↑ Upside

• Parade-viewing turf wars give onlookers chance to feel better about own life choices
• What else would we do with all these damn flowers?
• Fleet Week seamen jokes still not stale
• Every real city needs that thing locals pretend to ignore
• C’mon, not like Royal Canadian Navy was doing much else
• Commemorates that one time Pettygrove seduced Lovejoy on a bed of roses
• Has improved every year since legalization

↓ Downside

• Technically, all those roses are withering and dying
• Budweiser Clydesdales still count as celebrity appearance
• Thorns definitely metaphor for lack of affordable housing
• Ground zero for pre-summer teen breakups
• Jacobite factions refuse to recognize Rose Queen
• No human sacrifices
• Royal Rosarians: totally failing to be a truly sinister secret society
• Roses really smell like poo-poo-oo