YESTERDAY'S KING MANGO STRUT

   41 years ago my buddy Bill and I started a parade. Yesterday the King Mango Strut marched again and it seems everyone had a jammin' good time.

  

Miami's history museum described our event (yesterday, on Facebook) pretty well,

What began as a spoof of the annual King Orange Jamboree Parade in 1982 has become of the most anticipated events in South Florida, and it's taking place today in after a two-year hiatus! 

 

The King Mango Strut was started in 1982 by Grove residents Glenn Terry and Bill Dobson. After Terry's group, the Mango Marching Band, was denied entry into the King Orange Jamboree Parade due to their unusual instruments, kazoos, conch shells, and garbage cans. They decided to have their own parade in the streets of Coconut Grove. 

 

Today, the festival draws over 12,000 spectators and participants, all joining in to celebrate "what’s weird and wonderful about Miami and the year that was". King Mango Strut includes everything from people dressed as politicians to funny takes on the year's biggest headlines.

    I live in Gainesville now and did not attend.Friends told me it was terrific and sent photos. Here are a bunch of them with comments from me, the former "Top Banana of the King Mango Strut"

2022'S KING MANGO STRUT

(which took place in '23, which is just  another odd aspect of this annual procession).

     The parade always starts with two guys carrying a banner.

 

followed by a truckload of waving young girls. They are the ones participating in the Little Miss Mango Competition.

   Since the parade's beginning, all have tied for first place, each getting to be "Little Miss Mango" for a day.  Beauty pageants may not be politically correct but -who cares?- that's what the Strut is all about.

If you look hard enough you may see a few small children

    Twenty years ago the truck began getting crowded with waving parents and grown women bearing "Former Little Miss Mango" signs. 

MANGOHEADS

     The core of our parade is "the mangoheads" the marching elite who have been with us from the start.

Gina McFall creates incredible costumes (red-haired, below).

 

Her group this year, "Las Cucarachas" pointed out that when humans "end the world as we know it", roaches will still be dancing in the streets. 

Peer Everett was the Big Guy with a big personality.  Every year he'd be a crazed evangelical preacher, a loud, leering wrestler, or in '83, "Cosmic Claus". He moved on to the Strut in the Sky last month so we honored him with a "Peer-amid" covered with photos of him in his many disguises.

Bobby Deresz has been in it since the beginning too. For thirty years he was the memorable white clown. He'd carry a shovel and a garbage can at the parade's end to clean up non-existent trash.

This year Bob morphed into "Mr. Money" one of

many developers tearing down the Old Grove to build big white boxes for the rich. 

Behind him was Mr.  Box letting folks know he would sell his latest creation for a paltry $5 million. 

 And. of course, you can't build McMansions without tearing them down first.

That's why Janice and Allyn Pruitt brought their Dino Demolitionator and their "Team of Extinction" to Main Highway. These two and their Irvington Avenue

 

neighbors are hard-core mangoheads. They gleefully leveled 16 historic buildings along the parade route without breaking a smile.

 

 

 

 

From the start we wanted our parade to be different.  The bands had to play rock n' roll, salsa, or the blues from flatbed trucks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

   In 95' a group of runners filled out an application saying, "We are The Running of the Bullshitters".

They ran our parade route backwards -three times- during the course of our event. We loved it.

    The guy in the photo above?  I saw a video of him running between legs of the orange dude on stilts. If you're nuts this is the parade for you!

Our motto has always been, "Let's Put the Nut Back in Coconut Grove".

 

We always had fun coming up with mango art for our events, here are a few examples...

            (compiled by HistoryMiami)

   Jeremy, a neophyte strutter, came as the King himself. Why he was pulling a casket, I don't know.  

 


  Local civic groups want to join the fun but have a hard time being funny. Instead, they wear funny clothes and carry signs that say things like "Rotary Loves Kids". If you dress bright, smile, and dance in the road, you'll do.

Often a good sign and a funny hat is all you need.

 

 

SilverMan is a professional artist who wanted to make a statement about AI art. Yesterday he was a fabulous artist robot who drew all the parade characters -while in the parade on the side of a moving truck.

   That's strutting!

 

 

AND FINALLY THE FREDS

   The Marching Freds were a big deal in the 80's and 90's but... who names their kids "Fred" anymore?  This year there

were three and two, were only relatives...

As they say, "Better Fred than dead".

 

 

    Again, I couldn't be there but many of you sent me your photos. Thanks. I'm glad King Mango "22 (in '23) turned out to be such a grand affair.  

   It took many mangoheads -from the past and present- to make it happen. I thank them for their hard work, colorful costumes, and for making thousands of people laugh.

The king's best friend,

Glenn