What did New Year’s Eve look like in downtown Miami years ago? See for yourself

What was New Year’s Eve like in Miami in decades past?

First, there was the parade.

The King Orange Jamboree, also called the Orange Bowl Parade, stepped off on Biscayne Boulevard and played to a network audience of millions every New Year’s Eve.

Then came Fiesta by the Bay, the music and party in Bayfront Park.

And then came the Big Orange, the giant neon fruit slowly climbing the side of the Hotel Intercontinental for the New Year’s countdown.

The parade is gone. Big Orange has changed. But there’s still a party on the bay.

Here’s a look through the Miami Herald archives at New Year’s events in Miami over years gone by.

The Big Orange

READ MORE: The Big Orange is back for New Year’s Eve in Miami. But it’s different this year

Big Orange gets a different look

Published Dec. 30, 1990

By Michael de Zayas

He’s hip. He’s cool. He’s orange.

And there will be more of him to see this year. The Big Orange, the rising fruit of downtown Miami’s New Year’s Eve celebration Monday, has been redone in bright neon.

The Greater Miami Host Committee, which organizes the annual celebration, wanted to improve upon last year’s inaugural party -- specifically the Big Orange, which will be seen nationally on ESPN as it rises up the side of the Hotel Intercontinental at midnight.

Organizers say last year’s orange, which was a large balloon with a “Miami” banner stretched across it, was comparatively tame, and, well, lacked feeling.

This year’s orange features a bright red neon smile, bright orange neon outline and a bright green leaf. Across his orange face are bright blue neon sunglasses highlighted by bright neon white. It’s made of light aluminum painted with acrylic enamel.

The bright idea was created by Metro-Dade police Sgt. Paul Janosky, whose design of the orange was adapted from last year’s Pig Bowl poster, which he also designed. “It’s symbolic of Miami and the sun,” Janosky said.

The Host Committee then handed the project to Steve Carpenter, owner of Argoneon and Mr. Neon, 260 W. 21st St., Hialeah. Host Committee Executive Director Rodney Barreto said he wanted a neon Orange because neon projects better than anything else.

Carpenter and seven of his employees have been “working nonstop since we got the job -- seven days a week” in order to meet the New Year’s Eve deadline.

The project - all 800 pounds and 1,000 feet of neon - will go through a couple test runs before Monday’s 8 p.m. show time.

“It kind of plays to everyone,” said Barreto. “While the rest of the county is freezing, here’s an orange with glasses. It portrays South Florida’s sun and fun.”

The Orange will begin its ascent from about 25 feet above the ground at 8 p.m. and rise four floors every hour. The last 10 seconds, it will rise 50 or 60 feet until it reaches the top of the hotel.

“Happy New Year Miami” will then appear, each letter a four-foot tall neon structure in neo-blue. There will be a large fireworks display from the top of the hotel and a laser light display.

ESPN will televise the last minute of the orange’s climb during its Sportscenter show. “I think it’s great for Miami -- coast to coast,” said Barreto.

Carpenter was paid $25,000 to create the orange, which measures 25 feet across. “It’s the type of structure you can put on a building for 10 or 15 years,” Carpenter said. “Instead, it’s a one-shot deal at night, but it still has to be engineered and be structurally correct so it will work properly.”

Barreto says he will use the Big Orange for years to come because it was built to allow for minor alterations or changes in design. “It was constructed in a manner so parts would be interchangeable,” Barreto said.

The Big Orange is just one attraction of the second annual celebration, which begins when the King Orange Jamboree Parade ends.

Besides the Big Orange, festivities will include a free concert at Bayfront Park Amphitheater featuring Dion and Latin performer Remy.

There will be food booths and free ice skating on a 1,500- square-foot rink in Bayfront Park. Skate rental will be available.

The New Year’s Eve parade

The scene in 1982

Published Dec. 31, 1982

By John Arnold

When the King Orange Jamboree Parade surges down Biscayne Boulevard tonight, its streaming colors and pounding drums should work a well-practiced magic, bedazzling hundreds of thousands at curbside and millions of television viewers with eyesful of spectacle and earsful of melody.

Five tons of glitter will guarantee the sparkle, and 20,000 yards of glistening plastic floral sheets, the shine.

Orange Bowl parade builder Dennis Light, who buys mirrored bangles by the hundreds of boxes and glitter by the barrelful, said that this year’s pageant, the 49th annual, is held together partly with 250 gallons of glue.

Aside from the glue, the element that unites celebrities like comedian Milton Berle, actor Ben Vereen, singer Vicki Lawrence, actor Michael Warren and Great Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is this year’s parade theme: Something to Sing About.

At 7:30 p.m., 33 floats bearing renditions of famous and not-so-famous inspirations for song will start rolling down the two-mile parade route, accompanied by 25 marching bands and 16 other groups and marching units.

At curbside, an estimated 500,000 people will stare up at members of the Royal Philharmonic as they make their stately passage up the boulevard atop a float bedecked with Big Ben, Union Jack flags, Buckingham Palace guards and the London Bridge.

Floats paying homage to such melodious subjects as champagne, sophisticated ladies and that old mill stream will trundle by.

And looming up in the midst of it all like some outsized bumpkin, a huge, 25-foot-high, freckle-faced, red-headed bather will warble down the parade route to the recorded jug-and- bottle-band strains of Bathtub Saturday Night.

The giant figure, reclining blissfully in a sudsy white tub, will be scrubbing his back with a brush the size of a small tree. A large rubber duckie will be poised precariously beneath one massive upraised foot. The yellow duck, true to the bathtub breed it represents, bears a look of perplexity in its painted eyes.

It is a point of pride with Orange Bowl organizers that the Royal Philharmonic has traveled halfway around the world expressly to appear in their parade and halftime show.

“The orchestra members aren’t on tour or anything,” said Dan McNamara, director of the pageant. He has collected marching bands and parade units from all over the country, but no other has come so far.

“It’s the most unusual thing in the world,” McNamara said.

It happened this way: Someone who had just answered a telephone at the Orange Bowl office rushed in to report: “Hey, some guy from Minnesota wants to know if we can use the Royal Philharmonic in the parade.”

McNamara, who formed a mental picture of the philharmonic in marching formation something like the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers band, responded, “Are you out of your mind?”

But on reflection, McNamara thought that it just might work.He was right. The formally attired philharmonic will render selections from its album Hooked on Classics atop its imposing and stately float, courtesy of Pan American World Airways and the K-Tel International record corporation.

The parade this year also features at least one other first -- live camels, McNamara said. Appropriately, the desert beasts of burden will plod as escort to the caravan float, a rendering of a rich desert city of satin tents, velvet rugs and urns of jewels.

Anybody who wants to see and hear the celebrities, music and floats close up should plan to arrive early at Biscayne Boulevard, where the sidewalks start filling up at noon.

For parade-lovers who would rather avoid the the downtown parking problem, the Metro Transit Agency will run express buses from two park-and-ride lots.

And for the people who want to stay at home, the television set will provide. The whole parade will air start-to-finish on WCKT-Ch. 7 with Jill Beach, Steve Rondinero and Dan Tasciotti and on WTVJ-Ch. 4 with Katrina Daniel and Jimmy Cefalo.

The NBC network will broadcast an hour-long segment from 8 to 9 p.m. with commentary by Joe Garaqiola and Shelley Long. Ch. 7 will include the network programming in its local broadcast.

The Orange Bowl Committee said 18 million people watched the broadcast last year, and the committee expects the same audience for this year’s parade.

Include Orange Bowl float builder Stan Burger among those who will be jamming the stands. Burger will scrutinize this year’s cavalcade from his boulevard box with a perfectionist’s eye, thinking already about next New Year’s Eve.

“I watch the floats and I watch for the reaction of the crowd,” Burger said. “It gives you a perfect indication of how well you did your job.

“I find that’s really important for next year,” he said.

What everyone saw at the parade

Published Jan. 1, 1994

By David Hancock

The King Orange Jamboree Parade celebrated its 60th birthday Friday, but Miami’s colorful, high-energy, high- stepping procession showed no sign of age.

With hundreds of thousands packed in grandstands and downtown streets -- and an estimated 17 million more watching a national television broadcast -- the bands and the dancers and the city glittered in the 90-minute extravaganza.

The skies threatened and dribbled a bit, but when the parade kicked off with an honor guard of law enforcement, it lived up to this year’s theme -- “Bright Lights ‘N’ Fabulous Sights.”

“Beautiful,” proclaimed parade hosts Joe Namath and Cindy Williams, who described the event for NBC.

Watching on television was fine -- but hearing and seeing it live made the homebodies wish they were out there marching.

“I love parades. I wish I could be a parader,” said Karen Castro, 6, after her father Luis Castro elbowed his way through crowds to find a rare empty space to watch along Flagler Street.

The jamboree treated a national audience to a snappy opening production number with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip and Dale, Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and singer-actress Nell Carter, who was decked out in a Carmen Miranda number.

Carter vamped through a medley of Latin tunes, including Miami Sound Machine’s classics Conga and The Rhythm is Gonna Get Ya.

The Disney characters drew cheers from Mike Fussell, 11, of Atlanta, who was snapping away with his camera.

“Kickin. All right. Goofy. Look, look, cool! Aw, man. That’s got to be fun,” said Mike, who especially liked the kids on the floats.

Some kids had less glamorous jobs than waving to the crowd. Two Boy Scouts had the necessary but unenviable task of following a team of eight gigantic Clydesdales, scooping from behind.

“What kind of merit badge is that, guys?” yelled one less- than-sympathetic spectator.

And how about Tania Aguet, 40. She played the chicken on the Pollo Tropical float. Her husband was supposed to play the role, but he scrambled off to a party, she said.

“He did it on purpose. I know he did,” she said, standing in an oversized chicken suit as a light rain fell moments before the parade time. “I’m no pollo tropical, I’m pollo mojado,” she said. That means wet chicken.

This year’s King Orange Jamboree featured a 75-foot-long green dragon, stilt-walkers, towering unicyclists, hip-hopping musicians, and some 17 floats. Celebrities on hand included athletes Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson, and parade grand marshal Ed McMahon, who was greeted by the crowd with shouts of “Hi-Yo.”

Some paradegoers used Miami ingenuity to cope with the hundreds of thousands of spectators on Biscayne Boulevard. Jill Espinoza, 13, had given up hope of locating her aunt in the throng -- until a beeper helped Jill hook up with aunt.

For a couple from Hillsboro, Ore., patience paid off with a fine view of the parade. Bob and Carol Melton arrived four hours before the start to stake out a bus bench on Flagler Street.

“We’ve been sitting here for four hours, because we’re from out of town and we don’t know any better,” Carol Melton said.

Before and after the parade, thousands gathered in Bayfront Park for the Big Orange New Year’s celebration. That party was capped off by a laser show and a countdown to 1994 that featured a 25-foot neon orange rising along the wall of the Hotel Intercontinental.

The festivities were not without incident, however. Shortly after the parade ended, two people attending the parade were hit by stray bullets fired into the air.

Near Biscayne Boulevard and Fourth Street, a man was shot in the neck by “a bullet that seemed like it fell out of the sky,” a Miami Fire Rescue medic said. The man was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital. Rescue workers said he was dazed and confused, but there was no evidence of paralysis.

At about 8:15 p.m., a woman standing at the corner of Southeast First Avenue and First Street was grazed in the shoulder by another bullet. It did not penetrate the skin and apparently fell on the ground beside her. She was examined by paramedics, but appeared to have no more than a bruise.

For most of the crowd, the party continued after the parade. At Bayfront Park, a group of Nebraska fans watched South Florida children trying to skate on an artificial ice rink.

“Ice to us is nothing new,” said Kathy Goodrich. “We just wanted to see if it was real.”

The Nebraskans were surprised at Miami’s beauty, Goodrich said.

“I didn’t think there would be so many wide open spaces,” White said. “It’s pretty.”

The lineup for today’s Orange Bowl Classic - with a national championship at stake in the game between Nebraska and Florida State University - brought out some Miamians who normally watch the parade on television. Ray Biedinger, a 1952 FSU grad, said he needed to be at the parade and game to support his Seminoles. No mercy will be shown Saturday, if Biedinger has his way.

“We’re looking forward to Florida State beating Nebraska badly,” Biedinger said.

Parade veterans Phil and his wife, Stevie, Thomas shared what they learned after 15 years. The Thomas’ said they get tickets on the edge of the parade route, so they can rush off when it’s over to “beat the drunks home.”

“It’s a happy habit for us,” said Stevie Thomas.’

The parade also brought out folks like Joseph Miller, 53, a Cincinnati man who dolled himself up in curly green hair, a long red coat, and a red nose with a fly painted on it. Miller, of course, was a clown. He walked his invisible dog Fido down the boulevard.

It’s Fido’s first time in parade,” said Miller. “Fido likes to see everybody, because nobody sees him.”

Maybe no one could see Fido. But Miami was on view for all. And it looked great.

End of the parade run

Published March 12, 2002:

One of South Florida’s most cherished and enduring traditions is gone.

The Orange Bowl Parade turned the final corner Monday, 62 years of lights and music, swagger and laughter extinguished by financial anemia, general malaise and changing times.

The Orange Bowl Committee voted 120-1 — and with great regret — to abolish the New Year’s Eve revelry that once glorified South Florida, but now seemed tired and threadbare. Money that subsidized the parade will be used to attract national championship college football games.

“It was with a very heavy heart that we came to this decision,” Al Cueto, committee president, said. “But you start seeing certain evidence that the people in your community are not supporting the parade. We can no longer afford to have a low class parade.”

The event’s fate was sealed in 1997 when it lost its national TV contract and hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate support. Soon, floats seemed to lose their luster, and residents and tourists seemed to lose interest.

A spectacle that once attracted 500,000 people to Miami’s Biscayne Boulevard could not lure even half that number. Cueto said the last parade, swamped by bad weather, lost more than $200,000.

Except for three years during World War II, the parade rolled through downtown Miami every New Year’s Eve since 1936. Now, something might be found to take its place, Cueto said, but the Orange Bowl parade as we know it is over.

“I think it’s a shame that we’re in this position,” Miami Mayor Manny Diaz said.

Mourners included many thousands of children, and many thousands of former children.

“It’s sad. It’s a shame,” said Edward Zurawski, 78, of Hialeah, who cheered and applauded during more than 20 parades. “We always took the kids to it. It was such a fine community thing.”

But he and his wife, Mary, noticed the deterioration.

“It was just the same old stuff, over and over again,” Zurawski said. “Last year, I said, ‘You know, Mary, I think I saw this before.’ This year, I knew I had seen it before.”

Still, he and others remembered the past glory and the sense of wonder once produced by the parade. Bob Hope was a grand marshal, and so was Muhammad Ali, Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Gleason.

Millions of TV viewers tuned in every year. Many were snowbound, and they saw palm trees, and a gentle breeze, and people in shorts on New Year’s Eve.

“You can’t buy that kind of publicity,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, whose brothers marched in the parade with their school bands. “People turn around and start booking their vacations.”

Cueto said the demise of the parade, which could hurt tourism to some extent, also could help tourism.

The reason: Money that subsidized the parade can nourish the campaign to continue hosting college football’s national championship game every four years.

Committee leaders said last year’s championship game played at the Orange Bowl contributed $185 million to the economy, and at least that much will be produced by the next national championship game here in 2005.

In 2006, that game is open to bids, and the Orange Bowl could lose it to Orlando or Jacksonville if those cities make more lucrative offers.

Said Diaz, “I think the problem here is the championship series.”

So, in the end, Cueto said, the committee had four options:

It could continue sponsoring the parade as it was — and lose money. It could attempt to revitalize the parade with a transfusion of cash. It could cancel the parade without finding a substitute. It could cancel the parade and seek an alternative event.

The committee chose the fourth option, he said, though considerable uncertainty surrounds any replacement event. He refused to identify the lone dissenter in the 120-1 vote.

Cueto and Diaz said that something resembling the Calle Ocho street festival might work, but there might not be enough time to plan an event like that for this year.

The Orange Bowl Committee also voted recently to cancel a women’s basketball tournament, held a week before the parade as part of the Orange Bowl Festival. Committee leaders cited waning interest.

The men’s basketball tournament has not been canceled, and the Junior Orange Bowl Parade — an independent event — will still take place.

Hilarie Bass, chairwoman of the Orange Bowl Parade, said a subcommittee will meet with government, corporate and civic leaders during the next 90 days to discuss possible replacements for the Orange Bowl Parade.

“It could be that it’s a different kind of parade,” she said. “It could be that we recommend that it’s something that doesn’t look like a parade at all.

“Our goal is to come up with a communitywide event that will be interactive and reflective of our community’s diversity.”

The issue of diversity also was raised by Cueto, who said the parade’s marching bands were comprised mostly of students from the Midwest and “don’t have the face of the community.”

Committee leaders said they could not afford to bring bands from Latin America and the Caribbean to the parade.

But Mike Gonzalez, a member of the Orange Bowl Staging Committee that coordinates the marching bands, said recent efforts were made to diversify the lineup.

He cited the inclusion last year of predominantly black bands from Bethune-Cookman College and Hallandale High School. He expressed anger over Monday’s development.

“There’s no reason for them to do it,” he said. “If they put the effort into it, I’m sure they could find corporate sponsors. “After seven decades, just to summarily dismiss it, I think, is unconscionable. The parade is the only thing left of the Orange Bowl Festival that really belongs to the people.”