The Eugene Parade has followed a crooked route for several years, with changes in partners and funding. After the end of the Eugene Celebration in 2014, the parade changed directions, eventually joining Downtown Sunday Streets. With that event canceled for health concerns this year, organizers decided to go virtual.
Jerril Nilson, who’s on the all-volunteer committee suggests, “You could do a parade in place on your front porch, you could enter as a family, enter as a neighborhood. You could do a video of your cul de sac with everybody doing socially distanced hula hooping … and masks, because, you know, masks are part of parading.”
Nilson says they hope people will show their resilience and express their “EUGenius” with this year’s theme of “Bounce Forward.” She says it’s free to share photos, audio, or short videos. The footage will be strung together in a left-to-right parade, and aired on September 20th. Typically, the EUG Parade is the first public event for the year’s SLUG Queen. Nilson says there are plans in the works for the 2020 SLUG Queen coronation, and to stay tuned.
More information on how to participate is on the city's parade website here.
