Pride Parade comes to life inside featureless waterfront warehouse

There’s nothing special about Pier 54 from the outside.

The standout features are a mostly empty parking lot off Terry Francois Boulevard, a metal chain-link fence, and a cavernous, yet unassuming warehouse sitting on the waterfront. Near the top of the tan warehouse’s facade is a white sign that reads “Pier 54” in corporate red block print.

You’d never guess that inside that structure is the birthplace of The City’s artistic and hulking centerpieces for its largest celebrations.

For the last 12 years, Pier 54 has been headquarters of The Parade Guys . The company designs and handcrafts every float roaming through San Francisco streets during The City’s biggest parades , including Chinese New Year, Juneteenth and the Fourth of July. They’ve also created the floats for the San Francisco Giants and Golden State Warriors championship celebrations.

But perhaps no festival lets Parade Guys owner Stephanie Mufson and her team of artists flex their imaginative muscles more than the San Francisco Pride Parade .

“Any time we get an opportunity to really be creative and push our boundaries, either in technical skill or in terms of content and context, it’s fun,” Mufson told The Examiner. “I love Pride because it’s bombastic and colorful, and everyone tries to show up being their most wild and wacky selves.”

For weeks now, Mufson and her cadre of artists, designers and craftspeople have worked tirelessly at their Mission Bay studio to build the 15 floats — between 20 feet and 35 feet in length — that will be showcased on June 30 during The City’s Pride parade, during which upwards of 1 million people are expected to cram onto San Francisco streets.

“What makes Pride so special is it’s such a celebration of vibrancy, uniqueness and personality,” Mufson said, with tools whirring in the background. “It’s an embodiment of modern characteristics and modern ethos.”

Mufson took The Examiner on a tour inside the warehouse-turned-atelier for both a preview of what’s to come during this year’s Pride parade and a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring the floats to life.

“Be careful where you step,” Mufson made sure to say at the outset, gesturing towards the paint-splattered ground scattered with buckets of paint, loose tools, electronic cords, wood chips and oversized letters covered in silver glitter, ready to be fastened to floats sometime in the next few days.

On this day, workers were busy building and sculpting colorful cartoonish renderings of iconic San Francisco buildings for the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s float, giant dice and poker chips for Graton Rancheria, a huge ceramic pot for Williams Sonoma, and a massive, glittering disco ball for Gilead.

Mufson said she is particularly excited about the return of the Tonga Room float, which debuted last year and honors the Fairmont Hotel’s historic tiki-themed bar. This year’s Tonga Room float will feature a gigantic pineapple, a tiki hut and multi-colored tiki cocktail glasses just like the ones the restaurant serves.

“I love how vibrant the colors are,” Mufson said. “They’re not shying away from really vivid, saturated colors. I mean, it’s Pride — we should all do that”

“The float captures the flavor of San Francisco,” she said.

The process for building the floats — which are made from a combination of recyclable foam and plywood — generally involves a give-and-take between Mufson’s team and the organizations and companies they’re working with, which include city agencies such as the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and major tech firms such as Genentech and Prometheus.

Mufson said that some companies, such as Pinterest, have creative teams that can do a lot of the heavy design lifting. Others need more guidance.

“Some of the groups, all they want is their big logo,” Mufson said. “I always make sure that they understand that people are here for a celebration. We can see billboards on the highway.”

If Mufson and her team need any inspiration from parades past, they don’t have to look far. Chunks of old parade floats are everywhere inside the studio, whether on shelves, hung on the walls or just sitting on the floor. They’re as common as books inside a library.

On one shelf, you will find stacks of large Chinese coins, a glittering dragon head, giant Coca-Cola bottles, porcelain sheep and a nutcracker, just to name a few of the items.

Most of the dragon sculptures, which were dispersed all throughout The City for Chinese New Year in February, are now sitting idly in the middle of the studio.

The space isn’t big enough to contain all the parade artifacts, either. On the dock just outside the warehouse are a spray-painted rainbow jukebox from last year’s Pride parade and the remnants of a blue-and-gold Bay Bridge from the Golden State Warriors’ Juneteenth parade float last year.

Mufson, an East Coast native, said she moved to San Francisco in 2004 shortly after graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She said she has no plans to ever leave.

“Who could complain about this?” Mufson asked, pointing to Pier 54’s view of San Francisco Bay and the adjacent Chase Center, the construction of which she said she watched from the ground up.

The Parade Guys have five full-time employees. The rest are part-time workers, many of whom are students or recent graduates of the School of Industrial Design at Mufson’s alma mater, San Francisco State University.

Mufson and her crew are in the thralls of their busiest season. In addition to San Francisco Pride, the team works on Pride parades for multiple cities through the state — including Los Angeles and San Diego — which come right on the heels of creating The City’s Juneteenth parade floats.

Mufson said she hasn’t had a day off for nearly two months.

San Francisco Pride and Chinese New Year are the company’s biggest and most labor-intensive parades of the year, Mufson said, with the floats generally taking around a month to build.

When told that doesn’t seem like a long time, Mufson responded, “No, it’s not.”

But, she said, the “blood, sweat and tears” are worth it when she can take a step back on parade day and watch the floats roll through busy streets, invoking cheers and joy from swarms of celebrators.

“It’s very gratifying,” she said. “Sometimes you make something and you go ‘Great, it’s done.’” But there are moments — like our disco dragon from Chinese New Year — where seeing it not only met my hopes and expectations, but elevated above them. Those are those moments that you’re like, ‘Yes!’”