Back -- For the Moment

Hey, over here! It's me, Generik! Here I am, I'm back in San Francisco, back at the computer, back on the blog beat for the next couple days, and, uh... say, did anyone miss me?

*crickets*

Right. Well, that's fine. If you're anything like me, and I know I am, I'm sure most of you were occupied with holiday revelings this past week or so (it was an especially intense Saturnalia this year, wasn't it?), and weren't spending too much time online anyway. While the NSA spying issue has been simmering along, waiting for Congress to return and hearings to begin to bring it to a boil (and Preznit Unchecked and Unbalanced went on the offensive, defending his illegal program and asking the DoJ to investigate the source of the leak that finally exposed it), I was busy with a brief trip to southern California, visiting family members and friends. So I didn't post anything or even go online much at all last week, and, due to some medical nonsense I'll be subjecting myself to later this week, the output may be sparse here for a while.

But today I've got something that some of you might find interesting. While I was down in LA County, I had dinner at my old friend Walt's place, and met a few of his coworkers and neighbors. He lives in a loft in the building that once housed the Pomona newspaper, the Progress-Bulletin; a building that we both worked in at one time; a building that was long ago converted into live-work spaces; a building that also housed Eldridge Cleaver in his final days. (None of that is really germane to this story -- I just thought I would throw it in there for background.) One of his neighbors, a fellow resident of the old P-B building, sent me an intriguing email after I got back, and I'm sharing it with you. It seems that this fellow Peter, who was the founder of the Pasadena Doo Dah Parade (and ran it for 18 years), disputes the number of spectators that the Rose Parade announces as attending their annual shindig down Colorado Blvd. This reminded me of the controversy here in SF a few years back, when the police estimates and organizer estimates for local anti-war marches were wildly disparate, and each side accused the other of exaggerating for whatever reason. Because of that, the police no longer issue crowd estimates for any public gathering.

Here is what Peter had to say on the subject:

On the Rose Parade's official website it quotes a study by the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, which claims that one million people attend the parade in a typical year. This is a very significant development in a longstanding controversy over the parade's estimated attendance.

Parade officials, as you probably know, have claimed a million specators for decades, but when challenged in the past to validate that number, they have always dodged the issue by claiming that they either didn't care, or didn't get involved in crowd estimates. And up until now, they have always passed the buck to police and tourism officials from the city. The media shares a major portion of the blame in this situation, by spinelessly buying into the argument of parade and city officials that coming up with parade estimates is really some sort of imponderable task. (Even Wikipedia refuses to post the information I've submitted.)

I got involved in all of this nearly 30 years ago, when I became curious and developed a simple method for calculating attendance.* The parade route is 5.5 miles long, and it turns out that in order to have one million spectators you'd have to line up people shoulder-to-shoulder, 34 rows deep, along both sides of the parade route. (By the way, bleacher seating amounts to approximately 100,000 seats.)

So, fitting one million people along the parade route, or even one-third that many, is physically impossible.

With the arrival of this UCLA study, what's different is that the stakes have now been raised. UCLA is putting its reputation on the line by supporting a claim that is, even at face value, completely false. Now, it's one thing for some police or tourism official to not have any math skills, but the people at the Anderson School of Management are supposed to represent the best and the brightest in their field.

Their study is not online, and apparently studies such as this one are considered confidential, but starting on Tuesday I'm going to request at least a copy of the head count methodology its researchers used, so I can submit it to "peer review."

*snip*

On one occasion, when the (Pasadena Doo Dah) parade was at its peak, we did a photographic head count, using a team of photographers to photograph both sides of the parade during the event. I then pieced together all 442 photos and counted heads, using techniques I learned in an aerial photography class back in college. The result is that there were 31,957 people along a route that was 1.25 miles long. The crowd was actually more dense than typical Rose Parade crowds, so the obvious fact is that the Rose Parade, at approximately four times the length, only gets around 125,000 spectators lining the street, plus the 100,000 people in the bleachers, for a total of only 225,000 people in a good year.

*Here's my methodology. The route is 5.5 miles, or 29,040 feet long. If you allow two feet per person for people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, then it would take 29,040 people to form just one row along both sides of the parade route. You then divide 29,040 into one million, and the result is that you'd need 34.43 rows to equal one million spectators. If you allow 18 inches per row (which means jamming people in like sardines), then the crowd would need over 51 feet of clearance along both sides of the street. Of course, the sidewalks are generally just 12 feet wide, and the "blue line" in the street that runs parallel to the curb adds perhaps eight feet of viewing depth, so the average depth of the viewing area for spectators is just 20 feet. But then it's obvious that Rose Parade specators along much of the route are spread out with lawn chairs, coolers, blankets, etc., and there are many other gaps along the route. So, if the parade gets even one-fourth of what UCLA claims, that would be the very best you could expect. So, UCLA has some serious explaining to do.

He further wrote to say that he's found the email of the person at UCLA who handles the field studies, and will contact her tomorrow. While reading this, I began to wonder about the estimates of Times Square party-goers on New Year's Eve as well. I've always heard that line about "a million people will be here to watch the ball drop." Are there really that many people crammed into Times Square? I'll let you know what the outcome of all this is when I hear back from Peter.