The Hermosa Beach chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau has stepped in to save the popular St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and Spyder Surfboards has stepped in to save, and even expand, the city’s popular Christmas-season celebration.
City Hall, which abandoned both events citing budget constraints, is grateful.
“I think this is totally awesome,” Mayor Pete Tucker told both event saviors during a City Council meeting on Tuesday.
“I really want to thank our organizations and businesses for stepping up at this time.”
The parade was begun by volunteers who ran it for years, then pooped out and handed it off to the city, which ran it briefly before budget blues set in.
In August the parade’s traditional head leprechaun, Travers Devine, hopped back in to the breach, saying that the chamber might take over the parade. Devine, the chamber’s 2008 man of the year, helped launch the parade in 1995 along with Jean Cullen.
On Tuesday the City Council officially passed the parade’s production to the chamber.
The council also expressed its gratitude to Spyder for volunteering to produce the downtown winter ceremony.
Spyder partner Dickie O’Reilly told the council that the first annual Snowfest Dec. 4 will continue to feature the lighting of a large tree, music, and the arrival of Santa aboard a fire truck. He also said the event will be expanded to include a free, family-friendly snowboard movie on the Pier Plaza and a snow hill nearby on upper Pier Avenue, where pros will demonstrate snowboarding and event-goers can sled and play.
The event will go from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Tucker’s eyes gleamed at the prospect of piloting a toboggan he has had since childhood, and O’Reilly seized the moment.
“I would love the idea of you being the first one down the hill on your toboggan to kick this off,” O’Reilly said.
Spyder will serve as the event’s primary sponsor.
Spyder and the Chamber join Allen Sanford of St. Rocke, who has begun producing the popular summer concert series that also was abandoned by the city. ER
