Thanksgiving Parade kicks off with Mayor Turner, Rockets

Add a bit of rainfall to Thanksgiving traditions around the Bayou City, right next to heaping turkey dinners and kisses from grandma. For the third year in a row, the Houston Thanksgiving Parade made its way under a pitter-patter of rain on slick downtown streets. 

The Thursday crowd did not seem to mind kicking off Turkey Day cold and wet. Well, most of them anyway.

“Yesterday the forecast showed no rain, and this morning it showed a 90% chance,” one woman grumbled, seconds before Mayor Sylvester Turner took the microphone to kick off the parade under the morning’s steadiest drizzle. 

The 74th annual parade was a lap of honor for Turner, who served as grand marshal and is approaching the end of his time as Houston mayor. 

“Let me thank Houston for being Houston, the greatest city in the United States of America and it’s because of you all,” Turner said. “What a wonderful ride these last eight years have been.” 

Turner was joined Thursday by legendary Houston Rockets Hall of Famers Rudy Tomjanovich and Calvin Murphy, who rode behind Turner’s decked out Tom Turkey float in swanky, low-rider convertibles. Murphy, now a Rockets analyst with AT&T SportsNet, was the first Hall of Famer to spend his entire career with the franchise, and Tomjanovich guided Houston to its only two titles in 1994 and 1995 — Turner only stumbled over the pronunciation of his last name once, briefly. 

Theatre Under the Stars kicked off the parade at 9 a.m. with a performance from “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” sashaying through a song-and-dance routine in bright, flowing ballroom gowns, oblivious to the rain. Texas Southern University’s Ocean of Soul marching band kicked up a rhythm and the parade was off, strutting to the cheers of an adoring crowd. 

Valerie Haverland, from Lufkin, waited anxiously for the Apache Belles, Tyler Junior College’s famous precision dance team, to come marching down Smith Street. Her granddaughter was marching in the parade and for Haverland, watching the Belles high-kick around Houston in their white boots and cowboy hats felt like deja vu. Her daughter did the same with the Belles more than 20 years ago, and Haverland had a front row seat for that as well. 

“It makes me very proud,” Haverland said. “Very proud.”

In quintessentially Houston scene, families raised their children onto elevated planters outside oil and gas buildings to get a view of the drill teams, Tejano bands and Chinese dragon dancers that came cruising down the street.

Joseph Popoff, 59, posed for a selfie in a bright green sweater that perfectly matched the hue of a seven-story Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle balloon floating behind him down Milam Street. 

“Got it!” he hollered to his wife Roni, who was wearing a matching sweater that depicted Buddy the Elf, Will Ferrell’s iconic role from the 2003 Christmas movie “Elf.” 

Joseph and Roni have been coming to the parade every year for decades, staking out the same corner at Milam and McKinney to catch a row of American flags hanging from an adjacent office building in the background of their pictures. The Popoffs are the life of the party, hooting and hollering at every passing float and offering coffee from a thermos to curious passersby.

“Who wouldn’t want to come to this? Talk about unity and bringing the city together, that’s what this is all about,” Joseph Popoff said, before he was distracted by a gargantuan HEB shopping cart rolling down the street. 

What’s the Popoff’s favorite float? 

“We know him,” Roni added with a sly grin, winking down at her Buddy the Elf sweater.