YACHATS — Want to be part of Yachats’ July 4 La de da Parade? There are two ways to be involved and both have deadlines coming up soon.
Would-be marchers need to sign up with the Yachats Chamber of Commerce, which invites anyone to participate by completing an application on its website. Applications must be submitted before June 25. Those who want to submit a paper application may email chamber director Nichole Lippincott at director@yachats.org.
People who want to join the existing (and playfully traditional) Yachats Umbrella Drill Team need to do so by Wednesday to make the group’s first practice. Open to adults and children 10 years and up, the team has practices scheduled through the month of June under the direction of Will Webster. Drummers are also welcome — and drumming is loosely defined including rapping on a plastic bucket. For drill team information contact Debra Fant at debrafant@peak.org
Fant urges any interested participants to sign up right away. “There are routines to be learned, umbrellas to acquire, and costumes to be created,” she said. Volunteers come from Newport to Tenmile.
The parade, as the chamber notes on its website, has “No professionally-designed floral floats, marching bands or international TV coverage … Just friends, family neighbors and guests out strutting their stuff in fun and celebration.”
The parade begins at noon Thursday, July 4, making its boisterous, whimsical way down West Seventh Street to Ocean View Drive and then ending downtown at Beach Street. The chamber-sponsored fireworks show starts at 10 p.m. from Yachats State Park.
I hope they tone down the firework display this year. It is really upsetting to animals and people with PTSD. It’s like, if we really supported our troops, we would do something besides viscerally reminding them of the scenes of death and carnage they had to endure. The pollution it adds to the atmosphere is another very good reason to rethink this custom. And finally, I have to say that setting off explosives to celebrate a country that is currently facilitating the exploding of women and children in Gaza is straight up disgusting.