Pasadena

...........I haven't lived in Pasadena since 1966. And yet when I see the Rose Parade on television (our house two blocks from the route, near its end), and later the Rose Bowl game with its inevitable shot of the brown San Gabriel mountains, a scene that greeted us at the front door of our home on Estado Street, a neighborhood taken out for the Foothills Freeway, I feel a stab of homesickness in my gut. In many ways, I still consider Pasadena my home, not Portland where I've lived for so long. The power of a good childhood, perhaps. Or the longing for dry heat instead of the damp chill of the Northwest.

PASADENA, Calif. – Thousands of campers and revelers gathered along the Rose Parade route before the first dawn of 2009, eagerly awaiting the floral floats that will proceed down Colorado Boulevard escorted by marching bands and well-groomed horses on New Year's Day.
The recession and housing crisis didn't keep the crowds away or stop the National Association of Realtors from entering its first float in the Rose Parade.
The Realtors' float was one of 46 — some from major companies with sagging stock prices such as Honda Motor Co. and Macy's — in the floral extravaganza that has marched on through the Great Depression and world wars for 120 years.

Story.

We visited Pasadena a few years ago, several L.A. trips ago, so I could show H where I grew up. I'm not sure I could afford to live there now but I'd live again in Pasadena in a flash.