Santa Monica’s very first Fourth of July Parade could easily have been its last.
Back in 2007, as a few thousand people lined Main Street waving flags, organizer Jeff Jarow rumbled forward in a bright orange Kubota tractor pulling a 40-foot flatbed trailer that sat just inches above the ground. It didn’t go smoothly.
“It ripped off all those little buttons in the middle of the street, those reflector lights,” Jarow remembers. “They were getting compressed and exploding and flying up in the air. The city said, ‘You’re never going to do this again!’”
He still has one of those reflectors—broken and jagged—framed as a reminder of how close the whole parade journey came to ending before it really began.
“If I got out there with a tractor and a flatbed now, they probably wouldn’t say anything,” he laughs.
Nearly 20 years later, what began with a rocky start has turned into one of Santa Monica’s most recognizable, and most distinctly local, traditions.
This year’s parade begins at 9:30 a.m. at Beach Lot 5 South on Barnard Way. It travels north Main Street before ending at Pico Boulevard near the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. A grandstand for viewing will be set up in front of the Ocean Park Library.
From a local idea to a local tradition
Jarow started the parade in 2007 with seven fellow members from the Ocean Park Association. Over time they’ve all moved on. Jarrow is still leading the charge.
That first year drew a few thousand people. Now, the parade regularly brings in 12,000 to 15,000 spectators, with around 1,500 participants.
“It’s Mayberry,” Jarow says. “I always say it’s the one day a year when everybody in Santa Monica is smiling at each other. Everybody’s happy.”
The appeal hasn’t really changed. It’s still built around the people who live and work here — local businesses, schools, neighborhood groups, first responders, and of course, families. A lot of them.
Participants pay a fee—usually a few hundred dollars—to walk, march or roll, which helps cover costs. The parade runs through the Ocean Park Association and mostly just manages to break even.
“We squeak by,” Jarow says. “Sometimes we have a little bit of a surplus. Sometimes we have a little bit in the hole.”
For years, the city contributed $15,000 in discretionary funding, but that ended last year. This time around, the parade has something new: its first corporate sponsor, UCLA.
An event that reflects the city
This year’s theme celebrates three milestones—100 years of Route 66, 100 years of UCLA and 250 years of the United States—but the parade has always been as much about Santa Monica as it is about the Fourth of July.
It’s a snapshot of the community in real time.
Last year, following the Los Angeles wildfires, residents Pacific Palisades joined Santa Monica’s parade, folding into the lineup and the crowd. Moments like that have become part of the story. So have some of the more offbeat traditions from earlier years.
“We used to have bed races,” Jarow says. “Rolling hospital beds with somebody in it, and four or six people running them down the street. Nurses and doctors in scrubs pushing these beds—it was a lot of fun.”
And then there were the regulars who fully committed to the spectacle.
“The old Loews Hotel—Eunice, their general manager—she would get completely decked out in red, white, and blue and sparkles,” he says. “They’d decorate a car and just go all out. They were having a blast.”
Jarow still leads the parade himself, kicking things off with music and getting the crowd going.
Months of work for one morning
Putting it all together is no quick task. Jarow usually starts planning in February and spends the next four or five months lining everything up—participants, permits, logistics, fundraising.
And he does it all without getting paid.
“I want to say to the City, ‘why don’t you guys run the parade and you could pay me 80 grand to be a consultant?’” he says, laughing. “’I’m the schmuck that does it for free.’”
Then he shrugs it off.
“I do it because I’m passionate about it. I love it and it’s fun,” he says. “It’s my legacy to the city.”
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