Take a Seat

They are like the swallows of San Juan Capistrano, returning every year, or flowers blooming in early winter. But these flowers only bloom on Orange Grove Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. They are the grandstands that grow on these streets along the route of the annual Rose Parade, officially known as The Rose Parade presented by Honda.

Sharp Seating, who builds the grandstands, have been the official seating company for the parade almost as long as there’s been a parade. They begin building the grandstands the first weekend of November, and they’re gone again by the second week of January.

“We bought this company about 30 years ago from Dave Sharp,” explained daughter and owner Sindee Riboli. “He was retiring, and my father, Mike Brown, had built grandstands for him for about 20 years or more.”

Sindee was working in Upland at a division of Toshiba more than twenty years ago, in their accounting department, when her father asked if she wanted to come and join the team at Sharp Seating.

“I was a little nervous because my background has really been accounting,” Riboli explained. “I said I will come for one year and if I don’t like it, you will not be upset if I leave and go back to accounting and he said absolutely not.”

She is obviously still there, and as she says, “I’ve never looked back, because we are part of putting on the Rose Parade for the world, and it’s just so much fun. It’s a serious business and it can be intense, but at the end of the day, we have this beautiful production on January 1st each year.”

Riboli has, of course, seen countless parades over the years, and naturally has pockets full of stories of people affected by the magical yearly event.

“There was a young man who had been in Desert Storm,” she recalled, “and he was diagnosed with cancer. He was in his 20’s and his mother wanted to take him to see the Rose Parade because that was his wish. So of course, we treated them to the most fabulous peek at the parade.

“Then there’s the two little ladies from the Midwest who told me that every year, they would turn their television on and spray Avon rose perfume, so it smells like roses and they would sit and watch the parade together.

“One day, their husbands told them that if they went hunting with them, that they would send them both to the Rose Parade! So they came in to my office like two little giggling girls and bought parade tickets.

“We have had all kinds of interesting and fun and exciting stories that make us feel like there’s a value to all of this that’s a little deeper than a parade,” said Sindee. “It’s more than a parade, it really is.”

And in case you’re wondering about seats and tickets, they’ve been on sale since February 2 of this year. The company takes January off, and then the magic starts all over again.

Sharp Seating Company, American United Sales Corp., 1737 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (In The Back) (626) 795-4171 or visit www.sharpseating.com.