{"id":225748,"date":"2026-06-23T12:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/225748\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T12:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:17:08","slug":"behind-the-scenes-look-at-the-floats-of-this-years-red-white-and-blue-to-do-parade-in-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/225748\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind-the-scenes look at the floats of this year’s “Red, White and Blue To-Do” parade in Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 2 isn’t the first date when we think of America’s birthday<\/a>, but that’s when John Adams wanted to celebrate Independence Day.<\/p>\n

In honor of his wishes, organizers in Philadelphia are yet again hosting “Red, White and Blue To-Do.”<\/a>\u00a0 A big part of that is the “Pomp and Parade!”<\/p>\n

Todd Marcocci is the parade’s producer. On Monday, the team, including volunteers, put the finishing touches on 13 red wagon floats at the National Constitution Center.<\/p>\n

“This parade is so special. It’s the only one in the country, and especially how significant in history July 2 was to the success of building this nation,” Marcocci said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Borrowing inspiration from the Rose Parade, the floats feature everything from silk flowers to coffee beans, crushed pine cones and cranberry seeds.<\/p>\n

\"red-white-and-blue-to-do.jpg<\/p>\n

CBS News Philadelphia<\/p>\n

“Some will have kids in them, and people will be pulling them during the Red, White and Blue To Do Pomp and Parade,” Amy Needle, the president and CEO of Historic Philadelphia, Inc., and co-chair of the Philadelphia historic district 250th committee, said.<\/p>\n

It takes four days to put these 13 floats together. Then, they’re going to go into storage until they come out on the morning of July 2.<\/p>\n

“Many, many hours to put these together, as you can see, they really are beautiful little red, white and blue works of art,” Needle said.<\/p>\n

Each float also tells a different story, whether it’s the 52 weeks of firsts or the Declaration of Independence<\/a>. The parade will also feature dance troupes, drill teams and this, according to Marcocci: “We’re putting all 50 state flags and five territories in the actual parade itself.”<\/p>\n

“We’re hoping to create some of those core memories, so that people can, when they look back 50 years from now, can say, ‘oh yeah, we did,'” Needle said. “We watched a parade, we watched a drone show, we listened to a great concert.”<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 2 isn’t the first date when we think of America’s birthday, but that’s when John Adams wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[43518,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-225748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america-at-250","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}