A Parade of Shoes – Stikii Style!

This past weekend, (6/2/12) Stikii participated in the King Wamba Parade in Toledo, OH. The parade, part of the annual Old West End Festival, was Stikii’s first and was an extremely exciting experience.

The Historic Old West End of Toledo (OWE), Ohio consists of 25 city blocks making up one of the largest collections of late Victorian homes left standing in the United States today. The neighborhood boasts beautiful examples of Colonial, Georgian, Queen Ann, Italian Renaissance, Dutch Colonial, French Second Empire and Arts and Craft homes. The OWE District is just outside of Downtown Toledo.

Every year the OWE opens up the neighborhood to the public during the first week of June. This year, the 41^st annual Historic Old West End Festival was held on June 2^nd and 3^rd, 2012. Official events of the festival include the King Wamba Parade, House Tours, Juried Art Fair, and entertainment tent, a beer pavilion, local food vendors, an antique car show and much more.

2012 was the 103^rd Anniversary King Wamba Carnival Parade – AKA “The Mardi Gras of the North”. The King Wamba Carnival Parade kicks off the OWE Festival and has even been called “Toledo’s best and most eccentric parade” by the Toledo City Paper. The King Wamba Parade is a tradition that began in our sister city – Toledo, Spain – as early as the 7^th century. Toledo, Ohio Wamba celebrates the beginning of summer by paying tribute to Toledo’s grand, but short-lived, Mardi Gras festival of 1909. The parade is comprised of an eclectic collection of floats, performance art presentations, cars and musical acts.

A feature unique to this year’s festival was the Neighborhood Watch: A Projection Walk, held from 9-11pm on Saturday at selected homes on Robinwood and Scotwood. The event was organized and curated by Tart Projects founder Kimberly Adams, and consisted of a walking tour utilizing the outside of houses as projection screens for artists to showcase short film projects and digital images, sort of like a traveling movie screen!

The parade began on June 2 at 10:00am and included appearances by Cirque du Soleil: Members of the cast of Quidam, The Scott High School “Fantastic Dancing Machines” Marching Band, The Glass City Rollers, and yours truly….the Stikii Mobile! The parade ended with the coronation of the 2012 King Wamba (Mark Moffett) and Queen Sancha (Condessa Croninger).

Stikii joined the parade on Saturday morning and picked a spot in the lineup right behind the band! They were awesome and rocked before, during and after the parade. The Stikii mobile was decked out in balloons, with Stikii shoes adorning the side mirrors and ornamenting the hood and windshield. We tossed out hundreds of balloons to our fans and made a HUGE statement, further affirming the notion that shoes CAN be fun!

A special thanks to 13ABC for capturing the Stikii mobile’s inaugural parade appearance! We can’t wait to hit up the next one! We would like to thank Nicole Duhart and the Duhart Campaign for all of the nice things they said about Stikii! Check out our parade photos below!