The art of the float

A Dallas family has been building parade floats for decades, and the Dallas Pride parade brings them a lot of customers

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
With less than a week to go before the 34th annual Lakewood Brewing Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade steps off, float-maker Clyde Watts said he still had 14 floats to construct before Friday, Sept. 15. In total, he’s made 30 entries in this weekend’s Pride parade.
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have had an effect on his business. Watts said he had some assets that were left in Houston, and those were under water.
“Harvey devastated everything we had there,” he said.
Of the materials in Houston, Watts said he expects the wooden frames he uses to build his floats to be rotted and the metal trailers upon which they sit to be more trouble to repair than they’re worth.
Hurricane Irma also could have had an impact. Watts explained that while the supplies he uses to decorate the floats come from around the country, the glitter comes from Florida. No glitter on Pride parade floats? Unthinkable!
The Lone Star Floats glitter room appeared to be amply stocked this week, so parade-goers shouldn’t fret about the supply for Dallas’ Pride parade. But Austin’s parade, which was postponed until Sept. 30 because of Hurricane Harvey, and Fort Worth’s parade scheduled for a week after that, may be slightly glitter-deprived if Florida’s glitter factory took a direct hit.
Lone Star Floats on Westmoreland Avenue in West Dallas is the only float-maker in Dallas. Watts said he builds floats for 77 parades every year, throughout Texas, and some as far away as San Francisco. Whether he’s delivering to the West Coast or just a few miles down the road to Cedar Springs, he explained that each float has to be folded and compressed to legal road size.
So after each parade entry is built, it’s folded and wrapped with three layers of protection, so neither the hot sun nor rain will ruin it.
The frames used in the floats are recycled and reused. After the parade is done, the floats are returned to Lone Star’s West Dallas headquarters, where they are stripped down to their bare wooden bones. Each float takes half a day to prepare.
Each staple is removed by hand — and since the decorations on the average float are secured on the frame with 15,000 staples, that’s no easy task. If those staples are caught out in the rain and aren’t removed quickly, they’ll rust and ruin the frame, Watts said.
The floats, he continued, are covered in floral sheeting, a product designed just for parades. Other supplies come from places like Walmart.
Designs sometimes come from the customer, but Watts said he does 95 percent of the designs himself. “Sometimes customers give me a sketch or tell me an idea,” he said. “For Pride, they know what they want to do.”
Watts does all of this with a tiny staff — his immediate family, including his son and daughter, his wife, in-laws and a couple of additional employees.
He has about half a dozen truck drivers to deliver the floats to the parade site.
Despite the fact that the number of floats making this one of his three largest events of the year, Dallas Pride is easier to manage than some parades, Watts said. All floats are delivered to Cathedral of Hope’s parking lot on Saturday morning, the day before the parade, beginning at 8 a.m. At 10 a.m., the tarps are untied.
On Sunday morning — parade day — parade entrants pick up their floats, beginning at 8 a.m., with the specific pick-up time determined by entry number.
Then Watts’ job still isn’t done. “I’m the enforcer,” he said.

He wants to make sure everyone’s safe. That goes beyond just making sure every float’s equipped with a fire extinguisher and that handles are provided for float-riders to hang on to, keeping floats up to city code. Accidents, he said, can come from people having a good time who just aren’t thinking.
Floats for clubs with dancers, he said, “always scare me.” He said he’s always worried the pole dancers are going to dance right off the float. Despite his worries, though, there’s never actually been a problem. That’s because his floats are built to be balanced and sturdy.
Working with the Dallas Tavern Guild, the organization that stages the parade each year, is a pleasure, Watts said, because the guild appreciates his emphasis on safety. The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day parade, on the other hand, breaks every city rule.
Watts described float-building as a repetitive job. Automation has changed just one thing: Cutting out the logo for an organization used to take hours, but now a machine cuts the stencil-like form out in just minutes. For a job as large as the Dallas parade, that saves days of work.
The job may be repetitive, but it’s one Watts loves. He’s been at it since 1968, when he worked in his parent’s float-building company in South Carolina.
After serving in the military, Watts decided to join friends who lived in Dallas. In 1982, he opened his own float-building company and built his first float for the Parade of Lights in Fort Worth. For the first 11 years, he worked alone.
At the time, there were three other float-making companies in Dallas. Lone Star Floats is the only one left.
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ largest float-builder, known as Mr. Parade, moved to Dallas. The owner was known for the detailed — and expensive — floats built for Mardi Gras. When the Dallas Morning News did a story on Mr. Parade, they asked Watts what he thought of the move.
Watts said he welcomed the newcomer to Dallas and that he wasn’t worried. The New Orleans float-maker’s prices were much higher, and he didn’t lose a single customer. Mr. Parade moved back to New Orleans within three years.

Despite any controversy within the LGBT community itself over the scheduling of the Dallas Pride parade, Watts said he likes the parade just when it is, but not for any historical reasons. (The Dallas parade commemorates a Dallas event, a 1982 court ruling striking down the Texas sodomy law, rather than the New York event, the Stonewall Riots, that are the reason for June Pride events.) Watts’ preference is based on availability: In June, he’s already making floats for the Houston Pride parade — nine each year — which falls on the Saturday night closest to Stonewall, and for San Antonio Pride two weeks later. He’s also building floats for Fourth of July parades in various locations in June.
And while other Texas Pride parades are held at night to beat the heat, Watts said he likes that Dallas’s parade is held during the day, because having to add a generator to power the lights on a float for a night-time parade, and then stringing those lights, adds about four hours of construction time. With 30 floats, it would become a logistical nightmare and add about 50 percent to the cost.
With the success he’s had, Watts could open additional facilities. He has a couple of San Antonio locations, but those are strictly for the Battle of Flowers Parade, his largest client which has very specific and elaborate needs. But Watts doesn’t want to send any other work elsewhere.
“I want to touch it, feel it,” he said. “I want to make sure it’s up to my standard.”

His standard is so high that the national cheerleading competition had him create and send a float to an event in London, and he’s currently negotiating to do work for a parade in Dubai.
At 65, Watts has no plan to retire. Why should he? And what would he do if he did retire? After all, one of his favorite things to do is go to a parade.
“And the thing I like most about this business is I spend all my time with my family,” he said.
His son and daughter have been helping build floats since they were 5. During a reporter’s recent visit, his son was building a new frame; his daughter was decorating a float for this week’s parade, and his wife was decorating signs in the glitter room.
And having built floats for Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio Pride parades, Watt said he has noticed something about Dallas: “Dallas is organized and efficient — at least from my perspective.”
Yeah, we’ve been accused of that before.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 15, 2017.