Mummers see an efficient future

If New Year's Day is the time to begin making salubrious changes in life, then the Mummers are off to an excellent start for 2009.

(Before we proceed: Just in case you read that too quickly, that word was salubrious, not inebrious.)

Thursday's parade proceeded more efficiently than it had in decades, reported Leo Dignam, the city's deputy commissioner of recreation and Mummers Parade director.

"To me it was the best one," Dignam said yesterday, "because it was entertaining and as concise as it's going to be."

Since 1901, the city's star-spangled, hoop-skirted, sequined, feathered and grease-painted hordes have indecorously spent Jan. 1 dancing, marching and playing brass and strings from South Philly to City Hall.

For anyone who has overslept lo these many eons, the spectacle that is the Mummers Parade is difficult to explain. Think thousands of (mostly) straight, (largely) working class, white Philadelphia guys channelling gay pride day, Mardi Gras and Liza Minelli in Vegas. But while the parade's creative juices have never ceased to impress, the crowds willing to stand in bitter cold to get a glimpse have dwindled drastically over the last 20 years.

The parade, many people felt, had grown self-indulgent and long-winded.

Crowd-pleasing, however, was not why the Mummers shifted into a higher gear this year. The motivation was money. Or, more precisely, the lack thereof.

The city is broke. In November, Mayor Nutter announced that he had to cut the Mummers out of the budget. But since the change came so late, the city gave the paraders a last-hurrah gift of $300,000 to cover police, organization and clean-up. Any costs over and above will be billed to the Mummers.

Time was literally money, so everyone agreed to get the job done faster.

To that end, the Mummers gave two fewer performances along the route - four instead of six. They also honored a strict schedule so that each competing team gave its final blow-out show before the judges' grandstand and then quickly exited the public stage.

The result: Start to finish, six hours, 20 minutes.

According to Dignam, that was three hours faster than last year (nine hours, 18 minutes) and almost half as long as the pokiest parade on record: 1996, 11 hours, 24 minutes.

"I loved the quicker parade," said Charlie Roetz, the 45-year-old captain of the Quaker City String Band. "You do get tired."

Roetz spent yesterday at the 160-member band's South Philadelphia club house, nursing a Rolling Rock and watching endlessly entertaining reruns of the parade video. The band placed second despite a nearly flawless performance. But Roetz won the top prize for captain. (This despite a major costume malfunction that kept him from peeling off an orange jacket to reveal a checkered underlayer at a dramatic moment in the show.)

The band adopted a farm theme, with corn on the cob, dancing chicks, and cows and a big red barn.

"Anybody here ever set foot on a farm for real?" Roetz shouted out to his bandmates gathered around the bar and eating homemade barbecue wings and cookies.

Silence. Snickers. Then one man shouted back, "Yeah! Field of Dreams!"

Roetz' 15-year-old son, known as "Chalie," danced in the show. At one point, he tripped and fell. That part of the video was replayed ad hysterium yesterday afternoon.

"Here it comes," band members called out. "Boom! Go Chalie!"

Chalie watched and laughed, shaking his head.

In the band's 78-year history, there have only been three captains. This is Roetz' first year in the role. He expects that the more efficient parade and the shift of financial responsibility back to the Mummers are the beginning of other major changes for the institution.

The tally for the Mummers' share of the costs is not final, said Dignam, but he expects it will be around $50,000. The Mummers have already started fund-raising for next year's parade, which they will have to pay for entirely.

Roetz recalled that during the Depression, the city also had to cut off the Mummers. Then he showed framed black-and-white photos along the clubhouse wall, where crowds in the 1950s and 1960s packed the sidewalks all along the parade route.

"Since then, we've been de-evolving in a way," he said.

The club's complicated props - including hay-flipping machinery - are marvelous to behold. But they are cumbersome and block the fans' views, and cater more to the judges than the people on the street.

"I think," Roetz said, "we may have to move away from the props and make it a parade again."