Lighting the way

Local woman creates impromptu lighted car parade to brighten Sebastopol’s holiday
Lori Jay has always enjoyed lighted car parades like the tractor parade that happens each year in Geyserville.
“I just knew that this year, there wasn’t going to be anything like that because obviously we can’t gather in crowds, and Sebastopol doesn’t have anything like that anyway,” Jay said. “And I just thought, ‘You know what, what a great way to just bring cheer to people and get people in the spirit.’”
News of the Sebastopol lights parade, which happens tomorrow night, Dec. 16, just hit social media, but Jay has actually been working on this plan for a while.
“I’m hoping to have a minimum of 10 cars. I have at least that many people signed up,” Jay said.
She’s also spoken with the fire and police departments and hopes they’ll be able to add one or two lighted vehicles to the parade as well.
The parade will start on Belle View Avenue at 6:30 p.m. and wind its way all over town, finishing up at Fircrest Market.
Jay said she did very little marketing for the event because she didn’t want to attract lot of people from outside of town. She spread the word on Nextdoor and didn’t put it on Facebook, but it’s hard to keep a good idea on the down low and it ended up on Facebook anyway, shared by others.
“I want it to be successful, but I also didn’t want to bring so many people into our community that now we’re being unsafe and we’re creating issues for our police department,” she said.
Jay has already started decorating her car.
“I already decorated my jeep — the spare tire on the back is decorated with Christmas lights — and I’m going to decorate more for tomorrow night,” she said.
“Who knows, maybe next year, we can do it again,” she said, “It’s just a simple little thing that I thought might perk everybody up, given what everybody’s been going through this year.”