –that is not for simple people,” he said. “At first, it was a passion, and then it became a beat-down job because we grew so big.”

Thomas said he sees his job as a civic responsibility because the parade organizers trust him and the communities need him. “If I die tomorrow, they know what they got, but they don’t know what they took out of me,” he said. “I’m probably one of Chinatown’s best-kept secrets,” said Thomas, “because nobody wants to know that the white guy is making the Chinese stuff.”

Thomas said that he now made “more money than most executives in America.” He owns houses, apartments, hotels, and boats all around the Bay Area. “In San Jose, I’m know as the Real Estate guy; in San Francisco, I’m known as the float guy,” he said.

Thomas is now training a new person, Alison Lowe, to whom he will give his company so that the parades of the Bay can still have their floats as he is retiring in a couple of years.

“I have a lot of fun working with Dave, because he has a good sense of humor,” said Lowe. “And sometimes, we just get lucky ideas that I can’t picture myself but he has all this stuff in his head and it gets you thinking.”