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Fifty Billionth Annual Santa Claus Parade Tomorrow

By David Topping

Sinter Clause!There are bleachers set up along Queen’s Park, we’ve had huge amounts of rainfall over the past few days, it’s mid-November, and nobody’s even slightly interested in Christmas yet – and you know what that means: it’s time for the annual Santa Claus Parade!
The parade runs tomorrow, beginning at 12:30 PM, travels from Bloor & Christie, east along Bloor to University, south to Queen, over to Yonge, then finishes at Front & Church (drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians take note: those streets will be shut down for most of the afternoon). This year’s parade has 1,500 participants, 25 floats, and 20 bands. In spite of the horrifying upside-down clowns, the overpriced cotton candy, and the extremely anti-climatic arrival of the man himself, the parade – whether you’re downtown or watching it at home on TV – is always still a lot of fun.
And hey, they’ve even got a websiteee…oh dear. Oh GOD. Never mind.

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Comments

  • Chester Pape

    I appreciate the olde timey nostalgia of the event, but man oh man their web site really is a horror show isn’t it?

  • http://mute.rigent.com miles

    I laughed out loud at your first paragraph but the laughter turned to horror when I clicked through to their web site…

  • http://tlonista.wordpress.com Tlönista

    Oh! Oh god! The website! The source! The…aaagh! It’s like being kicked in the face by 1995.
    This is a joke, right?
    *googles*
    Damn you, David Topping. Today you made me cry.

  • Chris Dart

    What type of 1996 shit was that?
    Makes me want to give myself an undercut.
    And why is that elf on the menu page so CREEPY looking!?

  • rek

    I live at Bloor and Shaw and get the distinct pleasure of looking down on the float staging area from my window.

  • Athena

    That site is taking wayy too long to load…I wanna see the crappy Santa Claus Parade site too!

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/dstopping David Topping

    These screenshots won’t do is justice (the site is fully animated), but for those desperate:
    http://www.torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_david/santaclaus_1.png
    http://www.torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_david/santaclaus_2.png

  • Steve

    How can you not like the upsidedown clowns… They offered years of confusion for my kids (a tradition I was happy to pass down).
    That said, they really need some website advice. Just what time warp are they living in?

  • Marc Lostracco

    1996 called. It wants its website back.

  • Patrick

    I think they hired the same marketing company that Bad Boy uses. Nasty.

  • rek

    Really, there are tens of thousands of people in Toronto alone who would redesign their site — for free! — if asked.

  • d

    Regarding website: Didn’t they learn anything from those Japanese cartoons that caused children to get seizures?