Everybody Loves a Parade

Last night, Wife and I took a short trek up to the Central Park West area to see the big balloons all ready to be walked down Broadway. The balloons were…big. I was absolutely shocked to see the masses of people crowding the streets to catch a glimpse of the tied down balloons. I have not heard an official count on the number of people who were there, but it was definitely in the hundreds of thousands (if not a million or more).

Probably the most entertaining part of the evening was watching Wife digress into a four-year-old. As we approached the Scooby-Doo balloon, wife yelled out, “Scooooby-Scoooooby-Dooooooo!!!” Immediately, hundreds of children around us began picking up the chant (I have no doubt that their parents were eternally grateful). A little later we walked by Ronald McDonald, where there was also a huge balloon of an ice cream cone. Wife gleefully screamed out, “Ice cream!!!!” – again, Wife was a trend setter for the children around us (the parents loved us).

Earlier in the week, I spoke to a friend at Law School who mentioned that he and his wife would be coming out to see the balloons. I casually remarked, “Maybe we’ll see you there.” He just stared at me. Now I understand why. I expected a lot of people, but I didn’t expect the huge masses that we experienced.

The Macy’s parade today has over 3,500,000 people lined up on the street to watch the balloons float by. To put that in perspective, that is approximately the number of people who live in the state of Oregon. There were probably more people bundled up on Broadway than live in Oklahoma. As a matter of fact, more people lined up on the street before it was light out to watch this parade than live in about twenty-two different states. That’s a lot of people.