(The Last) The Elvis Parade - KCMO
Friday 17 August 2007 - Barney "Elvis" Plaza
This is probably the last Elvis parade. In late 2007 Nov/Dec the owners of the radio station committed radio-station-cide on KY. They put the last nail in one of the last of the real old-time rock stations in the U.S.A. Among others, in a general firing-squad corporate brain bust, Tanna was fired. She intends to remain in Kansas City and concentrate on her other commercial ventures (charity auctions and real estate). She doesn't think she will return to radio. That is how the largest Elvis Parade goes dormant along with a legend in US radio stations.
Tanna's hubby, Jeff Holmes, gets into the tap spirit with the Miami Cloggers.
Good view of the double taps worn by the Miami County Cloggers
Tanna Guthrie - Organizer and 99.7 DJ
Cherise Plescia and daughter with Nicole's Group, Nikoria (associated with City in Motion)
She and husband Tony (also in the parade) just opened Studio Restaurant and Bar on 1118 McGee
Nikka (of Nikoria) and kids from the audience
The Crowd Around Tommy Chong
Tommy Chong was grand marshal this year. He and Shelby, his wife, also a stand-up comic, did a comedy gig at Stanford's the previous night. They perform the classic Cheech and Chong type of routine from the old days and they add in dance. Tommy and Shelby salsa, merengue and tango as part of their act.
The Elvis in the first photo (wearing the black Elvis Suit) with Tommy Chong and his wife, Shelby (Feddis) Chong, never has a chance. Usually the grand marshal arrives early and the autographs take place early and in back of the DJ. This time the arrival was late in the outside stage show.
Here, the crowd rapidly builds, moving right up around Tommy Chong, at least until reaching the portable fence, and ignoring the Elvis who is singing to a crowd which is mostly either behind him or focused behind him.
1 - Tommy Chong arrives with wife Shelby
2 - At first the crowd stands back. Notice the portable fence. The barrier
is still easy to see.
3 - Before long everyone else moves in
4 - The black-suit Elvis sings east while the crowd goes west.
5 - From here you can really see the singer and the crowd behind him, going elsewhere.
6 - The same crowd from another angle. The black-suit Elvis is on the left. KC Star video guy is front right with a Canon HDV (It's only going on the web and the cam is $4k)
7 - Finally, black-suit Elvis is totally separate from the crowd around Tommy Chong.
The cloggers came on one more time after this. Tommy is still surrounded but the cloggers are joined by others.
Nutcases, one each
As I am buried inside my viewfinder getting angles on the tight-rope walker I hear this woman next to me scream, at me, that I am a pervert, trying to look up her skirt and she will do something or other to me as soon as she has the chance. How she ever imagined that I was looking up her skirt I can't imagine unless she's so stoned she thinks my camera sees around corners.
I said something in response that she was wearing shorts anyway. Later when I looked at the pictures I realized it was a skirt, not shorts, but I was too busy at the time to do a double check anyway. Look at the pictures yourself and try to figure out how she could even imagine I had an angle up her skirt.
Then check the picture of KC Star photographer Alison Long (just below) sometime earlier, getting an angle on the guys in kilts. Now that really is an up angle. But when I looked over and saw her it didn't occur to me she was trying to look up anyone's kilts. I'm another photog and so my only thought was, "she's getting an angle."
As low (on her belly) as Alison looks, as another photographer, I could see her shot in my head and knew exactly what it would look like, which it did, when I viewed it later on the KC Star's online slide show. It looked good and no, it was NOT an up-the-kiltie shot.
This is as close as I have to a direct shot and she is not the focus of anything although she is a forground object. You can see she is wearing a skirt but a quick glance, especially in a viewfinder with sweat dripping off my head into my eyes, it really looked like jean shorts to me. Maybe the rope's pull made her think her skirt was being pulled up? Darned if I know. Maybe she was on something. She probably can't figure angles in billiards either.
Maybe because I got behind her for this obvious angle she thought I was actually looking at her. Sorry. The obvious line is the shoulder, to the rope to the wire to the wire walker. If you are not a photographer you may not see it that way, but for a photog, the angle is so instilled that this is all you are thinking.
When she screamed at me I was shooting a couple of sets-of-three shots which I intended later to stitch together into a single larger shot - like this one.
So. for comparison, it just so happened that I took a shot of Alison Long of the KC Star
- going for a front page shot -
The shot was on the
Star's website, on Alison's slideshow from the parade.
Alison Long and Nicole - Alison doesn't look like a perv either.
So here is the wire-walker
We run into Louis Bar alongside the Lyric
Construction workers in front of the Muehlbach's west side.
Let's see that over-eager fan again as she is hauled off the stage. That's our Cherise again.
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The 2004 Elvis Parade
The 2005 Elvis Parade
The 2006 Elvis Parade
The 2007 Elvis Parade