Ocean City’s annual tribute to humor — the 29th Doo Dah Parade — starts at noon today, and leading the fun will be grand marshal Peter Funt.
Funt is son of “Candid Camera” founder Allen Funt and a former host of the same show.
In the same week he accepted the invitation to come to Ocean City, he also received a call that TV Land would air a revival of the show starting this summer. At a press conference on Friday morning, Funt, of course, attributed his good fortune to the Doo Dah Parade.
Having reached Ocean City’s Port-O-Call Hotel only at 3:16 a.m. after a day of travel when “everything that could go wrong did,” Funt said he already was mining the situation for humor.
Perhaps we’ll see on hidden camera a taxi pulling up to an unmanned tollbooth (just maybe a little like the Garden State Parkway Exit 30 tollbooth in Somers Point) that takes only six quarters.
“It’s important to laugh at the world around us,” Funt said.
That’s the message he tries to remember as he pulls hidden-camera pranks on the unsuspecting (are they going to be able to laugh along with everybody else?). And that’s the message of today’s Doo Dah Parade.
Ocean City Public Relations Director Mark Soifer created a local version of a California event in the early 1980s. The event has grown into an early-season weekend dedicated to getting outside and having some fun.
“It’s one of our signature events, and it means that means spring is here,” Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Michele Gillian said.
The parade starts at noon at Sixth Street and Asbury Avenue. It runs through the downtown shopping district on Asbury Avenue and takes a left on 12th Street. to the Boardwalk. The parade ends at the Ocean City Music Pier (between Eighth and Ninth streets), where all invited to smoosh shaving-cream pies in the annual Pie-Asco.
Later on Saturday, at 2:30 p.m., all children are invited to participate in a free Easter egg hunt on the beach between 11th and 13th streets. The event is sponsored by the Boardwalk Merchants Association.
