Nicolaus Labor Day Parade
Nicolaus Labor Day Parade
Reportage
3 September 2018
NICOLAUS, Calif. – The 27th Annual Nicolaus Labor Day Parade took place on September 2 this year. The day kicked off with the traditional pancake breakfast and floats varied from kids on motorcycles to charros on their dancing horses and award-winning FFA cows and goats being paraded down the road.
This is the only annual open event that takes place in the community, so a lot of time and hard work goes into the planning. In the early years, the parade went down Marcum Road and was attended by a small crowd of locals from the town of Nicolaus, which has a population of 211, and the other surrounding farming communities.
Nicolaus is my home town and I grew up on the very road that the main events take place on. In the 90s it was an opportunity for locals to come up with funny, clever floats to out-do their neighbors or get a laugh, and for local students, athletes and club members to be shown off or be introduced. Back then the most annoying thing that would happen to those of us living on the street would be our extended family members stealing all of our Coca-Colas.
Today it has grown so much that it begins much farther down the old Garden Highway and then only later turns onto Marcum Road, and it is now attended by thousands of people, many of whom come from Plumas Lake, a large housing development built in the early 2000s. Although the flow of people from outside the community helps to bring in money for local schools and clubs, it has caused some controversy and problems with the locals.
Nicolaus is a farming village, it does not have the infrastructure to handle such an influx of visitors, it doesn’t even have sidewalks. So on the day of the event, people from out of town park their cars on the property of private homes without permission, often carelessly destroying prized flower beds and previously pristine lawns. It has also become common for people to drive into orchards, destroying sprinkler systems that could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to repair. There have been cases of attempted break-ins and strangers will shamelessly enter a person’s home to use their bathroom, take food and drinks from their kitchens, or even sit in their home to watch TV or swim in their pools.
The event maintains a lot of the traditional floats, but it is often drowned out by advertisements and a long line of people running for public offices using the day to campaign. For my documentation of the parade I chose to focus on the more traditional, local “floats” that capture what makes up the fabric of a small farming village in Northern California.
Photographer based in Munich, Germany