How Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Works

Published Nov 12, 2020, 10:00 AM

For almost a century, Macy’s department store has kicked off the holidays in America with a grand parade. And when you march thousands of clowns, lip synching celebrities, bands, and giant balloons through New York things get remarkable.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's out there dressed as a turkey dresses a kilgrim weirdly and uh that makes us of course. Stuff you should know. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade edition. That's right. This is an episode we've wanted to do for a while and there's a lot here. It's it's really pretty interesting. Do you watch, By the way, I'm just curious too, if I missed one, I would just be in Shamble's crime. I love the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for sure. I don't think I've ever watched one, really, Chuck, man, you I'm really surprised, especially in the eighties too, that you didn't watch it back back in the day. Yeah, it's it's great, man. It is a very fun thing to watch. It's like full of glad tidings and cornucopias, pumpkins and stuff, and it's great. I mean, I feel like it's on at houses that I go to, so it's not like I don't have never seen bits of it, but I've never like popped the popcorn and sat down and be like, I get my parade on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, some people do that weirdos. But for the most part, it's meant to just kind of be seen as you see it, you know what I mean, Like you'll you'll see some of it and then while you're making your trimmings and stuffing. Yeah, or you can sit down and watch bits of it. But if you sit down from nine to twelve, I'm quite sure there are plenty of people out there who do do that. Um, but there, you know, for the most part, it seems like something you just kind of watch here there, you know. And I know we talked about it at some point because I did tell the story about Emily and I going to We were in New York every Thanksgiving a couple of times, and both times we went the day before to watch the balloons being blown up. Yeah, that's a lot of fun. That's an event in and of itself. Inflation Day is what they call it now. Yeah. It's really a good time and just little kiddos everywhere. And I can't wait to go back with my daughter one day once uh, once it's safe to do so. Yeah, And one of one of my friends Molly. Um, she worked for Macy's for a very long time. Okay, well, Molly has been in the parade. This is going to be her fourth time as a matter of fact, And she said some of her best member I was texting her about asking her some questions, and she said some of her best memories ever were formed because everybody is just in the best mood and watching the parade and you're just marching down the street waving and everything. She said, it's just amazingly cool. Yeah, and I think can we go ahead and drop the fact of the episode for me since you said that? Okay, does that make you nervous? Yeah? Which one? Well I never knew this, but you know, except for the performers and you know, the the host and stuff like that, everyone you see in that parade is worked for Macy's. Yeah. Or they're a friend or a family member of a Macy's employee. Yeah. I never knew that. And I'm sure like a straggler might get in there, but it is. It is largely Macy's friends and family and employees. Yeah. So, and that's actually um to kind of get into the history of this. That is a tradition from the very beginning, so like the first ever Macy's parade wasn't even a Thanksgiving parade. It was called the Macy's Christmas Parade, even though it was on Thanksgiving. Still. Um. Back in Um there were a lot of recent immigrants to the United States from Europe who were working for Macy's who said, Hey, we've got these parades that kind of celebrate things over in Europe. We should start doing one here. And they actually led to the first Macy's Thanksgiving well Christmas Parade, And so all the clowns and the cowboys and the people pulling the caged wild animals, um, they were Macy's employees, and has always been the case ever since then. Created by immigrants to the United States. Everybody, yes, rich American tradition. I love it. So except for a three year break during World War Two, they have been launching this Thanksgiving Day parade for ninety six years. Uh. It is morphed and changed over the years from sort of a small thing to a very big thing to an event, one might say, an entertainment event. About quarter of a million people showed up on that first one, and I think, what is it like three and a half million people now? Go in person. Generally, Yeah, and we should say generally traditionally. We gotta qualify with that because the parade, thanks to the paint pandemic, is going to be different, and we'll talk about it. But like, yes, under a normal year in the last like decade or so, three and a half million New Yorkers or people show up on the streets of New York to watch this thing, and then like fifty million more watch it on TV. Amazing, so quarter of a mill at that first one, um, ads read a marathon of mirth is coming to this Macy's Christmas Parade. And it was about a six mile route in that first year, and it was it was pretty long for a while, and then they narrowed it down there like we can't go six miles anymore, this is getting ridiculous. No, it started in Harlem and went all the way down to Harold Square where Macy's flagship stories, which is where it ends. Like yeah, six miles and and on that first um, that first marathon of mirth, UM, like I said, they had caged animals that they dragged along and they did that for the first few years, UM, and then they realized like actually the animals. They're scaring all the little kids. They're not delighted like we thought, so they stopped borrowing them from the Central Park sero. It also wasn't much fun for the animals, I'm sure as well. Um, and so they replaced the animals with floats I think in nineteen twenty seven, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, And you know, that was a good idea that because they're like, what do kids not like? Are angry tigers? What do kids like? Are happy balloon type? Yeah? Especially when it's cold out you don't want your pants to be wet, that's right. By the mid sort of nineteen thirties is when the Christmas Parade really made the transition to the Thanksgiving Parade that we know and love, and uh, that's when pop culture started to be a thing and people, you know, Felix the Cat was a very first character balloon in ninety seven, and traditionally, UH, celebrities started taking part uh in about nineteen thirty four. I think Eddie Canter was the first big celeb who was a pretty interesting guy. If you want to look, come up old ban Joe eyes Eddie Canter. He so not only was he the first celebrity to take part. He's also the one and only celebrity to have a balloon based on him too. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised by that. Yeah, that that's the only one. Yeah, you'd think would have I don't know. I'm hoping that this really tips the scales in our favor, though, Man, that would be amazing. Mine would be mostly beard, you know, would be cool as if they made a balloon n of us as the thing with Two Heads with Rosie Greer and Ray Milan. Yeah, do you remember that movie? Sort of do? Like? Its like Ray Milan is like a terrible like horrible racist, like old rich guy who pays to have his head put on Rosie Greer's body and they have to get along the first deep fake I guess. I guess maybe so parade wise, boy, that's a that's a deep cut. Um, that's wise. He's shrunk, shrunk this thing down. Like I said to about forty three blocks that we see today, the balloons and the floods just got bigger and bigger. Of course, the rockets started kicking their way in in nine and then in seventies seven, uh, with the addition of Gene McFadden who was the macy Stay planner, the parade planner, that's when they started doing the big Broadway perform Mints is Yeah, Jim McFadden. She was from Texas and so of course everything is bigger in Texas. She injected that idea into the Macy's Parade, which was already like a big deal by the time she came along, but she really blew it up and turned it into like this, this incredibly huge event that it is today. And she also will see brought in sponsors to UM, which definitely altered the complexion of the parade for the better and the worst. Really, yeah, I think so. Um. They planned the parade for about eighteen months, so if you do the math there, there's about six months where there are two parades um being planned at the same time. Which did you imagine? Yeah, I bet you. It's pretty sigmented. Though it's confusing. I would be totally bald, I think if I were in charge of that. Uh. And then last year in nineteen it was the nine parade. They had twenty six floats, sixteen giant helium character balloons, and forty heritage and novelty balloons, and eleven marching bands. Yeah, that's a that's a lot, um, I mean, especially up from four horse drawn floats to you know where they've got now twenty six and those those giant character balloons, those are the ones you always see. But in addition to those, there's all those other balloons you mentioned too. Like there's a lot going on in this parade. I mean it's a three hour parade for Pete's sake, that over two and a half miles. It still takes three hours or so much to it. Yeah, and it's interesting. There are a lot of balloons and over the years, Um, you know what happens is this parade acts like a time capsule. So whatever's going on in twenty nineteen, they're gonna try and feature like like very twenty nineteen things and over the years that is paid off. Um. You know, you've got your your timeless characters that are always there. But um, sometimes you're gonna have characters like in ninety nine when they had the ask Jeeves float or I'm sorry the balloon and uh you know that one didn't age so well. Asked Jeeves went away is retired, right, he retired for sure. But at the same time, like fortunate lyst somebody like videotape that and you can go on the internet now and see footage of the Ask Jeeves the balloon, you know, like it's kind of the point though, it's like it does transport you to ninety nine when you see something that exactly kind of was only or if you go on, if you watch the two thousand and eight parade, you'll see Rick Astley Rick rolling the parade, like he comes out and sings like never gonna give you up, And that is about as two thousand eight as it gets, you know, so like yeah, it's it's like these these time capsule and you can go watch and entire parades on YouTube right now. One of my favorites the parade, remember the Where's the Beef balloon? She was great and she was great, or that I'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler lady, yeah, or the them It's time to make the donuts guy, or ninety nine. I think they also had the Fight Club float, which was fantastic. It was it was just Edward Norton staring at his hand with a lie chemical burn growing on it. We're getting about all this, by the way, although I wouldn't be surprised if they wears the beef Lady might have. She was pretty big. She was very big. Uh, so maybe we should take a break and really get into these balloons after this. Okay, so um balloons, like we said, first, came about to replace those poor animals from the Central Park Zoo. Um, which was a good move. And there was a guy who really put the first stamp on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. His name is Tony sarg and this guy is just such an amazing character. He has his own American Experienced documentary about him. Watched that. I have not seen it. I saw a clip of it to make sure we were pronouncing his name correctly. How is it good? Yeah, it's good. It's short and sweet. Did you see the beginning part, that little stunt he did about the sea monster. Yeah, it's pretty great. And I mean that was that was a Macy's Day float. I mean, it wasn't a Macy's Day float, but it's essentially what what it was. I think it was originally and he borrowed it. I'm pretty sure it was used in the parade and he repurposed it. So so I guess for those of you the million of you who don't know what we're talking about. This guy Tony Sarry. He was a puppeteer, a designer, and he was responsible for creating the first floats and balloons in the Macy's Parade. Um. He was also a bit of a prankster, and he took one of these a sea monster balloon from the Macy's Parade and had it come ashore on Nantucket as like a sea monster. It was like this early, like nineteen thirties prank. But he was just this whimsical, great guy who really kind of took this you know, hum drum parade and turned it into like a major annual event for the first time. Yeah he was Uh, he said he was a puppeteer. He is the father of American puppeteering, so very big figure in puppeteering in the United States. Um, and yeah he's he's what really I think I think it was basically in the history of the parade, you can look at Tony sarg and you can look at Gene McFadden is kind of being the two people that really injected the most. Uh. I don't want to see enthusiasm because everyone's always been enthusiastic. Yeah, magnificence, it's the Sorg McFadden effect. It's a good band name. Uh So in nineteen eight they had a little promotion. It's kind of funny to look back on these promotions over the years and little things that you try that don't necessarily work out, But this was one of them. They said, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna release five balloons, like release them and they have slow release valves, and they're going to just sort of float around the country and get lower and lower and lower, and about a week later, they're the land. And if you gather this thing up, travel to New York City and bring it back to Macy's. I guess, could you bring it back to your local Macy's. I wonder I think you had. I don't know. Anything I say would be a guess. Okay, but you bring it back to Macy's and you get a hundred bucks. And uh That ran for four years until a dangerous thing happened, which was people started using their airplanes to try and go catch these things. And they said, you know what, let's we did it for four years. Maybe we'll just kind of trim that down now, yeah, I think it was either Civil Air Patrol or Tuskegee Airman episode where we talked about like that was about the time when flying was like this cool new thing that people were trying, and they were also dummies, so they would do horrible daredevil stuff like that, which you know that is to Macy's credit that they stopped doing it rather than they're like, yeah, let's see what happens, let's keep this going. Have you ever been to that Flagship store I have? They have like the original escalators in there. That's a that's all I can think about when I In fact, sometimes I'll go to New York and I will ride that wooden escalator just to do it. It's so cool because if you look through like the the gap between the handrail and the stairs, you can see the army of monkeys cranking the levers to make the thing go up. No, the monkey poop. Um. So all right, thanks to our buddies at Mental Flaws, we know that. Um. How these balloons are done these days, Uh, they are hand drawn at first, which you might, you know, kind of assume, and it's kind of cool how they used to do it. They used to create an actual model and immerse it in water to see how much to kind of calculate how much helium they would need to float this thing. UM Today you can use just math and science and computers to do all that and figure it out. But you still start with that pencil sketch. Then you UM submit it to a three D modeling soft where you're gonna fine tune it, and then you're gonna three D print a few of these things. They probably do a bunch, because I would want to take one home, but they print a couple of them to use UM. One to use that the actual hand paint to say like, here's how it's supposed to look like every part of it is painted exactly right. And then another one is a blueprint that's going to guide UM the cutting of the fabric and the heat ceiling of the fabric and everything like that. So the dimensions of the balloons very obviously according to what kind of character it is, but most of them are about five or six stories UM, about sixty ft long, about thirty ft wide ish, And they actually have to UM employ UH engineers and aerodynamic experts just to make sure these things do what they're supposed to do, which is float with with you know, uh, guidance from their human friends on the ground, which we'll talk about. But they don't want that kermit arm dragging along down behind them like it's a gimpy or something, or even worse like flying higher than the head. No, and let's it's supposed to. Well, sure if it's opposed to, but what kind of world is that? Well, I don't know. You know, he waves his arms about in a crazy way, and he does case he wanted to do somethun like that. I've been corrected. But they make these balloons. It's not just one big balloon. It's a bunch of different chambers. And they do this for a few reasons. One is because one like, let's say you do want that arm. Let's say it's uh, it's the where's the beef lady high fiving somebody. You're gonna want that arm higher than the head in that case, so more helium, less air. Um. And also if where's the beef lady which never existed, um, the balloon that is, like let's say her leg popped or something, the whole thing wouldn't go down. They'd be able to still float her. Yes, um. And that's the other reason to have it in chambers too. Plus I believe it's easier to make in different parts different components that you end up putting together too. So where do they do this though? They have what's called it's one of the most magical places on the planet from what I can tell from videos I've seen Macy's parade studio. And they used to have in a tutsie roll factory in Hoboken, which is a pretty new Jersey sentence. Um. And then they moved to a different part of Jersey Moonaki not to be confused with one of our former favorite words on the podcast, um. And they went from sixteen thousand square feet and the tutsie roll factory to seventy two thousand square feet in forty four ft high ceilings. So now they can like build these balloons and test them indoors in their enormous magical parade studio. Yeah, and here's another cool little fun fact um. Up until the eighties, they would repurpose the balloon sometimes, which I think is pretty cool and efficient. The Smile balloon, uh, the little Smiley Face from nineteen seventy two, just one year as Smiley Guy um was actually made from Elsie the Cow, which was Borden's mascot, and then after that repurposed into hot air balloon for Old Alban and the Chipmunks in their float. I love that fact too, pretty neat. They also have they have something kind of newer. I think it's started in two thousand five. Maybe it's called a Blue Sky Gallery, where they're like, how about you famous artists submit some designs for a balloon that you would make, And so there's like a Yayoi Kusama balloon. Um, there's a Cause balloon to Kashi Murakami balloon. But then the Balloon of Balloons, and I'm not sure how many times it's flown, but its first flying first flight was in two thousand and eight. Is a Keith Herring balloon. So you know, like his little kinetic figures. Of course, it's one of those, a black and white um kinetic figure and he's holding a red heart over his head. So I guess in that case you would want the arm above the head um. And it turns out that apparently Keith Herring had for a very long time wanted to design balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but died before he got a chance to. Yeah, he died of complications from AIDS in nine and I think this is a lovely tribute, um, you know, in two thousand eight, on the fiftieth anniversary of his birth to do this, I think, I think that was really really neat and it was wrangled by his family, his father and his siblings, which is really really beautiful. Yeah, and keep keep an eye out for the Keith Herring balloon because it makes another appearance later in this episode. That's right. So what you were talking about was UM Inflation Day, right, where people go and watch the balloons being inflated, and it's the day before into the wee hours before the parade UM and it's outside of the Museum of Natural History, Right, Yeah, it's really cool. It's um. I mean, don't expect to go and have just a very leisurely uh you know, it's pretty hectic, you know there. If you think there are a lot of kids at the parade, I felt like there were even more kids at the UH Inflation Day. But it's fun, it's relaxed that you walk around, the opposite of what you said, Well, no, I mean it's it's it's not like it's not an organized thing. That's what I meant by relaxed. You can just kind of wander about and um, how close can you get? I mean you can get really close. We got over. We have a great UM picture we recreated probably fifteen years later in front of Kermits, so we did a nineteen whatever. I don't even know the years, but they're about ten or fifteen years apart. That's yeah, it's good. And they use up something like four hundred thousand cubic feet of helium to fill all those balloons every year. Yeah. And if you listen to our helium podcast and we talked about the helium shortage, UM, we're actually good right now. There have been three major shortages over the years, and apparently we're doing great UM because of the pandemic. Oh, people aren't buying like balloons and stuff as much. That's what that's this article and that's what it said, and said that we're like flush of helium right now. Well, yeah, so apparently um Macy's used to be the number two consumer of helium in the world after the US Armed Forces. But apparently that UM is like that was true sixty years ago or something. Since the advent of UM medical imaging and aeronautics. They started to kind of use a lot more helium than Macy's, but still, I mean, four hundred thousand cubic feet of helium, it's nothing to sneeze at. No, And I think they drop about a half a million bucks on helium every year, don't they. Yeah, we should say. Apparently they don't ever release numbers, Like every number that I found, I guess is a guestimate, an estimate, or just a straight up guess Mark Mark Twain's three Most Hated Lives. So um the helium is actually, I think is when they started using helium, which is pretty close after the um the debut of balloons in the Prey in the first place, I think it was seven that they really started, right. Yeah, they used air at first and had people with sticks and it was kind of like a big marionette, which makes sense with Tony sarg But I think everyone was like, this is for the birds, man, we need to get some helium up in these things. And they've used helium ever since except for I think Night because of the first helium shortage, they went with air. Yes, And so because you have helium, that means that those balloons can float away, like if they're not held down, and so they're held by ropes on that inflation day when they're when they're blown up, they throw netting over them and then put sandbags on the net and connect the things to like support utility vehicles basically to keep them from floating away overnight. But then you know, you can't just keep it under a net during the parade and drag it along the ground. You wanted to kind of float up in the air a little bit. So they need something like eighty to nine handlers per gigantic balloon. That surprised me, and there's usually in this is under normal circumstances, up to three thousand balloon handlers. Again, all Macy's employees are friends and family at Macy's employees. That's right. If you want to be a handler, uh, and you're let's say you work in the cosmetics department at Macy's, they're gonna size you up and say step on the scale. You need to wait at least a pounds to carry these things. Uh. They're gonna check your I. D. To make sure you're over eighteen. Uh, it's like getting in the club that sort of they're gonna make sure you're in good health. And uh, if you want to, you can go to training, but I think only the team leaders have to go to the training where they're going to learn about aerodynamics and geometry and physics. Um, they're gonna practice, they gotta you know, they're gonna take you out to a field with a real balloon and and practice and say, as team leader, Um, you're gonna be in charge of this thing. You're gonna have a pilot and a captain and two drivers. And I think the pilot is the person walking backwards that you see on TV kind of guiding it along with a rope. Right, yeah, yeah, but while they're managing the balloon in that sense, they're not actually the leader. They they take their orders from the leader leader. Right. And there's also apparently an NYPD representative or a cop basically who's also trained in balloon handling that marches along with everything balloon too, but they're they're like highly trained in balloon handling. The NYPD is generally from what I understand, So, um, should we take a break. Yeah, I think we should take a break and maybe talk about some of the foibles over the years, because those are always fun. It is fun, alrighty, So we talked about foibles. Um, everyone watching this thing on TV in person loves to see a well timed, well honed parade that goes off without a hitch. But sometimes it's kind of fun to see a balloon going a little crazy because because of the wind, it adds a little excitement, It adds a little something else, a little air of the of the what is going to happen now? Maybe, and uh, I don't think people root for that, but when it happens, um, it's it's always kind of fun. And in fact, if you want to see a crowd react how a crowd reacts to an out of controlled giant character balloon in New York City, go look up Barney the balloon Macy's Parade and just thank me later. That crowd is screaming and thrilled. It could be in in or it could be in ninet. It could be but they're like, they're clearly it's that kind of scared where you're you're it's like roller coaster. It sounds like several hundred thousand people on the same roller coaster right then, Yeah, but that was this one year was a particularly bad year. Um, there have been people who have been, you know, seriously injured when balloons go wrong. Um. One of the first injuries came in UM when an off duty police captain was injured by a street light that fell on him when a sonic the Hedgehog balloon random mock and knocked the street light over onto the cop um and I think he like broke his shoulder something horrid like that. Yeah, there, that seems to be sort of a UM's not common because it doesn't happen that much, but it seems like lamp posting street lights, which really goes to show you how big and heavy these things really are. Uh seven, like you were talking about. Besides Barney the big wind gus that year about forty miles an hour. But there was a cat in the hat balloon hit a lamppost and uh it knocked it knocked this decorative arm to the ground and actually put a woman in a coma for about a month. And if you think that is interesting, the same lady, her name was Kathleen Corona. She recovered and she went on to uh be the same lady who's remember when that that Yankees pitcher Corey lidell Um crashed his plane into a building in two thousand ten that was her apartment. So that's um man, that woman has a specific New York strain of bad luck, I know. And it was a cat in the hat. So like I don't know how many lives does she have. That's a great she's she's on at least three now the third one. I think I might move. Uh, she may by this time. Um. And two thousand five there was a big incident with the Eminem's balloon that yet again hit a street lamp and UM knocked it onto a pair of sisters who were injured. And then we said before that the Keith Herrying balloon was going to make another appearance, and it did in that two thousand and eight parade. UM, because it's sideswiped the NBC broadcast and apparently I haven't seen it, but it's scared Al Roker and Meredith Viera and Matt Lowerd quite quite badly for a second there. M hmm. There's the urban legend is that it knocked UM the broadcast off the air, but that's not true. Not true. Because of these accidents, you know, they're always trying to make it safer. UM, Giuliani when he was mayor there. He appointed a task force to review the ninety seven cat in the hat balloon accident, and there were some rules that came out that said, um, you know what if it's uh, if the winds are twenty three miles an hour or higher, or if it's gusting thirty four or higher than um, you can't fly these things. Yeah, so think about that. That was a big enough incident. Again, a woman was put in a comba. It was big enough incident that the administration of New York City got involved in appointed a task force to figure out how to make this work. That says a few things if you step back and think about it. One like, these these balloons can pose a danger of just some extent if they if they go wrong, and they can under certain circumstances. But too the Thanksgiving parade is so beloved that they're like, we're not going to stop this, so we need to figure out what to do to make it less, to make it safer. New York's not a nanny state, no, which is funny because Mayor Bloomberg, who who created the soda tax, which is like the pinnacle of the nanny state in some people's eyes. He still wouldn't change things. He appointed his own task force after that Eminem's incident, and they still were like, we can just figure out how to how how high each balloon should fly. That's another thing we should do. So New York has taken steps. The City of New York has taken steps to ensure that that parade keeps going on regardless UM. And one of the things that they do that I saw, they have contractors that come through the night before and they take street lights and the arm the posts that go over the street that hold the street lights. They take those down on the parade route two and a half mile stretch of New York overnight, they take down all of those arms, and they take down other street lights, street lamps. They trim trees that might get in the way. And from what I saw in those incidents where UM, at least with the M and M balloon, if not also the cat in the hat balloon, UM, they got out, they went out of the way. I think they hand the handlers didn't keep them in line because of the gusts, and they went out of like their normal route onto a street lamper that that hadn't been you know, taken down. Should have gone to that training, I guess so. Uh so those are balloons. You've also got your floats, um. These floats really started when nine, like the big Spectacle floats Wind Float is under Manford Bass got on board. You know, this is another big, big moment. It was Manford Bass was like, you know what, we can only make these things so big because they have to travel from New Jersey to New York and we're not putting them on a barge. We're going through the Lincoln Tunnel. So he said, how about this, how about we figure out how to collapse these things and fold them down and then fold them right back up so we can get them through the Lincoln Tunnel and then we can just pop them right back up. And that collapsibility is what really changed the game in the nineteen seventies when these floats um, you know, got to be really really big, and you know it takes three to five months to build them, up to a hundred thousand dollars to build them, and it kind of goes the way of the balloons as far as the sort of starting out with the sketch and then eventually a little three D model. Yeah, they start out with architectural drawings from the sketch and then make the models, and then they start building and they make them out of like these things are like well died metal structures. They're like really sturdy, and they have to be because like the Santa Clause float, the one the current incarnation that was designed by a guy named Joel Joel napper Stick, I think n A P R S T e K. It's an amazing float. Like it's four small houses, snow covered roofs with Santa's reindeer, you know, swooping down the roofs and Santa is on the top of the sleigh, which you know, in in in reality is like three stories up. Um and it I guess it's it's enough to keep Santa's bowl full of jello, you know. Intact. They're that sturdily made. You've also obviously got tons of costuming going on. Um. They've got about five thousand costumes in their costume house. They're led by Kimberly Montgomery, and the costumes are estimated to be about worth two million bucks um. Just the clauses um each Mrs and Mr. Santa Clause. Uh, they cost about twenty grand each and they reside in a little specially made cedar chest all year long, and they add about seven hundred new costumes a year and then end up dressing about individuals a year in costumes, which is mind boggling. Yeah, and they do it in like a couple of hours. It's his four hours. That's uh, you really got to be on your game. I've been on the movie sets. That's yeah, that's very impressive. And then there's one other thing that a lot of people don't think about. Um, all of those costumes have to be washed and laundered after the parade, which I would not want to be on the wardrobe team just for that. You know. I bet you they sent that stuff out or maybe they have in house. Uh yeah, you know so. Um remember Tony sarg the amazing puppeteer, sorry, the father of American puppetry, Thank you. He was, from what I could tell, the first parade host. I don't know if that's supported by the facts or not, but I saw it mentioned in a couple of places, and I traced it back to one site that said it, and I can't find out if he was or not, but I believe he was. If not, the first parade host, one of the early parade hosts, UM because the pretty and pretty short order. Within you know, less than a decade, that parade started to be broadcast at least locally on the radio, I think, and starting in the thirties, and then very quickly after that it was broadcast in the forties and uh CBS picked it up and started broadcasting at nationally in the late forties early fifties. UM, and then NBC picked it up. And when you have a broadcast, you need to have a host. And so from what I saw, Tony sarg was was the first host, and then eventually as the parade got bigger and bigger, he was supplanted by more nationally recognized figures. Yeah. And for many years it was kind of kid friendly stuff. UM, not that they ever like you know, went Blue and like you know, Richard Pryor doing it or anything like that, but a kid friendly meaning like Captain Kangaroo and stuff like that. They did have Andy Kaufman like on one of the um yeah, one of the floats ones, but he was ironically very kid friendly at times. You're right, that's a dirty comedian UM. But that changed I think in the fifties Jackie Gleeson, who was certainly not kid friendly. Um, he was a host. And then basically it kind of just became like, you know, let's get as biggest celebrity in here as we can. And they got bigger and bigger, um, which of course, you know, there's a lot of eyeballs on this thing in person and at home, and so they said, you know what we should do, We should probably try like this then costs us a lot of money. UM, we should probably offset some of these costs by allowing people to sponsor some of these balloons. So they did that, and um, selling sponsorships has become a great way to alleviate those costs. Yeah, and we should also say that they are like adamant that that they're like, this is not we have never said that, So it's like, but it's all out there. A bunch of people have done a bunch of um number crunching and stuff and reported that it costs about or and a half million dollars to put on the parade um, and that they have something like nine million dollars in balloons and floats, in studio space and costumes. And then again, like you said, about a half a million dollars worth of helium. So that's a that's a bunch of cash. And when Gene McFadden came in and said, wait a minute, you guys aren't selling sponsorships. Let's get sponsors in here in the late seventies, that really changed everything. Um. And so now from I think CBS News, if not Bloomberg, somebody reported that, um, the rumors companies pay about two grand to sponsor a new balloon, which I have to say, these are like national, sometimes global companies. That seems low to me, don't you think so? Sure when you look at like advertising for the Big Game. Yeah, fifty million people plus another three and a half million in person, everybody's in really good mood, all looking at the same thing. That just seems like a bit of a deal to me. Um, which makes me wonder if it's way more than that in reality. And then CBS News also said that it supposedly drops to ninety grand after that initial year, because you know, you don't have the cost of designing and building it. It's just you know, it's been in storage for year and they just have to fill it up again. Yeah, and there's been a lot of celebrity appearances over the years. Um, some I think a little bit more. Uh. Some makes sense, some don't make as much sense. Yeah, I love the ones that don't make sense. I didn't get what didn't make sense though about Miami Vice. That's when I didn't get. So to me, I picked this. It's Miami Vice in New York in the fall, almost wintertime. It's the Big Apple Float, which makes sense, but it's also Miami Vice on the Big Apple Float and then the speakers blaring Glenn Fries you belong to the city. That's like one of the least holiday theme songs anyone's ever recorded. But it's a Miami my song. I know, but it just doesn't make any sense. Like just have Philip Michael Thomas on their waving at people. You know everybody loves to srico tubs. Why have you belonged to the city like a real down or like like song playing in the in the Thanksgiving prayed It just struck me as weird. And I loves the Miami by s theme. Would that be better? Much better? It's upbeat, it's energetic. Can you imagine you belong to the city just dragging you down on a nice. You know, Thursday Thanksgiving morning, while you're standing out there, you'd be like, get on with that, keep going. I don't know. I mean I'm living in a river of darkness under the neon lights exactly. Yeah. What else? Nine There was Buckar Rogers himself Mr Gil Gerard on the Ocean Spray Cranberry float. Right, I gotta put somebody up there, um, Andy Kaufman on the Rocking Lion float. So two facts. One, Andy Kaufman was the first celebrity to ever ride the rocking line, so instead of a rocking horse as a rocking lion. Yeah, okay, he was late, so they actually had somebody feeling I don't remember who until he made it, you know, onto the parade route. And then three that is one of the oldest floats still in the parades. When you see the Rocking Lion on the on the parade, you can be like Andy Kaufman went stood there. I know. There was I think like five or six years ago there was a bit of a kerfuffle with the rock band kiss Uh. You know the parade is that they can't they can't sing live. You know, that's just not how parades working. Give me lip syncing, and depending on how things are going and the weather and the wind and the sound, sometimes the lip lip syncing is better than others. Um. But I think the deal with Kiss was they got really kind of mad afterward, um, because they thought they were going to be on the Gibson Guitar float, which was this make sense, huge, um kiss worthy float because Kiss does the big, big thing, and they were like, Paul Stanley gotta pay play Gibson guitar up there. He's like, I don't play Gibson guitars and never have. I'm not gonna play Gibson. So they said, all right, well you can't be on the Gibson, but we gotta float for you, and they put him on. I mean, you can look it up from it was. It was a little underwhelming for Kiss, but the Ocean Spray Cranberry float, No, it was just a just sort of a flatbed with rails and it was not not the most impressive float. But they at least have bales a hey on there. No, it's where it's worth watching interesting camera work, Um, cutting way too the things that are not Kiss while they're playing it was. They were pretty pretty upset about the whole thing you you mentioned lip sinking. I mean like this parade is well known for bad lips sinking. Um. There's a great one if you go watch again that one of the guys from Little House on the Prairie, Deean Butler, is doing a horrible lip sinking job to don't fence me in um, and it's definitely worth watching. I think you said the starts of the mark, um, just go check it out. And then I guess John Legend was on, and you know, he's well known as a very very talented MUSICI and he felt compelled actually tweet out an apology saying like, hey, I'm sorry, I know I was lip sinking. I actually don't lip sync at my concerts, but these floats are not set up for concert quality sound production. They just can't possibly handle this equipment, and so we lip sync instead. And that's just part of the parade. Uh. And I guess he was forgiven because everybody loves John Legend. Yeah, the whole thing with live music at a parade. It works for this because it's televised, but if you've ever been to it, like a local parade where they have bands on a flatbed, it's just the worst because it sounds terrible, Well it sounds terrible. It's like, hey, do you want to hear seventeen seconds of a song? Right, because that's all you get, and you know the bands up there having a good time, but no one watching it enjoys it. So there was another great lip syncing episode in the parade that you can go watch. Just look up Melbourne Moore holding out for a hero Marvel Superheroes, and that was pretty great. And it's just weird. So Melbourne Moore is great Broadway talent. She was also a huge disco queen, right and for some reason, she's lip sinking to Bonnie Tyler's holding out for heroes. She had plenty of her own hits um but it's a cheap Midi Cassio version of holding out for hero. But then, bizarrely, chuck, have you seen this one? I did so pre Marvel like Cinematic Universe version Marvel, These puffy terrible costumes version Marvel Superheroes are all like gyrating as her backup dancers for some reason and helping her dance. And it was named by the Advocate magazine as one of the ten gayest moments in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade history and brother is it? I love it. I love the advocate. That's that's very fun. I think you should take the most infamous one though. Well, in nine yeah this wasn't lip sincing necessarily. But in ninety four is that the one? Yeah, this is when they got the Munsters. They got Fred Gwynn and al Lewis Grandpa and and Herman Munster to recreate their characters and dress up and ride parade float um. In fact, the Munster coach, which was great, and apparently Fred Gwynn just got ripped oar and drunk. He brought a brown bag bottle of liquor on board, said it was nerve tonic to everybody, and just got hammered and was like cussing at people, and he was cussing at the hosts, and the driver of the car just had to, like I think he was the show's producer, had to just crank the music way up so no one could hear him. Yeah. Can you imagine seeing a drunk Herman Munster shouting at you, shouting curses at you. And the hosts that year were longtime hosts Lauren Green from Bonanza and Betty Watt. I know it's like the two nicest humans, right, and he apparently shouted like the mother of all exploitatives at them and over the Munster's theme song, I love that Little Great God bless Fred Quinn so Chuck. If you want to go, um under normal in a normal year, if you wanted to go, there's a few things you should remember right there. Some insider tips. Yeah, it starts at nine. Um, you should show up as early as six, they recommend. Insider tips say west side of the street on Central Park West from fifty nine is a good place. Uh. If you are sleeping in and having mimosas, you may want to go down to the toward the end of the route and catch things because they're gonna end up there later obviously. Um. It's also less energetic further down, like the highest energy stuff is closer to the beginning from that makes sense, and herman much is just gonna be plowed by the time he gets to the end of the right exactly. So it's actually a reason maybe that's what you want. Yeah. Uh, they don't sell tickets. If you see people in seats at the end of the route that is reserved for Macy's friends and family. Uh, you know, bring your kids, but don't bring your strollers because they're just a nice mayor. You can bring a blanket if you want to sit on the curb. You don't have to burn it afterwards. Um, but Gene mcfatten said, you know what you do is bring plastic garbage bag because you can wear it as a raincoat, as a wind breaker. You can sit on the curb with it. You don't have to burn it. And uh at the end you can pick up a little trash and be a good New York citizens. Yeah. I thought that was pretty great. Totally. So for this year's parade. For parade, because of the pandemic, they're actually not going to have the parade wine two and a half miles through New York in front of three and a half million people packed cheek to jowl on the street. Um. Instead, it's gonna be TV only that's not gonna be anybody watching the parade in person. And the whole thing is going to just be shot and take place in front of that Macy's Harald Square flagship store. And apparently they're all gonna socially distanced to wear masks and it's gonna be pandemic riffic, but the show is still gonna go on. Yeah. I thought this was a good compromise. And uh, while you won't be able to go in person, I think people on Thanksgiving Day that love to watch it in full or have it on in the background, it'll still be there. That comfort food will still be there on your television. And hats off to them for figuring this out. Yeah, I agreed. So that's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about it, go on to YouTube and watch old parades and then watch the one this Thanksgiving. It's gonna be. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this Australian voting. Okay, hey guys, I was just listening to the Voter Suppression podcast. I thought i'd touch base. Where is that from? Is that from like a Wallabies corner accent? I don't know. It's a good one, yeah, totally. I'm just trying to to put my finger on it. The system we have in Australia works super well. Voting is compulsory, it's on a Saturday there's always a sausage sizzle going on, so you can get to snack as well. It's great. So this stops voter for old everyone is accounted for and well fed. And for people who say it should be a person's democratic right not to vote. If they don't want to, then they have the option of putting in a dummy vote or just getting a fine of about two hundred dollars. Most people in Australia are amazed at how silly the U S system is. It is and the US does have good podcasts. So there's something. I just went into something weird at the end there. I'm not sure what that was. Uh, and that is from Jackie Jackie, that's great. Um, yeah, I was really I didn't realize that other countries have compulsory voting where you're eighteen, you're automatically registered just from turning eighteen and then you have to vote in every election from that point on. I love it, and um, thank you for Jackie in Yeah, it feels so weird too, for to do the opposite of trying to not to get people to not vote, you know, doing the opposite. That seems right. Yeah, I agree, And as it turns out Jackie is a is a pretty prominent Australian artist, Is that right? Oh? Well, thanks for listening Jackie. Hopefully we've had some influence in your art and that it wasn't one of your darker periods. If you want to be like Jackie and get in touch with us from your home country, uh that Chuck might do an accent of we would love that. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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