A New Year’s Day dialogue:

Storey: “Do you ever watch the Rose Parade?”
Alex: “What’s the Rose Parade?”
Storey: “Only the biggest or second-biggest parade in the country annually.”
Alex: “Where is it?”
Storey: “Pasadena, California.”
Alex: “Maybe it’s just a West Coast thing.”
Storey: …
Alex: “Seriously. Pasadena?”
Storey: “Are the Oscars just a West Coast thing too?”

This prompted me to extremely unscientifically poll my Facebook friends with the following four options, asking them to describe their closest understanding of the Rose Parade:
1. I am aware of it and have watched it or watch it.
2. I am aware of it but never watch it.
3. I am unaware of it.
4. I am only aware of the Elliott Smith song and have no idea what he’s singing about.

In honor of the two people who actually chose option 4, as well as the others who cited that as a great song, here you go:

Here were the (again, very unscientific) results:
Option 1: 49% (23 respondents)
Option 2: 19% (9 respondents)
Option 3: 28% (13 respondents)
Option 4: 4% (2 respondents)

For a simpler split of
68% have heard of the Rose Parade, 32% have not.

I was expecting to garner some sort of regional and/or age splits on this number that would make it make sense, but this attempted analysis has proven woefully impossible.

For example, there are people who attended high school with me in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who have answered 1 and others who have answered 3. This defies regionality, unless New Mexico is on some sort of West Coast/East Coast faultline of viewership.

Yet many people who responded 1 are lifetime East Coasters, including several who have never lived outside New York and New Jersey. Most of those who responded to 3 were also in this category, however, with several having earlier roots outside the country. Although an Albanian-born New Jerseyan voted 1. Many people who live in Southern California unsurprisingly voted 1, with many adding that they’ve attended the parade as well. No one from California seemed to vote 3, which at least gives me one regionally boundary.

And the two people voting 4 were a lifetime East Coaster and someone from my high school. Proving… nothing. Other than that both of them are at least somewhat hipsters.

Of course, it comes to mind that the greater factor may involve sports viewership, and/or some combination between that and parade viewership, whatever that demographic is specifically comprised of. (Clearly, it excludes Elliott Smith himself, at least if he’s thinking about his decisions, or was.) I’ve never much thought of the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl as being terribly intricately linked, which is obviously not an opinion shared by East Coasters, including Alex’s mother, who responded to the same question with a discussion of the Bowl. I have no doubt that more people have heard of the Bowl, but I wouldn’t have thought till this month that more people watch the Bowl than the Parade. Which I guess is mostly the fault of parade broadcasters who very much sound like they have a broadcast reach of the Oscars or possibly the SuperBowl when they’re doing the announcing, at least to me.

The moral of the story is, mostly, that it’s great fun to use social media to poll your friends, even if Facebook doesn’t support traditional poll formatting outside of groups. And maybe there’s something about the diversity of Millennial experience as we veer off the course from universal TV stations and radio songs to our own carefully cultivated, mostly online experiences.

In any event, 2015 is looking up so far. I’m sure Elliott Smith could find a way to be concerned about it, and maybe I should be, but my interest was always greater than his. I think you can expect a lot more content this year on this page, as indicated by the flurry of the last few months. And some of it may even be slightly more serious than this post.