The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings
you the secret history and little known facts behind your
favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more. We are your
inflatable cartoon characters of Info. Nope, your festive float riders

(00:23):
of facts, Nope, your department store divas of details. Giving
thanks for each and every one of you tuned in today. Nope.
My name is Jordan run Tug. No, come on, those
are all good? Now? Those were all solid?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Nope, every single one a miss? How would you have
done that?

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Not at all? I'm Alex Igel.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Why do you care about the Mazy's Thanksgiving Parade?

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Jordan? Well, I'll tell you well. I had a whole
intro written that I was going to tease that, but
I guess I'll go right into it now. You know why.
In the recent episode, I think it was the candy episode,
we talked about how the super Bowl was one of
the last vestiges of monoculture that we yes, and I
think I would also include the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

(01:04):
on that short list. Unlike the super Bowl or even
the Olympics, it's an event that's purely based on frivolous fun.
And I see the Thanksgiving Day Parade as a descendant
of variety show vaudeville, which is largely extinct in twenty
first century mass media. Okay, you don't have plate spinners,
you don't have acrobats, you don't have novelty acts like
that's gone. That's gone. This is the closest thing we

(01:27):
have that's part of our culture, is it.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, you're connecting Vaudeville to all the Ed Sullivan like
goofy stuff to the Macy's Day Parade.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I said, it's a descendants. I mean, there's nothing
else out there like this. You know, we got the
Dick Clark Rock in New Year's Eve that's basically a
lame halftime show. It's been updated and new oblivion. It's nothing.
You got the Fourth of July Fireworks, which are also
hosted by Macy's. That just doesn't have the same It's good,

(02:01):
it lacks the goofiness factory. You know, you got the
Boston Pops it's too stuffy. You know. The Oscars they
swing wildly between taking themselves too seriously and then also
revealing troubling truths about our society. The maces, Thanks Saving,
they parade. It just it makes no bones about what
it is. It's pure stupid, giddy, corny celebration, and I

(02:22):
think we need that. I strongly believe in that. And
you know, I'm not gonna lie. I've fallen off from
watching it regularly, but I still get happy when I'm
walking between rooms with casserole dishes or tablecloths on Thanksgiving
morning and I see that it's still on.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
I guess, I just I don't disagree with what you're
saying about those other aspects of monoculture, but I guess
I just like, is this really such a thing. I
would have thought, like football was morph being on Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Or really macus thanks Ev they parade. I mean, I
guess you know, I'll leave it to listeners to tweet
at us.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
No, No, I mean I remember my mom liking it
a good bit mine too.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
I never once went for it when I was in
New York, did you?

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Oh? No, god, no, Well it was either I was
always home first of all, right, But even if I wasn't,
I would like to see the inflating of the balloons
the night before, or that'd be kind of cool. That
seems a little less chaotic. But yeah, no, I mean
for the same reason I would never do the ball
on Times Square. Sure the people in the cold, No, yeah, well, yeah,
what do you think about this? I guess you don't

(03:27):
think about that. I don't think about it. It's Whitney
Houston on Mariah Carrey. I don't think about you at all. Yeah, yeah, looked.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, it does seem unbearably quaint in the sense of, like,
you know, let's get a bunch of large things and
put them down a street.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, it's hilarious that we still have that. Yes, it's hilarious.
They spent you know, it's for me. It's the same
reason that I love big, stupid musicals, because I find
the inherent joke of it all. Wow, somebody took a
lot of time and effort and money and got a
whole bunch of other people and convinced them that this

(04:04):
was a good idea, put all these resources into it
for something that's really kind of goofy. And I admire
that hutzpah. I find that idalism. I find it to
be both the best and the worst of being American.
And I think that that sums up thanksgiving perfectly. A
day of giving thanks and gratitude, but also a day

(04:25):
of absolute gluttony and waste. I think it's the same
I guess of America.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I guess I just don't see the artistry in it
in like the same sense as like, oh, my friend, no,
I kind of.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Got seventeenth pages.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
I'm no, I'm well. But to me, artistry is different
from craftsman show. Yeah, yeah, you're just The Macy's Day
Parade is an example of like, yeah, organization and craftsmanship,
but it's not like it's not a musical.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
There's at least some like emotional content to a musical.
I just I don't get the get You watch a
big spider man float down the street and you're you're
what transcended? Like, what does that tell us about the
human experience? I think it's the same as a firework.
How do you feel about watching a firework?

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah? No, fireworks whip? Well okay, but yes, I know
they whip, but yeah, it's the same experience of everybody
in one place looking up and going wow.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Maybe I guess I connect fireworks to something more primal,
which is just like the fire Yeah, the love of
blowing of things exploding. I don't like, well we got
some exploding. Yeah no, but that's like the first love
of man other than violence and sex. It's probably an alcohol.

(05:48):
It's probably it's gotta be top five, right.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Well okay, well what about looking to the sky waiting
for a giant being to come down and grace you.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Your reaching is what you're doing, and I respect it
because that's what you do. But no, I don't get it.
And I feel like if it went away, I would
go huh and then never think about it ever again
in my life once ever. And I didn't realize this
was such a thing for you, Like you turned this

(06:19):
around in like three days after being like, well I'm
getting into the Macy state. Red Just it kind of
came out of nowhere for me.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
I mean, don't ever underestimate my ability to just get
interested in anything and then spin it into something that's true.
That's true.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Okay, man, all right, I'm willing to go along with it.
I'm here for it. It's giving.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, I don't think you've read through this at all,
So I think this is bringing a lot of live react.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
It's giving thanks, it's giving balloons. Do you like balloons?

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Not any more than the average in the average bear.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
So you're not like a like, I'm not a lunar.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
No.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
So but if somebody like, if somebody like brought you say.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
No, I wouldn't. I'd say, well, now I got to
deal with this until yeah, till it. Yeah, it's like
a pad I didn't ask for. Well, I have to,
I have to take kind of I feel about flowers too.
It's like, well, I gotta take care of this is
going to die until it dies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, you brought me something a corpse to dispose of.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, here's a question I never would have thought. I
would have asked you on the show, what do you
think about balloon's Heigel?

Speaker 2 (07:33):
You know, I can take them or leave them. I
find it funny that it's an art form that is persisted.
I mean, I get, you know, there for kids, and
you can inhale the helium and it'll make your voice
sound funny.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Although I don't.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
I did have a terrifying I remember one time my
high school chemistry teacher was like talking about how helium
like paralyzes your vocal chords.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Oh yeah, I'm not good to do that as.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
It yeah, and then like as an aside, and she
was like, she was like, also, my husband is dying,
and that's what's happened to him. It's just like a
very very bizarre moment of being like sixteen and having
an adult just like drop like she was a bit
of a kook god lover. She's a water witch in

(08:19):
rural Pennsylvania when she was growing up.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
What is a water witch? Dowsing? You know? Dowsing? I mean,
you know that's sick. I would, but I don't.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, that's like an old folk magic thing where you
walk around with a stick and.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well the stick Oh yeah, I didn't know that was
what that was called.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, yeah, And she was like thought to have had
that power in Pennsylki.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Wherever. What are you looking for with the stick water?

Speaker 2 (08:46):
I mean it would be in like Appalachia and ok
Appalachia sorry, an Appalachia and such. That would be where
you would sink your well where the water witch told you.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
That's the hell of a racket. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Maybe that's why I don't like balloons, just because she traumatize.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Me in that good way. Uh yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
I don't give you bubballoons, you know what I like
pumpkin pie? Yeah, why didn't you give me seventeen pages
on pumpkin pie?

Speaker 1 (09:10):
I see it must more of a pecana guy, though,
I'll allow it.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
I'm not offended by that. At least you didn't say apple.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
I'm glad you said that. I don't like apple pie
and that's everyone's favorite. Not like it.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
I just find it so basic.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Well yeah, well that yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Do you just want to just shoot the for this
whole episode about Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1 (09:32):
We can we can work that. We could definitely work
at a secon can do a type five on pies. Well, cranberries,
I like what about that? I like cranberry sauce the
older I get. Do you like it out of a can?
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
I like that weird gelatinous stuff where it shakes out
of the can in one form and you can still
see the indentations of the ridges. YEA love that. That's
America to me, and that's beautiful. All right, take it away.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Well from we will have fun. I promise I sense
how anxious you are right now. We will have fun.
It will be okay. I never said we wouldn't. I
just no, continue going at the end of this episode. Okay, folks,
I'm calling out at the end of this episode. I
want to check in with you. This is going to
be so much more entertaining than you ever thought, because

(10:24):
here's the fundamental difference between you and I about how
we approach this series. I don't mind covering things that
I don't care about as long as the stories are interesting,
Whereas you, if you don't care about the topic, that's
it for you, and that's interesting to me. Okay. That's
why I was able to turn around seventeen pages on
the Macy's Thanksgiving they parayed in like two days. I've

(10:45):
never really thought much about it before this, and then
the more I dug into it, the more I found
interesting stuff. And that's beautiful, and now we get to
share that with people. That is what I am thankful
for Thanksgiving. That is America, and that is what I
am thankful for this Thanksgiving well, folks. From Macy's connection
to my beloved Titanic, to the time stray balloons nearly

(11:07):
crashed an airplane, to the sweat field bootcamp like life
of a Rocket to the hilarious pettiness between rival TV
networks for broadcasting rights, here is everything you didn't know
about Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Now, before we talk about
Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, Heigel, do you know the Ragamuffin Man?

(11:31):
Is it like a the rag and bone Man? No, no, no,
it's not. This is a truly bizarre, eccentric predecessor or
precursor to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade called Ragamuffin Day.
For many years at the turn of the century, there
was a Thanksgiving Ragamuffin Parade, which was an event where

(11:52):
local children dressed up as beggars and asked the adults
on the street for pennies, candy, and apples. As we'll
get to, not terribly dissimilar to Halloween trick or treating,
this very whimsical tradition has a somewhat depressing origin, as
so many whimsical traditions do. In the early nineteenth century,

(12:14):
poor Massachusetts residents started knocking on doors on the eve
of Thanksgiving begging something for Thanksgiving, and as a terrible,
tasteless joke, well to do children in the neighborhood began
dressing and tattered close and doing the same thing, mocking
these poor starving people, and then go mass yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(12:40):
So after Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving an official holiday in
eighteen sixty three, towns across the country held elaborate masquerade
balls and parades, and children mostly dressed as these ragamuffins.
It became a thing, and soon that became the dominant
tradition on Thanksgiving morning in the late eighteen hundreds early

(13:00):
nineteen hundreds, they just ran around the streets in rags.
They darkened their faces with soot. They modeled themselves after
Charlie Chaplin in the Tramp basically, and they'd ring doorbells
and always say anything for Thanksgiving. By the nineteen hundreds,
it was known as ragamuffin Day, and it wasn't exactly
popular with the city officials. The New York Times complained

(13:21):
in nineteen oh three, the practice of ringing all the
doorbells and demanding backsheesh is long past a joke, and
a nineteen oh nine Sons of Daniel boone hambook moaned
this must be a foreign innovation, for no self respecting
American boy would think of parading the streets dressed up
like a ragamuffin and begging a cent from each passer by.

(13:45):
And this is truly wild, especially mean spirited New Yorkers
began heating up coins on their stoves and throwing these
so called red pennies out onto the streets and roared
with laughter as these kids burn their fingers to try
to take them.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
This is really the most like American.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Possible.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Starts with mocking the poor, yeah, ends with becoming a
weird or I mean the middle ground. Is it becoming
a weird nativist dig where there's like a hint of
anti immigrant, a sousson of anti immigrant sentiment in there
by the Daniel Boone society.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Question mark yeah, which I haven't looked up. I like
the John Birch Society. I would only assume yeah, and
then yeah. Then burning the fingers of children yeah, well yeah.
By the nineteen thirties, articles appeared in the New York
Times calling for an end to the ragamuffin day tradition,
mostly because everyone found it annoying. There's a piece from

(14:47):
nineteen thirty six, Ragamuffins frowned the Ponds the headline. Despite
the endeavors of social agencies to discourage begging by children,
it is likely that the customary Thanksgiving ragamuffins wearing discarded
to pairrel of their elders with masks and painted faces.
We'll ask passers by anything for Thanksgiving. The New York

(15:08):
school superintendent sent a memo to his principles which stated, quote,
modernity is incompatible with the custom of children to masquerade
and annoy adults on Thanksgiving Day. Many citizens complain on
Thanksgiving Day that they are annoyed by children dressed as
ragamuffins who begged for money and gifts. Organizations like the
Madison Square Boys Club began throwing parades to quote discourage

(15:31):
the Thanksgiving ragamuffins, and they sported the slogan American Boys
do not beg.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
The sons of Daniel Boone were merged into the Boy Scouts.
They be like an early competitors that merged in, but
they used to dress in like the classic fringed buckskin situation,
which is so much bit not just but yeah, that
is so cool, so much cooler than a Boy Scout uniform.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Wow. So these parades began to kind of outstripped the
whole ragamuffin day tradition for popularity. And also the Great
Depression went a long way towards killing the ragamuffin Day
tradition because at this point, the answer to the question
anything for Thanksgiving was usually no. The Ragamuffin Day parades
were largely a thing of the past by the fifties,

(16:17):
having been out shown by the bigger, balloon centric parades
like Macy's, which had received a boost in popularity thanks
to its inclusion in the nineteen forty seven film Miracle
on thirty Fourth Street, which we'll talk about later. This
was also a period when Halloween was starting to become
a bigger deal, so the whole costumes door to door
begging tradition was absorbed into that. The loss of Ragamuffin

(16:40):
Day hit some nostalgic New yorker's hard. As one patrolman
told The New York Times, I remember how my fingers
got blistered. But they don't have any real fun like
that anymore. Tone, what are your thoughts on Ragamuffin Day.
I think we should bring it back.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
I mean, not necessarily the burning coin situation, but you know,
I'll walk around and bring people's doors for money. I
need it just as much as anyone everyone does. Or
corn bread or pumpkin pie or whatever you got. Yeah,
anything for Thanksgiving, you know, that's cool. It's like the purge.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
No, that's after Thanksgiving. Oh okay, okay, okay, okay. So
Ragamuffin Day gave way to parades on Thanksgiving and giving
its status, you would imagine that Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade
was the first of its kind in the United States,
but this was not the case. The oldest Thanksgiving Day
parade was actually founded in Philadelphia by appropriately enough, Macy's rivals, Gimbals.

(17:46):
Gimbles had a store in New York next to Macy's
flagship store in Harold Square, as you may remember from
the movie Miracle on thirty fourth Street, and prior to
Gimble's closure in nineteen eighty seven, their rivalry with Macy's
was the stuff of legend. Even gave way to a
popular phrase to brush off questions you didn't feel like answering.
Does Macy's tell Gimbals your grandparents or anybody ever? Say that? No? Yeah,

(18:09):
no mind either. Yeah. Gimbal's massive flagship store at Harold
Square was home to the Manhattan Mall, which some New
Yorkers may be familiar with. Until twenty twenty one. He
was hit hard by the pandemic, and now it's just
off of space. They paved down Gimbals and put us
off his space, but back to their glory days. The

(18:31):
Gimbals Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia kicked off in nineteen twenty,
a full four years before Macy's unleashed their own holiday
parade and the Gimbals thanks Giving Day Parade. It's still
going on, though it's gone through a handful of name
changes since Gimbles closed. Today it's called the six ABC
Duncan Thanksgiving Day Parade really just just rolls off the tongue.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Well, at least they've got the Massachusetts connection in there
with Duncan. That's got a warm macacus of the original
you know, well to do Massachusetts family who founded the
parade by mocking their poorer peers.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
And actually Macy's has its origins in Massachusetts.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Ah, the state that just won't stop giving such a
big heart. So oh, you were segueing that, and I was,
I was trying to help you. Yeah, and I rejected
your gift. I rejected your They could not hear his message.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
They rejected him. Uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Macy's founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, a native of Nantucket,
perhaps the original man from Nantucket of poetry and song.
According to legend. The store's red star logo was chosen
because it resembled a tattoo Macy had received from his
brief period working as a New England whaler.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Come on tattoos and whaling of trying to I'm mountain.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
That's cool. No, that's yeah, that's cool man. And I
wonder how many scholy square dick bags got that same
tattoo in honor of him on their way to punch
someone out of the drop Kick Murphy's show. Taking a
lot of shots at Boston tonight. Feels good, yo. Despite

(20:25):
this extremely metal backstory, Macy was kind of a failure
for a time. Between eighteen forty three and eighteen fifty five,
he opened four dry goods stores, including the original Macy
store in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts, in an effort to serve
the mill employees of the area. After they all shuddered,
he decided to try his luck in New York. His

(20:45):
original store was on sixth and fourteenth. He was on
sixth and fourteenth. There was an American Guitar center. But yeah,
there was a guitar center. There's a I think I
stole a lot from the Urban outfitters that was there.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
On the corner. Yeah, yeah, it's not there anymore. Now.
You know what's in that Urban Outfitters? Now, what's that?
A Titanic exhibit, which I keep trying to set you
up because there is a connection between Macy's and Titanic.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Anyway, then moved to Harold Squared, which is the classic
Macy's location as most New Yorkers and.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Tourists know it.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Following his death, however, the company passed through a series
of family members before being acquired by Isidor Strauss and
his brother Nathan, who had previously had a license to
sell china and other goods in the Macy's store. Isidor
and his wife Ida are interesting because they famously died
on the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
If you gotta die, you might as well do it famously.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Due to the orders of women and children, first, Isidor
was not allowed in a lifeboat. A friend wanted to
ask an officer about letting him board the boat, but
he refused to go while there were still women and
children on board. I had to refuse to leave her husband.
When he tried to persuade him to go, she replied,
we have been together for many years. Where you go
I go, and that is supposedly the couple referenced in

(22:02):
that shot of the old people cuddling together on the
bed as the icy waters take them in James Cameron's Titanic.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I think the whole scene's actually enacted in the movie too.
I forget. It's been a while, has it. It's been
since February.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Not historically accurate, but sad. In reality, they were last
seen sitting in deck chairs, and his body was later
recovered floating in the ocean. He is buried at New
York's Woodlawn Cemetery, along with an urn filled with water
from the Rex site. In tribute to Ida. The Strauss
Mausoleum bears the following Biblical verse from Song of Solomon
eight to seven. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can

(22:44):
the floods drown it.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
There you go. The Bible was wrong.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
If I'd say the waters succeeded water one Strauss's zero
feels like kind of a you to put that on
the on the gravestone, like.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
The water too. The fact that they actually had an
urn is not not a move.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I would have made. If I was a ghost slide there,
I'd be like, you put one on.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Top of me. Yeah, not wrong, man, they really, I
mean not to. I probably will cut this whole thing
because it's the holidays. But there really have been some
incredible advancements. And what to do with you after you die? Like,
did you know they can put you on a firework? Yeah? Firework?

Speaker 2 (23:32):
There was a company doing it, pressing you people into vinyl?

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Vinyl? Yeah, would you press yourself? Like what would you have?
Would you want to do the tree things? No? I
want to do the tree thing? Oh?

Speaker 2 (23:42):
What would I be pressed into? Yeah? Harsh noise? Yeah,
like maybe something maybe an istres ending, noibounten.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Or or Lulu? Would you do Lou read in Metallica?

Speaker 2 (23:54):
No, no, it can't be have lyrics. It's got to
be instrumental and it has to make people feel. Maybe
metal music actually has to make people feel like I
feel all the time, which is on edge and back.
And then they'll go, oh I remember him. No, I
was actually just no. Have you heard about have you
heard about the Infinity Chapel?

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Or like the so I told you we take this
to a place that made you happy? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Eventually, no, what is the yes? John Cage, who famously
wrote not wrote so much as conceptualized minimalism in a
big way with four three three, which is a composition
in quotes that is four minutes and thirty three seconds
of nothing. He has a piece called as Slow as Possible.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
And what it is is.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
A properly maintained pipe organ can sustain forever. What yeah,
if it just has air flowing through it and the
keys are held down, you know, as long as the
airflow never stopped. So I guess it's a composition. The
piano version lasts anywhere from twenty to seventy minutes, but
there is a foundation that is dedicated to putting on

(25:15):
a performance in Germany that will end in twenty six forty.
How would you keep the airflow going? I don't well,
I mean, I don't think human civilization is going to
last that long. But sandbags are held on the organ's pedals.
The performance started on September fifth, two thousand and one,

(25:39):
and it has oh good, yeah, it has rests involved.
The note last changed on February fifth, twenty twenty two.
And so what I want instead of like an eternal flame,
is I want like a like a delay pedal set
up with a guitar feeding back, so you just get
a self oscillated echo to pitched guitar feedback forever.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
That's oddly beautiful, I know, and some lovely. You're being sarcastic,
but I actually find that deeply touching because I was
just watching a thing on JFCA Assassination for the sixtieth anniversary.
I say, as if I don't do that every year
or two anyway, and was watching Jackie like the Eternal Flame.
That's a very I yeah, that's very touching. I like

(26:24):
that a lot, The Eternal The Eternal just like hit
the guitar.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, so he just wanders by every now and again
and just flicks a string and the amp is loud
enough and the delays maxed out, so it just starts
feeding back over and over again.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
I wonder if you could make a feedback forever if
you just hit it once.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
So not forir Well, you could use an ebo, which
was part of part of it, but the batteries on
those do need to be changed. So in theory you
could do it if you had it all kind of
rigged up to solar panels and it just sort of,
you know, in a battery to help it go overnight.
Trust me, I've thought about this. It's like the eternal
flame though, I mean, you have to have that hook
up to some kind of like pain, you know, propane.

(27:03):
Do you think it's propane? You should know this.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think it is. I know that it like accidentally
went out like some I feel like a tourist like
accidentally doused it once or something. It was like quietly,
wait how many times? On two occasions. Oh, inclement weather
caused the flame to go out for a second time
in March nineteen sixty seven. First, but first there was

(27:30):
the holy water incident. This is per mental floss. On
December tenth, nineteen sixty three, a group of Catholic school
children were visiting the Kennedy Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.
The grave site was temporary, a place for the public
to go grieve while the permanent memorial was being constructed.
Even so, the eternal flame was already in place, lit
by Jackie Kennedy on the day of the funeral. The
children managed to extinguish the flame less than a month

(27:53):
later while blessing it with holy water. Luckily, one of
the grave guards happened to be a smoker, and he
used his hip a lighter to reignite the memorial.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
This crusty old guy bending down flickless. All right, col
all right, I didn't see a thing. Wo wow, alright
where worry well? From death to consumerism the American experience.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Flagship Herald Square location of Macy's initially consisted of just
one building, but expanded through new construction eventually came to
occupy a whole city block, save for a small, pre
existing five story building on the corner of thirty fourth
and Broadway that was purchased by a rival of Macy's
and never to thwart their attempt at building the largest
store in the world.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
This rival had the largest store at.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
The time, so undeterred, Macy's simply built around the building,
which earned the name Million Dollar Corner when it was
sold for a then record one million dollars in December
nineteen eleven. Jordan, what is it now?

Speaker 1 (28:55):
What it's worth? What's in there? Now? Oh?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Now?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Now it's a sunglasses hut?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah that God love this country. Macy's does not own
it still, but they have leased the air rights and
put a sign shaped like a giant shopping bag on
the roof. Macy's became the world's largest store when it
opened in nineteen oh two, and it's a title it
held into two thousand and nine, when Guinness World Records
certified that the Accolade now belonged to the Shingsehi Centum

(29:21):
City department store in Busan, South Korea. At five point
eight four seven million square feet, Shinseia is practically three
times the size of Macy's, but it remains the largest
in North America, with its selling space adding up to
over twenty six acres or over one point one million
square feet. That was something I wanted to pitch to

(29:42):
I pitched to people at one point that they wouldn't
they wouldn't let me do, was see how long I
could live in Macy's.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Oh that's so, because it's like, yeah, I pitched a
lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
I don't I think they like that presaged the kind
of Logan Paul era of posting that they should have
let me try.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
That was literally my pitch.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
I was like, I'll just go into Macy's and see
how long I can stay in there uninterrupted, like I
was gonna hot. I was gonna scope out and see
what the security was for their closing routine. There's no
way they can lock down all twenty six acres. I'm
sure people have tried, but I would succeed.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
I'm sure people have succeeded. Yeah, that's also true. It's
probably motion sensors. Uh yeah, what were some other experiential things,
because you did a few that were like you did
the past life regressions.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
But I did the past life regressions post and boy,
I lied to that woman. I felt nothing. I made
it all up. I could remember her name, I'd call
her out right now. Uh, it's a crackish You're just
rotten the ground. There's no past lives in your body
or your mind. Then sorry, what was I saying?

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, So the land the building stands on has an
estimated value of between three and four billion dollars. Macy's
also boasts the world's largest shoe floor, with over sixty
three thousand thousand square feet containing two hundred and eighty
thousand pairs of shoes.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Quentin to hero must.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Love it there bah And speaking of shoes, Macy's was
among the first American retail stores with escalators. A number
of these century old wooden ones are still preserved in
the store today. You say, forty two forty two. Yeah,
and speaking of firsts, well, and speaking of constructions, and
speaking of firsts, Macy's was the first to introduce colored

(31:27):
bath towels to America in nineteen thirty two. Before that,
they had been kept separate. Before that, America had only
ever seen or imagined white bath towels. They also supposedly
brought tea bags and the baked potato to the United States,
and also when prohibition ended, the first liquor license issued

(31:47):
by the City of New York was rh Macy and Co.
This brings us now to the origin of the Macy's
Thanksgiving Parade. Though the first was held on Thanksgiving Day,
November twenty seventh, nineteen twenty four, it was actually called
the Big Christmas Parade You disingenuous.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Just before the parade.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
This was because the parade was designed to usher in
the start of the Christmas shopping season by showcasing Macy's
beautiful storefront and dazzling window displays. Those framed as welcoming
Santa to New York, which is an interesting bit and
why Santa always appears at the end of the parade.
It wasn't until three years later, in nineteen twenty seven

(32:27):
that was re christened the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and according
to the New York Times, the majority of participants of
this first parade were employees of the stores. This is
a tradition or condition that continues to this day. In
order to be involved with the parade, you must either
be affiliated with Macy's or be recommended by someone who is,
like joining the Freemasons.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Do you know Mason? No? I bet you doing? You
still know it? Are you a Freemason? You think I
would be, but I'm not. Had you pegged for a Shriner?
I do like the hat? Yeah, I'm the little cars. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Original parade, which began on one hundred and forty fifth
Street before ending at Macy's thirty fourth a one hundred
and eleven block six mile journey, and the floats at
this point were being pulled by horses rather than cars.
The route has since been shortened two and a half miles.
It now begins at seventy seventh in Central Park West,
but it still ends in front of Macy's. Approximately ten
thousand people watched Santa, who rode on a float designed

(33:23):
to look like a sled being pulled by a reindeer
to be crowned King of the Kiddies. Glad that one
went back to the drawing board, and then enjoyed the
unveiling of the Sour's Christmas windows. The display was titled
The Fairy Frolics.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Of wonder Town.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
I think I've been to that bar and it featured
marionettes of Mother Goose characters.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
That sucks.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, you don't really easily impressed back then, Huh.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
I see, And that's what I find so charming about
all this.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yes, is that?

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah? So it's a three hand made yeah, three analog huh. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Now you just go on TikTok and watch people die.
This is one hundred years later. We've made that progress.
Greatest country on Earth. This is partially why most of
the floats at this first year were nursery rhyme themed,
depicting the little old Lady who lived in Shoe, little
Miss Muffett, Red Riding Hood, and the rest. The procession

(34:18):
included with the New York Times called a Retinue of clowns, freaks,
animals and floats. You'll notice they said animals rather than balloons.
For the first three years of the Macy's Thanksgaving, they
parade animals with a big attraction of the day. The
Central Park Zoo loaned out donkeys, lions, tigers, elephants, camels

(34:39):
and bears, who were then draped in Macy's promotional pennants
and marched down the six mile trail of tears down
the majority of Manhattan. However, these animals.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Reportedly terrified children, and there are also reports of marching
bands having the dodge massive piles of elephant dung during
their trek. So in nineteen two twenty seven, it was
decided to replace the zoo animals with less threatening and
less messy balloon creatures. Although I've also read that these
big balloon creatures were easier for the crowds to see,

(35:10):
especially the short little children, so your mileage may vary.
It's been weirdly hard to nail down the first balloons
in the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but according to
my research, they included a dragon, a toy soldier, and
other animal shapes. The first cartoon character appeared in nineteen
thirty two in the form of a popular cartoon character,

(35:32):
Felix the Cat, and despite the fact that he's fallen
on a fashion in favor of Disney characters these days.
That balloon has returned to the parade several times over
the years for old time's sake. Mickey Mouse joined the
parade in nineteen thirty four with a balloon that was
designed by Uncle Walt himself, and that same year, nineteen
thirty four, the parade featured a balloon of the popular

(35:53):
entertainer Eddie Canter, who became I believe the first real
life person to be a Mora lies Via Mas parade balloon,
and I think to date the only other real life
person I could find who was turned into a balloon
was Harpo Marx in nineteen thirty three. The balloons had
sound effects, which meant that the flying twenty five foot

(36:14):
docs and barked, the massive flying pig oinked, and the
colicky kid balloon really cried, which is horrifying. Yeah, I
don't like that.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
No. Some of these old timey balloons, if you look
them up, are really freaky because it's they're genuinely scary.
There's things like a lot of two headed stuff, two
headed pirate. There's the Nantucket Sea serpent, presumably a nod
to the macy's founder's origin on Nantucket Pinocchio with supposedly
a forty four foot nose. I don't know how the

(36:50):
era dynamics of that would work. And then there was
also Bobo the Hobo. Yeah, you're gonna have some of
those in these early years.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, I mean, and the whole thing stems from the
rich mocking the poor, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
I'd like to read this description from an undetermined year
of the parade. I think it's nineteen thirty two that
appeared in the New York Times, which details quote a
human behemoth twenty one feet tall that had the crawl
under the elevated structure at sixty sixth them Broadway. A
dinosaur sixty feet long, attended by a bodyguard, a prehistoric
cave man, and a twenty five foot docks in that

(37:28):
swayed along in the company of gigantic turkeys and chickens
and ducks of heroic size.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
That's a good, bad, great band name. Yeah, how big
does a duck have to be a qualifies heroic? Labrador? Clydestone.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
I was gonna say Beethoven, Well it was a Beethoven.
San Bernard. I want to say San Bernard.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I think horse size. Though,
isn't that a reddit thing that they ask celebrities every
time they do ames? Would you rather fight one one
horse sized duck or one hundred, five hundred whatever duck
sized horses or something like that?

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah, okay, it's finding one hundred duck sized horses or
a horse sized duck. Yeah, okay, what about you? Probably
a horse sized duck because then you know where you stand?

Speaker 2 (38:16):
No, definitely, you know you know how many duck sized
horses I could just kick into oblivion?

Speaker 1 (38:22):
A hundred of them? Though? Yeah, you did take karate
and I've been jogging, so come on, they wouldn't I'd
like to ask a rock at this question. That's something
they get all the profiles on the rockets I read
Wall Street Journal. Really drop a ball on that one.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
more too much information after these messages.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Well, back to the ballurns now. This first year of
the parade, the balloons were filled with air and held
aloft by a support crew with sticks. They were called
upside down marionettes back then, but kind of semi jokingly.
But these days it's easier to think of a more
as muppets kind of. It wasn't until two years after
the balloons debuted in nineteen twenty nine that they began

(39:22):
to fill them with a mixture of air and helium
so that they floated. This kicked off a tradition that
has made Macy's the second largest consumer of helium in
this country, next to the US government. Uh. Yeah, I
I don't know if we're doing weather balloon in quotes
experiments or what, but yeah, the US government is the

(39:44):
largest consumer of helium in this country, more than Party
Central or Ie Party or whatever.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
The medical field uses helium, and diagnostic equipment such as
MRIs helium neon lasers are used in eye surgery. National
defense applications include rocket engine testing, scientific balloons, surveillance craft,
air to air missile guidance systems, and more.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
And I shudder to think what the end more is.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
NASA uses helium to keep hot gases and ultra cold
liquid fuels separated during liftoff of rockets. I guess ark
welding uses helium. Was that what the O ring thing was?
And challenger that was keeping the helium out of Oh buddy,
was it the mazy tanks type?

Speaker 1 (40:32):
I can't go from Challenger to Macy's thanks gimmick they parade.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
I need it.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
I need some kind of a stepic stone. Oh man,
all right, the Challenger Titanic, Macy's macy Thanksgiving they parade.
There we go, Okay, The parade requires more than three
hundred thousand cubic feet, well the volume of three and
a half Olympic sized swimming pools of helium to inflate

(40:59):
the balloons. The biggest of these balloons require twelve hundred
cubic feet, or approximately twenty five hundred bathtubs worth of helium.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
So that's pretty crazy. You don't hear that as a
standard unit of measurement that much anymore.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
What it's bathtubs? Yeah? Yeah, I think the jacuzzis really
put the kebaj on that. Helium's obviously a finite resource,
and the cost to fill the balloons is more than
half a million dollars. Now, in nineteen fifty eight, this
was a problem because there was a helium shortage, and
organizers of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade grappled with how
to continue without helium. In what seems like the most

(41:37):
complex solution imaginable, they rigged up construction cranes to hold
these balloons aloft, almost like a giant gallows or something,
and travel down the parade route admirably but also sort
of psychotically. The only years the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
were ever canceled were during World War Two between nineteen

(41:58):
forty two and nineteen forty four, and Macy's did their
part for the war effort by donating six hundred and
fifty pounds of rubber from the balloons to the government.
They considered calling off the Thanksgiving Day parade in nineteen
sixty three since JFK had just been killed the week before,
but they opted to continue to keep up the spirits
of the nation.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
The nation needed to heal with Yes with Big Snoopy.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Now, it takes roughly ninety minutes to fill each balloon,
so it's roughly ten hours to fill all of the
balloons used for the parade. This process begins the night
before the parade at a staging area near the American
Museum of Natural History at seventy seventh Street and Central
Park West, and this draws all manner of tourists and
locals to come and take a sneak peak the night before,

(42:45):
which I would actually if I were over here. I'm
usually in a MEP in Massachusetts with my family for Thanksgiving,
but if I was here, i'd like to see that.
That'd be kind of cool. Hilariously, it only takes fifteen
minutes to to flate one of those giant balloons. They
use the same method that everyone uses who's ever deflated
an air mattress. They just open up the vents and

(43:06):
lay on it in the street and fold it over
on itself. And there you go. And now for my
single favorite part of this episode, I am so excited
to talk about this. We mentioned the deflation technique. For
the first few years of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,
organizers didn't have a deflation procedure in place. Instead, from

(43:26):
nineteen twenty seven to nineteen thirty two, the handlers would
simply release the balloons into the sky at the end
of the parade, which admittedly must have looked pretty awesome, but,
as we will see, caused all manner of airborne chaos.
In this first year, they merely popped after reaching a
certain altitude. But Macy's didn't like this, so they strengthened

(43:49):
the balloons the following year, and introduced a truly bizarre
Willy Wonka like contest. The balloon fabric was printed with
the return address on it, and those who found the balloon,
or more realistically, had the thing PLoP down in your
front lawn, were invited to send it back to Macy's
and collect one hundred dollars reward. Now, the one hundred

(44:11):
dollars prize, this was nothing to sneeze at because this
was close to an eighteen hundred dollars value today. And
needless to say, it became a race to find these balloons,
and things got intense. I'd like to cite a December first,
nineteen twenty eight article from The New York Times in full.
The headline is four Macy's Balloons land. Four of the

(44:32):
five balloons representing grotesque figures and released at the close
of the Macy's Christmas Day parade on Thanksgiving have been
accounted for last night. Executives of the store said. The
fifth balloon, a fantastic Ghost, was reported as having been
cited moving out to sea over the Rockaways with a
flock of seagulls in pursuit. The first balloon to a

(44:54):
light was the sky Tiger. It came down on the
roof of a home of Sea Shepherd and Richmond Hill,
Law Island. Its arrival stirred the neighborhood to a tug
of war for its possession. Missus Shepherd's two sons ran
to the roof to obtain it, while neighbors and motorists
rushed up from all directions. The rubberized silk burst into

(45:15):
dozens of fragments. The capture of the early Bird balloon
was affected more peaceably. It alighted to the premises of
Missus Lena Stender of Mill Village, Long Island. The sky Elephant,
the third to be recorded, descended on a dock at
Fourth and Front Streets in Long Island City, and the
fourth balloon, the Hummingbird, was last seen in the East River.

(45:36):
It was broken in half and both sections were floating
with a tide pursued by two tug boats. So I
almost want to stop and read through a list of
these early balloons that determine which of these would have
been the most terrifying to have land in your yard.
You've got sea serpents, a giant docks, and a giant
hippo nearly rammed the newly completed Empire's state building before

(46:00):
heading out to sea. It was reported by a fisherman
one hundred miles out of Rockaway Point quote walking on water,
the tail of a one hundred and seventy six foot
dragon narrowly avoided shattering windows and several office buildings in Midtown.
But the horrors got worse for those involved in the

(46:21):
nascent world of aviation. In nineteen thirty one, when the
so called balloon Race was in its fourth year, pilot
Clarence E. Chamberlain, who it's worth noting, was the second
man to fly across the Atlantic after Charles Limberg picked
up a plane ride of sightseers in Brooklyn and was
flying over the Burrow when he saw a giant balloon

(46:42):
of Felix the Cat and another giant balloon of a
giant pig gliding over Jamaica Bay, which is a perfectly
normal sentence. At the suggestion of one of his passengers,
the pilot brought his plane parallel to the Felix balloon
and managed to snag it with his wing, as well
as lassoing the pig with some rope. So here's a

(47:04):
guy flying with a Felix the Cat balloon on his
wing and a rope that's towing a pig. Unfortunately, the
felix the cat broke free, but he succeeded in bringing
the pig down to earth, and he collected the prize
from Macy's word of his endeavor must have gotten out
because the following year, in nineteen thirty two, a twenty

(47:26):
two year old flight student named Annett Gibson flew her
plane directly into one of these balloons, a yellow striped
tom Cat, which was one hundred feet across. The fabric
wrapped around the left wing of her plane, causing it
to go into a deep tailspin, and she basically panicked
and shut off the ignition, thinking that this would prevent

(47:49):
fire when the plane crashed. When you're in a tailspin,
try to get out of the tailspin before just turning
the engine off and giving up. There were two hundred
and fifty feet from crashing into the rooftop of Queens
when her flight instructor intervened and they switched seats so
the instructor could take control of the plane. But the
cabin door of the aircraft, which had been opened to

(48:09):
try to lasso the balloon in, was still left open,
and Annette nearly fell out. Her foot got caught in
the safety strap and she was able to pull herself
back in, and the instructor saved them, both, seemingly violating
Darwin's law. But she would go on to become a
friend of Amelia Earhart, So I guess she didn't give
up on her flying dream despite that stupid, stupid choice.

(48:32):
Did anyone ask her why she did that? I don't know.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
I just assumed she was like woman crazy, like in
the in the like as in the fashion of the time.
I don't mean that was a real reason. They were
just like, ah, what a dame, What a silly dame,
Like she's a hard study. Did the voices tell her
to do that? What intrusive thought was like I'm gonna
nine to eleven one of the Macy's balloons.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
I don't know, I should add this wasn't during the parade.
I want to add. This was after they'd let them go.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Oh okay, and she was hunting it for the reward
money and was like, this is how I'm going to
bring it down.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Maybe she thought she could run into it and it
would pop and just like the fabric would just kind
of harmlessly be on the wing. I don't I don't know,
But can you imagine the flight instructor was with her?
So can you imagine flight instructors being like, no, what
are you doing? What are you doing? No? No, no, man?
Can you imagine being a.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Like a really World War One veteran then when like
with your weird like boardwalk Empire assassin guy plastic thing
that covers the part of your face to the gas
eight and you're just doped up on the real good
morphine and you're like out on Long Island Sound and
you look up and you see like a good hippo, Yeah,
a hippo or a ghost like flying by.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
That would be awesome. That's what I mean. This is
this is the stuff I thought you would like about this. No,
you're right, you're right. So far no word of this
incident made the news, So I should probably read more
of the reports from the time and see if anybody
asked her why she thought to do that. And New
Yorkers decided that it was worth more to keep fragments

(50:12):
of this balloon as souvenirs, so they tore him to pieces,
and none of them will returned to Macy's and it's
probably not a surprise that the following year Macy's ended
its They call it the Balloon Race, the race define
the balloons. They kept the tradition alive, though in a
scaled down way, in nineteen thirty three, by releasing thousands
of small balloons, two hundred of which had tags offering

(50:35):
one dollar a free merchandise at Macy's. And these balloons
they were recovered as far away as Nova Scotia, which
is pretty impressive. One current organizer of the Macy's Thanks
Steven Day Parade, it was interviewed by People magazine, expressed
a desire for the full size character balloons to be
released at the end of the twenty twenty four parade
in honor of its one hundredth anniversary, so we may

(50:58):
get to see a giant hippo floating out past the rockaways.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Yet this is looking to have a bit of fun,
and Net flew straight into the tom Cat.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah. I've never found a good explanation. All right, it's
a hell of a thing. It truly is.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Uh am i up, I just can't stop thinking about
what that was.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Like.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
She's just like in the cockpit, like I'm gonna do
it I'm gonna get that cat.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Or were they both just drunk?

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Was like the flight instructor like, ah, this would be great,
you get the cat.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
You won't do it, you won't.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
She's on like old timey cocaine. She's like, I'm gonna
get that. I'm gonna get it.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Okay, you know what. I'm looking at a picture of
it now, hang on, I'm sending it to you. It's
small enough that I almost get it. It's like it's
like the size of like an RV, which I mean
still my first thought wouldn't be to fly into it,
but it's like not that huge. Dude.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Everything I know about flying is like and I know
very little is like, oh yeah, you know, the slightest
gust of wind on your tail can send you flying
into the ground and you'll die.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
And this woman was just like, no, I'm gonna get
that balloon. That guy. I love her. I love her
so much. I love that she was like she went
on to be like a major pilot.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Well with Cahoni's like that, no wonder, she didn't fear anything.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Oh she was like twenty twenty one. Wait, she's kind
of gorgeous. Wow, she's like really really pretty. No, that tracks.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Yeah, a hot twenty one year old flying like I
was twenty one once. I knew beautiful twenty one year
old women once they're a special brand of vane.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
Good for her. That's hot girl.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Oh survived into the late eighties, so she married a
rich attorney. She was just like a society dame and aviatrix.
Uh God, good for her, and spent more like she
had a lot of time to think about what she
had done, plotting her revenge. She's like eighty, She's like
tottering towards the plane one more time. They're like, Grandma,

(53:20):
what are you doing.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
She's like, I'm gonna get that sound of a picture.
I got one last flight in me. Hello, boys, did
you miss me?

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (53:33):
We gotta do Independence Day sometimes, Yeah, I kind of
I'm shocked we haven't. Yeah, uh, where were we? Skypilots
moving in the sky.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Pilots moving these balloons around and killing them is more
difficult than you might expect. They are, in many cases
several stories tall, and as we'll discover, extremely susceptible to
high winds. Up to ninety people or needed to anchor
and navigate each balloon, and they do so by grasping
onto ropes affixed to the bottom and sides. The ropes
are for some reason called bones, and they require a

(54:06):
specific way of handling so that they remain taut throughout
the parade. All of these people are requested to be
in good health and must weigh a minimum of one
hundred and twenty pounds. They are led by the mysterious
balloon pilot, who is basically the captain of each balloon.
They spend the entire parade walking backwards in front of
their balloons, guiding their team of marchers and two anchor

(54:26):
vehicles that also tow the balloons. As you can imagine,
the balloon pilots are the most experienced balloon handlers. To qualify,
they must demonstrate that they can walk the entire two
and a half mile route backwards without stumbling, as well
as sit for three field trainings and classroom training.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Each year. One balloon pilot has admitted to training by
walking backwards through their entire neighborhood. And this is all
done on a volunteer basis. Insane want to be a
volunteer lunar. You've been using this term without explaining it.
I think the good people are owed an explanation. It's

(55:06):
a specific kind of porn fetish. I believe people who
fetishize balloons fully get it, but I'm aware of it,
which really sums up my approach.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
To so many lies. For those of you seeking a
chance to loon for Macy's good luck. As per tradition,
all of the handlers are either macy employees themselves or
friends and family of one. So this is a good
long con for us, though.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
We you know you, yeah you.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
There's look, there's twenty twenty seven acres of Macy's. You're
gonna find a cute Macy's employee. You're going to cozy
up to her. We get access to the balloon, and
then we pilot. We drive it into the White House
or Trump Tower. I guess that's probably easier.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
It's closer, yeah, close.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Or the Union Square Guitar Center. Who's done the most farm.
Fifteen hundred volunteer spots are up yearly, and they go quickly.
There are there are nearly ten thousand participants, from clouds
to cheerleaders, to dancers to marching bands to the balloon

(56:21):
handlers and the pilot.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
I don't like the phrase balloon handler. That really I
just don't.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
I don't like balloon pilot. I mean like it implies
that you're to meet, implies that you're like as I think.
I hear that, and I think of the Hindenburg, not
like a guy walking backwards, you know what it is.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
I think a balloon handler. I think of the people
who make balloon animals of the towns. Yeah, you're describing
a clown. Well, no, I mean sometimes you just have
people that are really in the making balloon.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Shapes, do you, buddy, Yeah, how many civilian balloon makers
do you?

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Well? Quite a few. I mean I grew up in
Boston and like Faniel Hall and stuff like that, and
like you know, like city squares, you got the guys
with the briefcases up when you fill the bucks in,
then they get a hat or whatever and they and
they make, you know, a little unicorns and stuff out
of Not always.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
You're describing as street balloon artist. I've never seen this once.
Oh come on, no, I've had I have more dignity
for the humble living statue than I do for a
street balloon artist.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
For sake, street balloon ars, it gives you something to
take home. What's a still statue? Do joy no we
used to be a proper country. Well.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
The balloon MVP of the Macy's Parade is, of course Snoopy.
There have been nine variations of him since he made
his debut as Aviator Snoopy in nineteen sixty eight. In
nineteen sixty nine he was Astronauts Snoopy to mark the
Apollo eleven moon landing. There was also ice skating Snoopy,
Winter Snoopy somehow different from ice skating Snoopy, Millennium Snoopy Snoopy,

(57:57):
The Flying Ace of revamped Aviator design Snoopy with woodstock,
and for twenty twenty three Beagle Scout Snoopy.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
You're an Eagle Scout. I am that's really cool. No,
it's not. There's no joke there. I genuinely find that
really cool. What was the project again?

Speaker 2 (58:13):
It was something that it was like building a little
garden and some benches at the local old folks home.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
I thought the Boy Scouts were like an edging bankruptcy
because of all the molestation. How they have money to
influence the Macy's Parade.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
I would almost imagine that the Charles Schultz h State
State is really into the Boy Scouts in a nice way. Huh.
And maybe this was his way of trying to are
their way of trying to pick up the boy scouts.
I don't know. Well. Although Snoopy is the most frequently
appearing balloon, he is an impressive forty three parades to

(58:50):
his name, he is not the biggest. This honor belongs
to Superman, or more accurately, Superman the Third. The Superman
balloon debuted in nineteen thirty nine to show those Jerry's
what was coming to him, and reappeared in nineteen sixty
six to show those hippies what was coming to him.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
Ah, and his third appearance in nineteen eighty, the Man
of Steel got a supersized makeover, towering eighty feet tall,
making him the tallest balloon to ever appear in the parade.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Was that tied to the First Reeves movie? Yeah, but
also to show the Ruskies what they got coming to him?
So you're the Moscow Olympics. I think it's related.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Person, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Another beloved balloon is
a green apatosaurus dinosaur that appeared in the parade thirteen
times before being retired in nineteen seventy six after being
displayed inside the American Museum of Natural Histories, Theodore Roosevelt
Wrotetunda for five days. In other words, they held a
state funeral for the balloon. In two thousand and four,

(59:46):
Yeah It's nice. In two thousand and four, Spongeob SquarePants
made his debut as the parade's first square shaped balloon.
It takes more than six hundred internal tie lines to
give SpongeBob his distinctive look, and the following year they
launched the Blue Sky Gallery initiative to incorporate the work
of contemporary artists into parade balloons. To date, they've included

(01:00:08):
works by Jeff Coons, Keith Herring, Better, Tim Burton, Takashimir
Kami Kause, and Yooi Kusama. Jeff Coons is already balloons.
I was in a stretch Cowards. I should do Herman Nietzsche.
He's a guy paints in blood or just the scream

(01:00:31):
are here?

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Yeah, that'll be cool. Yeah, a monkst the scream. I
tell you about how I mean. As you can probably imagine,
this is one of the happiest days of my life.
I was a kid and we were going to the
local little harvest fair in our town, probably around this
time of year, and I remember like not being all
that excited to go. I don't know. And we pulled
up and what's like in the distance and I see

(01:00:55):
the unmistakable site of the Titanic sinking, and I'm getting
closer to it, and it is a giant inflatable back
end of the Titanic angled down as a slide that
someone at this harvest fans quaint bobbing for apples cinnamon

(01:01:17):
apple dumpling contest type place decided that was a good
idea to rent a sinking ty. I think this must
have been right after the movie came out, and I
couldn't believe it. It's not just about the balloons, though, Higo,
how many times you have to tell you it's not
just about the balloons?

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
God, get it right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
No, there's always making about the.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Balloons, but we're neglecting the real flesh and blood humans
who perform often in frigid temperatures. Twenty eighteen is the
coldest parade on record, with performers like Dinah Ross, John Legend,
and Martina McBride lip syncing in nineteen degrees. According to Wikipedia,
the first celebrity performer to grease the parade was Milton
Burrel in nineteen forty nine, followed by Jimmy Duranty the

(01:02:01):
following year. You must remember this, that was amazing Jimmy wedding.
Jimmy Duranty's a different version of it, not the Jimmy
Duranty one, although we should have uh less expected guests
include Jazz Great Lionel Hampton, a post child stardom, Shirley
Temple a pre Partridge Family, Shirley Jones, Big Band leader,

(01:02:25):
Benny Goodman, Amber Tamblin's father, Russ Tamblin.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
I think he was in a lot of Roger Corman movies.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yeah, he was in West Side Story, Oh yeah, yeah yeah,
and he's in Twin Peaks And I'm the only reason
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Tony Bennett makes sense, Willie Mays, Gene Krupa, The Cast
of the Monsters, Nina Simone, God, she must have loved
that makes Crackers like just up there like angrily comping Pano,
Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, William Shatner, The Temptations, Evil Canievel,

(01:03:00):
The Village People, Andy Kaufman, Robert sta Bobby Stacks, Lou
Rawls Hell Yeah, good for Lou Rolls, Twiggy Nah, I
don't like that. British people shouldn't be allowed She's British. Yeah,
they shouldn't be allowed to do that. President Ronald Reagan
American Yeah, Shelley Duvall, Kelsey Grammer, Dave Thomas of presumably

(01:03:25):
of Wendy's, Wendy l Cool, Jy Bo Diddley, the Baja
Men twice.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
Also foreign nationals.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
They should not be allowed here, Sharon Jones and the
DAP Kings, Rip and Rick Astley, who, of course, Rick
rolled the crowd during two thousand and eight by making
a surprise appearance of the float of the animated TV
shows Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends on Cartoon Network. Each year,
Broadway Musical or two will perform a number outside of
the front door of Macy's. Despite the old time equality

(01:03:53):
of this segment, it was only introduced in the seventies,
And of course we cannot neglect to mention the non
famous human performers, the almost three thousand marching band members
from across the country who entertain along the parade route.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Were you ever in a marching band in high school?

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
One year I was in the pit. I played bass, guitar.
I hated it in a marching band. Yeah, in the
in the pit, yeah, you play the tube lines basically,
it just helps it sound better.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
I just I'm more like confused about how you were
able to. I've never heard of a pit for a
marching band.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Oh yeah, it's where all the auxiliary percussion is, like
all the marimbos and xylophones and bells and stuff. Yeah,
only the drum line marches. All the other percussion gets
to sit still, which rules.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Oh, we had a whole line of all the brass
and everything. But I don't think we had a pit.
I wasn't in it, so I'm not totally sure. But
that's cool. No, no, it's not. No, it's no, I
don't have no. No, it's a weird cult.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
It's like yeah, it's like it's like the levels of
it has all the incest of all the other niche
high school of drama club, like drama club, cross country,
you know all that stuff. But no about cachet and
we were egged, you were agged. Yeah that's horrible. I'm
Pennsylvania and sucks. Oh yeah, what else did I hate

(01:05:12):
about high school?

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
We're going to take a quick break. But We'll be
right back with more too much information in just a moment.
Keep going, where are we?

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
Welcome to your worst night, my friends. We are about
to give a special TMI shout out to the rock Atshigo.
Have you ever seen the rock Cats live and in person.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
I've never seen them, but I know about the horrific
life of an exotic tiger that they lead.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
I've seen them literally more times than I can count.
It became this strange my first trips to New York
as a kid, where I was brought here by my
parents and my aunt to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
I was very young, and I probably I must have
seen it at least a dozen times over the years,
so I have a soft spot in my heart for them.

(01:06:15):
They have been performing with the parade since nineteen fifty seven.
But shockingly, the dance troop that's become so associated with
Christmas in New York actually got their start in Saint
Louis in nineteen twenty five when they were known as
the Missouri Rockets. That's such a New York story. Get
your start in the Midwestern or a totally different name.

(01:06:36):
You move to the big city, try to Reinvent Yourself
creator Russell Markert got the idea for what we now
know was The Rockets after he was impressed by a
UK dance troupe in nineteen twenty two, Zigfried Follies, which
was a review show. Basically, here's the closest thing I
can think of how to describe it. He was seized

(01:06:58):
with this can do big is better American spirit and
quoted as saying, if I got a chance, they get
a group of American girls who would be taller and
have longer legs and could do really complicated tap routines
and I high kicks. Man, they'd really knock your socks off.
He didn't say, man, but everything else is a quote
that didn't really show up.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Jerry.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
The themis and themis all of them. Russell Markert envisioned
a drill team that moved as a single dancer, and
when the group toured New York, their show was attended
by a theater magnate named sl Roxy Rothefeld. Roxy was

(01:07:41):
so taken by the display of athleticism and dance acumen
that he hired this group for his Roxy Theater. And
this move required a new name, and so the former
Missouri Rockets was reborn as the Roxyettes, which then morphed
into the American Rockets, the Rose and finally the Rockets.

(01:08:03):
I have a question, what's that? How much do you
think this was just horniness? Oh? Oh, greater than seventy
five percent?

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Because I didn't think other than the high character, I
didn't think they were known as like an especially amazing
dance troupe.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
Oh no, no that's not true.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
No, they're extremely talented, he said, unconvincingly.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
I mean, I don't know enough about dance to be
able to like back that up with anything. But no,
they're like really well, okay, let me really hot and tall.
That's what it is. It's just tall women. It is
shocking to me how every tall woman I know hates

(01:08:44):
being tall, and it makes me so sad. Yeah, now,
this Roxy character. He was one of the visionaries behind
Radio City Music Hall, along with John D. Rockefeller, who
bankrolled Rockefeller Center. I always assumed that the rocket were
named after Rockefeller and Rockefeller Center, but I guess they
got the name before Rockefeller Center was a thing. But

(01:09:06):
when Radio City opened on December twenty seventh, nineteen thirty two,
Roxy tapped the Rockettes to perform and it's been their
home ever since. A year later, in nineteen thirty three,
the Radio City Rockets debut They're iconic Christmas Spectacular, which
was designed by future Judy Garland husband and Liza's dad,
Vincente Minelli. During the rest of the year, the Rockets

(01:09:29):
were the opening act for screenings of the latest movies
back when Radio City was mostly a movie theater. Did
you know that Radio City used to be mainly for movies?

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
I assume all those beautiful buildings in like every decaying
American city was like a movie theater. He was a
beautiful one in downtown New Cumberland where I grew up. Really,
it wasn't even a first run theater when I was
growing up. There was literally the two dollar theater which
you went in and had all the gilded you know.
I saw the big velvet curtain and gilded pillars and such.

(01:09:59):
Wow did they get yepifi?

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Did millennials come in and turn it into one of
those like twenty dollars Hamburger and Martiniz while you watch
like Breakfast at Tiffany's kind of places. I'll report back
at Christmas. Yeah, so here, I don't know that much
about dancing to be able to offer an informed opinion
on the rockets dancing abilities. But I do know a
little thing about elbow grease, and damn it, the Rockets
have it. Over three thousand women have performed as Rockets

(01:10:24):
since the Christmas Spectacular is opening in nineteen thirty three,
and they are somewhat famously all on the taller side.
These days. The height requirement is between five foot six
and five foot ten and a half inches, and by
placing the tallest girls in the center and lining up
and descending order of height, the dancers can create the
optical illusion of all being the same height, which is interesting.

(01:10:46):
Imagine it's like a forced perspective thing. I don't know.
I thought they were like running out of money.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
I thought they were like bankrupt at some point, like
people just stop giving it about them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
I'm not saying anything about that. I see that the
Rockets Spectacular was canceled in twenty twenty for obvious reasons,
and it lost millions as a result.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
I think there's still kick in. I don't have an
anti Rocket's agenda. I just think it's horny. It's I
don't really see what sustained that for fifty years, one
hundred years, however long this shit happened.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Okay, let me talk about this. Every year, over a
thousand dancers auditioned to be a rock At only eighty
make it so. First of all, you know the cream Rises,
they've got to be extremely good at what they do.
But the Rockets, they have a somewhat complicated legacy due
to what I'll generously call outdated beauty standards hype restriction. Aside,

(01:11:55):
the Rockets reportedly didn't hire a black dancer named Jennifer
Jones until they eighteen eighty seven, fifty five years after
they taputed at Radio City. That's a bad track record.
Allow me to quote a piece from the November twentieth,
two thousand and five issue of The New York Times.
The Rockets are instantly recognizable symbols, but what they represent

(01:12:16):
depends on who is doing the interpreting. To some, they're
step for dancers. That's a great pun there, with the
step in and the step. That's good. Objectified women reduced
to nothing but legs and teeth to others, their glamour
personified the last cherish remains of a guys'n' dolls style
nightlife and to yet another part of the audience. This

(01:12:37):
is me their glorious kitch as amusing as they are entertaining.
Actually no, I'm the next one also. But one thing
is constant, their sheer physical accomplishment. Even in a city
full of sweating, striving talent, The Rockets may well be
the hardest working women in show business, and this is true.
They truly work their asses off. They rehearse for six

(01:12:58):
hours a day, six days a week, for six weeks
before the Christmas Spectacular opens. That's a lot of sixes.
Maybe they mistook Satan for Santa. A Rocket named Katie
Daniel told The Wall Street Journal in twenty thirteen. Rehearsals
are an all consuming process that requires a lot of grit,
focus and attention. We practice all day together, and then

(01:13:20):
we go home and practice on our own, and then
wake up and practice more. It's NonStop Christmas. There are
two separate casts of Rockets, with thirty six women each,
and each cast has four swings for a total of
eighty and these swings are waiting in the wings in case,
I don't know, somebody's achilles tendon acts up on stage

(01:13:40):
and they gotta tag out. I'm not sure so this
makes these six show days slightly more bearable. But still,
that's upwards of one thousand, two hundred kicks a day.
It's leg day every day.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
How many kicks a day?

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
Twelve hundred kicks a day. It's a lot of kicks.
It's a lot of kicks.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
As Bruce Lee once said, I fear not the man
who has practiced ten thousand kicks once but one kick
ten thousand times.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
I fear the woman who has perfected that kick ten
thousand times.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
In heels, Well said le go, you should start marketing
that on Cafe Press or something. I guarantee it'll become
a girl Boss slogan.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
Some of these women are required to wear heavy robes
from the Nativity scene, for which they use real camels.
One Rocket was later quoted as saying, standing still in
that heavy robe, you can feel yourself dripping sweat. And
there's a similar problem with the Santa costu, in which
weighs forty pounds. But the ladies like to wear it
because it's the only costume in which they can wear flats.

(01:14:44):
In a truly remarkable profile on the New York Times
from two thousand and five that I quoted earlier called
The sweat Soaked Life of a Glamorous Rocket. Writer Susan
Dominus describes these women as leaving their homes at six
in the morning and not arriving back until quarter past
the lane, heating up a frozen pizza, feeding their baby,
and getting up to do it all again the next day.

(01:15:05):
Six days a week, they have to perform ultra quick
changes backstage. The fastest is just seventy eight seconds. That's
between the March of the Toy Soldiers and New York
at Christmas. And this change includes shoes, hats, and earrings
while all crammed in the dressing room with seven other dancers,

(01:15:26):
and what I consider to be the ultimate indignity, they
all have to do their own hair and make up themselves. Jesus.
I know Radio City management don't comment on what the
Rockets earn, but dancers told The New York Times and
this aforementioned two thousand and five piece, that they typically
get paid on par with other Broadway dancers. So it's
a salary that roughly breaks down to one hundred and

(01:15:46):
thirty five dollars a show, and that was in two
thousand and five, so that's closer to two hundred and
thirteen dollars today sounds I mean, I guess it's ninety
minutes worth of work. But that's a hell of a
lot of work, oh my god. But because they form
more than one time a day, and then they get
overtime and all sorts of other little perks, it's a
well paying gig. It's also apparently they get health insurance

(01:16:11):
all year too, which is kind of cool. Yeah, I
know right. One of my favorite anecdotes from one of
the many rock Ass profiles I read was that they
would often get pumped up before showtime by listening to
Blondie Duran Duran, and just before the curtain went up
the final countdown by Europe. Well sure, yeah. Also, their

(01:16:34):
shoes are micd up so that the synchronous steps are
audible to the crowd, and every Christmas Spectacular season they
run through fourteen ninety six double A batteries. I'm told
the numbers don't really translate well on TMI. That's something
that people glaze over for. They usually like like the
stories like the woman running into the balloon in mid air,

(01:16:56):
But I don't know, I like some of these numbers. Well,
good because we got more of them coming your way.
Planning for the parade takes about a year and a
half or I don't know what, five hundred some odd days. Yeah,
that's about right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Fifty thousand hours of labor. Fifty thousand hours of labor.
More than thirty skilled artists work year round to prepare
the parade. Floats require three hundred pounds of glitter Jesus,
two hundred and forty gallons of paint, more than half
a mile of hand sewn skirt and fringe wrap, plus
two hundred pounds of confetti.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Oh, I love this story.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
They managed to cut some corners though on this step.
In twenty twelve, for reasons that are still undetermined, shredded
documents from the Nassau County Police Department ended up as
confetti in the parade. These included clearly visitible sensitive information
like people's social security numbers, license plate number, and banking data,
as well as details about undercover officers. Also found for

(01:17:58):
notes about Mitt Romney's motorcade from the final presidential debate,
which took place at Hofstra University. A Macy spokesperson defended
the company by saying they only use multicolored confetti and
were investigating how the private documents ended up in the parade.
He said Macy's uses commercially manufactured multi colored confetti, not shredded,
homemade or printed paper of any kind.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
In the parade.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
It is not unusual for spectators to bring and throw
their own confetti in the direction of parade participants from
the sidelines. So some in Long Eye, Long Island cop
showed up with his dirty laundry paperwork and hawked in snoopy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
That's my theory.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
God, I love this country. Macy's team designs about seven
hundred new costumes every year, creating an overall wardrobe of
forty two hundred costumes valued at an estimated two million dollars.
About two hundred costume fitters are on site the morning
of the parade to help everyone get into costume, including
the custom made costumes for Santa and Missus Claus and

(01:18:56):
now one of the balloons themselves, the real star of
the show. It is just about the balloons, Jordan. For
years all of the Mac's balloons were made at Macy's
parade studio, a former Tutsie roll factory in Hoboken.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
I know. That's the universal theory of TMI. The Tutsi
beast stirs. That's a balloon. I would see the beast Yeah, braining.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
Tutsi rolls out of its distended anus.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Uh he must roll.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
They have since moved to a gergantuan thirty thousand square
foot warehouse in Monachi, New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
Designers are buried under there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
Yeah right. The designers are effictually known as balloon attics,
balloonatics balloonatics by the way I said, it could also
mean that thing balloon addict. The term comes from the
praise where oh is that where the term comes from.
The term comes from the parade's very first balloon covered

(01:20:04):
float from nineteen twenty six, which was decked out in
traditional balloons and called balloonatics. They didn't just get it
from the easy, lazy pun or whatever Macy's loves to
myth make this. Macy's had to come up with other
new words to describe its balloon creations. There are falloons, falloons,
or balloon or balloon floats. Falloons like a racial slur,

(01:20:29):
balloonicles balloonicles sounds like a medical condition. You got to
go in and get your balloonicles drained. The nurse is
going to row you over and check you for balloonicals
and trikalloons or balloon tricycles.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
That's not even a pun.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
The balloonatics begin with pencil sketches of each character, which
takes into account both the aero dynamics and engineering. These
sketches are made into scaled down clay models that are
used to create casts of the balloons. Speaking do you
hear that Wallace in Gramt is? There's only going to
be one more Wallace in Gramt movie because the company
that makes their clay went out of business and there's

(01:21:08):
literally only enough to make one more movie coming out
next year. That's a proprietary it's a proprietary clay formula
that holds up especially well for stop motion. And when
they announced that they were going out of business, the
company just bought the entire stock and there's only enough
of it left for one more movie.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
And they won't sell them. The recipe of Maygate I
don't know, I don't know. UM that's gonna be a
like a some change dot org petition these bunch of nerds.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
Two miniature replicas are created, one that's marked with technical
details and one that's painted in the balloon's colors. The
models are immersed in water to figure out how much
helium they'll need to float. And then finally, the schematics
are scanned by a computer and the fabric pieces are
cut and heat sealed to create the various air chambers
of the balloon. For years, the balloons were made of rubber,
but these days they made of polyurethane fabric. Overall, the

(01:22:02):
process takes roughly between five months to a year. When
the balloons are finished, they are tested rigorously at the warehouse.
This includes six hours of inflation and a skin stress
test known by the highly technical term thumping. These balloons,
which regularly weigh around four hundred pounds, are then deflated,
packed up, and driven through the Lincoln Tunnel, which is
briefly closed to traffic just before midnight the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,

(01:22:27):
thus stymying the duires of the world. I was thinking
that in order to fit through the tunnel, the balloons
and floats must be packed down into boxes that are
no more than twelve and a half feet high and
eight feet wide, which is obviously a challenge. Then once
they arrive in Manhattan, they'll get parade ready in front
of the American Museum of Natural History, where people assemble

(01:22:49):
to gather and watch the inflation. Does it take place at.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Like four in the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
Yeah, it's some ungodly are Balloons traditionally last about eight
years before they need to be replaced or retired just
someone walks out and shoots it in the back of
the head. The price to design and build a brand
new character balloon is one hundred and ninety thousand dollars,
with subsequent appearances costing ninety thousand dollars a year. Macy's

(01:23:13):
will not disclose how much the parade costs each year,
saying it's a gift to the city, and as with
any gift, you don't leave the price tag on you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Firs.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
How much money do you get from the city to
run that show? That's pretty good doesn't cost them anything.
In addition to the three million people who turn out
in person each year, more than forty four million watch
the parade annually on TV. First broadcast by a radio
in nineteen thirty two. Jesus Christ, that is depressing, I know.
Next we have a really big balloon that's sort of
a racist character.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Next, there's.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
Is that Babe Ruth next to marching band from Topeka.
Look at them go and next the crew a PYGMS.
Yeah right, look at that a spirit?

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
How are they? How are they?

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
They'll never see their glistening homeland again. I don't know
why he's talking like FDR in this. I mean, we're
doing the Hindenberg explosion guy. Yeah, yeah, we're doing the
O humanity guys.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
True.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
It was televised locally in nineteen thirty nine as an
experimental early TV broadcast, and finally went national in nineteen
forty eight. It's had a host of hosts, most notably
TV news anchors, though from nineteen sixty nineteen sixty two
to nineteen seventy one it was co hosted by the
first Lady of Television, Betty White, alongside Bonanza star Lorne Green.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
How about that? You're the only person that want Planet Earth?
You care about that other than me? About Lorne Green?
For the folks.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Since nineteen fifty five, NBC has been the official broadcast
partner of the parade, but that hasn't stopped those rascals
at CBS from trying to hog the glory. Per Wikipedia, CBS,
which has a studio in Times Square, unauthorized coverage as
the Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS, the Macy's Parade committee
has their hands tied with this situation. While they can

(01:25:09):
endorse an official broadcaster, they cannot award exclusive rights like
a sports broadcast since the parade takes place in public,
So instead they re routed the parade away from CBS's
studio camera, thus making it significantly more difficult for the
network to horn in on their racket. God love them
ough this country. As we mentioned earlier, the popularity of

(01:25:31):
the parade was enhancespite its inclusion of the film Miracle
on thirty Fourth Street starring Little Matilda. What do you
think of that remake?

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
I don't really remember the remake.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
Richard Attenborough or Borough one of the Attenboroughs is Santa
in that right? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:47):
The original was released in nineteen forty seven. The movie
featured footage from the actual parade. Cameras were placed both
along the parade route and on the third floor of
a nearby apartment to capture shots of what you describe
as the electric atmosphere of the nineteen four six parade. Hilariously,
the film's leading lady, Marin O'Hara, best known to you
as the mom in the original Parent Trap, requested a

(01:26:08):
police escort to shop in Macy's after they filmed the
parade segments. The assistant director responded, I know New Yorkers,
they aren't going to pay any attention to you. And
don't wear bandana around your head or dark glasses.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
Just be normal.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
Good advice not to go too deep on Miracle on
thirty fourth Street. I will never do an episode on this,
so this is all you're getting. Twentieth Century Fox had
Daryl F. Xenik insisted that it'll be released in May
because he believed that more people go to the movies
in warmer weather. What I think, because movie theaters were
the like al air conditioned places.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Then yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
All mention of Christmas was scrubbed from the promotional materials
for the film as a result of Xenik's brainstorm. The
trailer features a fictional producer strolling a backlot where a
bunch of the famous actors and actresses endorse the movie,
and the Santa character is so small in the poster
that he's mostly unidentifiable. The movie also features Natalie Wood
in her child star face. She arguably made one of

(01:27:04):
the most successful jumps from child star to adult actor,
a transition affected by her role alongside James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause. Director Nicholas Ray was wary of
casting her in that film due to her reputations a
squeaky clean child starlet. But then while on a night
out with friends, she got into a car accident. Upon
hearing this, Ray rushed to the hospital. While in delirium,

(01:27:25):
Would overheard the doctor murmuring and calling her a damn
juvenile delinquent, at which point she yelled to Ray, do
you hear what he called me?

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
Nick?

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
He called me a damn juvenil nile delinquent. Now do
I get the part? And then Robert Wagner drowned her,
and Christopher Walkin was there, and Christopher Walkin asked himself, do.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
You think he'll come clean about that? At some point.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
Wagner or walking either Walkin probably not Wagner, like a
deathbed confession.

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):
Maybe. I don't know. He's had so many times to
like do that and so many like very special interview.
Oh yeah, I think there was a documentary made by
I forget if it was the daughter that they had
together or if it was just Natalie's daughter from another marriage,
But yeah, they had some documentary on Natalie would a
few years ago. I remember watching it during pandemic freshman year,

(01:28:19):
and yeah, it was like he had some big emotional
like it wasn't me moment, it was walking, Uh, Jordan, Yes,
speaking of disasters. Oh yeah, I mean I'm a disaster guy. Yeah.
From large boat to large balloons. It has not been

(01:28:42):
always smooth sailing for Oh, almost had a beautiful transition there.
It has not always been smooth sailing for these Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade performers.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
Speaking of Natalie Wood, it hasn't always been smooth sailing
for the macy How dare you look?

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
You wouldn't so I had to. Yeah, there's other things
went wrong. Mistakes were made in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Now,
most of the problems with the parade come down to
the balloons. Specifically, balloons over the years have hit electrical wires, signs,
tree branches, and street lights, deflating parts of the balloons

(01:29:22):
and even entering onlookers.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
To kind of minimize this, the balloons are divided into
several individual segments so that the show can go on
if somebody, you know, losing an arm or a leg
or something in nineteen thirty one, a balloon in the
shape of the wrestler the Terrible Turk, burst after hitting
a traffic pole. The New York Times described it thus,

(01:29:45):
Terrible Turk does split as laughing children see him to
plate in shame. It's like some old like variety headline
or something. Buffo, Buffo, who've been together too long? My friends.
There's a persistent rumor that a Felix the Cat balloon

(01:30:07):
burst into flames after hitting some high tension wires in
nineteen thirty one. I've done some digging on this, and
apparently there's some truth in the myth, but it is
kind of a myth. This actually occurred days after the
Macy's Day parade, after the balloon, which had been remember
this was in the days when they just set the
balloons free, came to rest in West nor with New Jersey,

(01:30:32):
which was yet another reason why the plan to have
these balloons just flowed away was really stupid. After the
guy in the plane tried to hook it on its
wing and missed and the balloon floated off. It flew
over to New Jersey, connected with some high tension wires
and burst into flames. A mini Hindenburg In nineteen fifty six,

(01:30:52):
Mighty Mouse lost his battle against forty five degree Wins,
veering into a street sign and collapsing dramatically near Columbus. Afterwards,
the balloon was retired from the parade. I guess it
was that badly damaged. In nineteen fifty six, the Popeye
balloon made a splash after heavy rains accumulated in the

(01:31:13):
brim of his hat and overflowed and drenched the crowd below,
and a similar thing happened a few years later in
nineteen sixty two with the Donald Duck balloon, who also
wore a hat. This was a relatively minor mishap, but
major problems can occur. In nineteen seventy one, the balloons
were grounded for the first time in the parade's history
due to heavy rains and strong winds. In Thanksgiving nineteen

(01:31:37):
eighty five, one of the rainiest on record, Kermit the Frog,
was blown into a tree and ripped. The following year,
Superman's right arm ripped off in the middle of the
parade after getting blown into a tree, and in nineteen
ninety three, Sonic the Hedgehog the very first video game
character to get their own balloon. Knocked over a street lamp,
injuring a spectator in the process. But this is all

(01:32:00):
preamble for the Thanksgiving disaster of nineteen ninety seven. Macy's
Annis harrillibus horribilius. How do you say that? Whatever you said, Annis,
I did, yeah, which is fitting because nineteen ninety seven
was the year that Beavis and butt Head had a balloon.

(01:32:21):
It wasn't actually flown, though, they just tied it to
a building that was on the parade route, which is
pretty funny. There was a Kurt Loader hosted special Beavis
and butt heead Do Thanksgiving, which I would like to watch.
I'm sure it's on YouTube. Maybe not. But this was
a very blustery day with winds reaching up to forty

(01:32:43):
miles an hour, and the balloons were difficult to control.
NYPD officers were enlisted to stab both Barney and the
Pink Panther balloon over safety concerns and to fully explore
the scope of this truly disastrous parade. I would like
to cite I don't think we've ever done this before
in full on New York Times article by Douglas Martin

(01:33:06):
published on November twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven under the
headline Macy's Parade of Balloons gets one thing it doesn't need,
wind take us away.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
Sudden bursts of punishing wind spun havoc at Macy's Thanksgiving
Day parade yesterday, as many of the parade's signature helium
filled balloons were damaged, and as four spectators were hurt
when one of the giant balloons struck a lamppost, plunging
the top part of it into the crowd.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
Nineteen ninety seven, not nineteen thirty seven. I'm kidding, fine, no,
reading it as your heart desires. Two people were hospitalized
with severe head injuries. The accident was a strange I
should have let you get that one in there. And the.

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
Accident was a strange and grim counterpart to a sunny
day of high festivity in which most of the two
million spectators were far away from the accident and had
no idea it happened. God the New York Times clowns,
they cheered, clapped, and squealed as fourteen marching bands from
thirteen states strutted, past or marched, as six hundred clowns

(01:34:13):
and twelve hundred cheerleaders enthusiastically did their thing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:18):
Paper record. You can't say a marching band, march it's
please allow myself to introduce myself. Okay, crown jewel in
the crown.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
Surely you could say a clown gamboled or or a cheerleader. Yeah,
I mean did their thing whatever most emphatically, as the
immense six story balloons of instantly recognizable cartoon characters glided
past the brick, glass, and concrete of Manhattan. Only at
times the balloons were not gliding, but instead were careening

(01:34:48):
as their handlers on the ground struggled to keep control
in winds that reached as highs forty three miles an hour.
For a while, the balloons seemed to be falling like flies.
Barney suffered extensive damage and had to be he removed
and fifty first Street. The Pink Panther succumbed at forty
second Street, Quick Bunny and the Cat and the Hat
limped away. At thirty sixth Street. There was high drama

(01:35:09):
as the balloon handlers and the police tried to control
the airborne chaos. As the Pink Panther lurched about while
simultaneously imploding, a police inspector shouted, somebody, give me a
knife quick. An officer quickly handed him a five inch
long knife, and he punched a hole through the feline's tail,
a move that almost immediately stabilized the balloon. Joyce Rice,

(01:35:30):
who held one of the panthers ropes, said she was
terrified the balloon was caught on top of me and
my daughter. We thought it was going to smother us.
Some of the Panthers' handlers said one of their colleagues
was knocked at conscious during the collapse, but the police
would not confirm the report. The worst problem occurred at
seventy second Street and Central Park West, when the sixth
story tall cat in the Hat struck a lamp post

(01:35:52):
on the northeast corner, causing the horizontal metal arm to
break off. Pat Clem, who videotaped the incident and gave
the tape to the police, said the lampost was wabbled
in the wind even before the balloon struck it. Eric
Neulan from Katana, New York, said, the balloon struck the
lamppost's arm twice. You thought it was going to bounce off,
he said, but the second time it snapped, it was

(01:36:12):
suspended for an instant, then it spiraled way down the
prade just stopped. He continued, There was a prolonged silence.
Your thoughts go from happy, joyous thanksgiving to prayers. John
Morley of Manhattan said the falling arm missed him and
his four year old daughter surette Ugh by about a foot.

(01:36:33):
He said the Cat in the Hat was the second
balloon to strike that particular lamppost. When he realized the
arm was teetering, he started to push through the crowd
with his daughter to escape.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
It was coming.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
That's the guy who shoved other women and children out
of the way to get on a lifeboat in the Titanic.
It was coming right at me, he said. Ronnie Taffett,
a Maze spokeswoman, said a number of adjustments were made
because of the weather the balloon. The balloons were inflated
less to reduce their balloons were inflated less to reduce
their buoyancy, and flown lower and at an angle to
make them harder for the wind to catch. Additional handlers

(01:37:04):
were also added. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said the city
would look into how to prevent such accidents in the future.
If this is something that can be corrected in the future,
we'll correct it. We'll find out what happened. I don't
think we know enough to answer that yet, he spoke
after visiting the two more seriously injured victim at Saint
Luke Roosevelt Hospital. Anytime there's an injury like this, it

(01:37:25):
makes you feel very, very bad, mister Giuliani said. At
the same time, the parade has long, long history. It's
a beautiful parade. It accomplishes a great deal for young
people and for the city. What a mass did you
say that at the hospital bed tragedy, But at the
same time, beautiful parade.

Speaker 1 (01:37:46):
Before the parade, and that Missus Lincoln.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
Before the parade began. The often driving wind was the
main topic of discussion. You can never tell which way
the wind demons are going to get you, said Manfred G. Bass,
the chief designer of what he terms air sculptures that
should have won them Apolitzar. I need to know everything
about mantred G. Bass. Meanwhile, captains for each balloon lectured

(01:38:13):
their crews. All stressed the need to be extra vigilant
because of the wind. Some of their advice was technical,
such as where to position one's arms while gripping the
spool of cord. Some were playful, such as the admonition
not to wave to television cameras with both hands, and
some remarks were prophetic. What is it, Betty Davis said,
fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride,

(01:38:35):
a captain shouted over the crescendoing wind. The crash of Barney,
the purple dinosaur, beloved by preschoolers and loathed by some parents,
was heart stopping for those at the end of its ropes.
Everything turned purple, said Antonella Laggiano of Mamaroneck, New York.

(01:38:58):
That woman's racist Barney attacked us set a still stunned
Isabella Fasciano of Hoboken, New Jersey, also a racist. After
it fell, police officers rushed to puncture it with knives
and relieved.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
The danger is not this is I was wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
This is painting a beautiful, truly beautiful, viviage, vivid image.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
That's why I wanted to read it all. The miypd's
stabbing Barney to death on the ground while children watch.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
The combination of cold and wind defined the parade for participants.
The bare legs of the drilled team for the first band,
Butler High School from butler pa were painfully pink, people
in kangaroo costumes hopped about for warmth as much as
dramatic effect, and the handlers holding onto the balloons, all
of whom volunteered for the seemingly fun job, hung on

(01:39:50):
for dear life. It's a lot more work than I
thought it would be, said Brian Sherman, who clung tightly
to a disturbingly frisky Peter Rabbit. Mister Sherman had volunteered
at the urging of his girldfriend, who works in Macy's
public relations department.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
Woo, you talked to who?

Speaker 2 (01:40:12):
And despite the winds and the problems they caused, the
spectators got what they came for. Christina Benitez from Tucson,
Arizonia pronounced it like the fucking guy doesn't what we
do in the shadow, Tucson, Arizonia. Christina Benitez from Tucson,
Arizona watched the parade with beaming pleasure at Broadway in

(01:40:33):
thirty sixth Street. This is our culture, the American spirit
of fun. I'm proud to be here. The tourists said,
why you well, I tell you it's our culture. What
a what a hideous collection of words? I was exposed
to just now. I wish you'd let me all read

(01:40:54):
it all in the newscaster voice. That would have been something.
Oh continue.

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):
Following the trag, the city put a policy in place
that dictates that balloons can't fly if winds are stronger
than twenty three miles an hour and wind gusts are
higher than thirty four miles an hour. I don't know
the difference between winds and wind gusts.

Speaker 2 (01:41:14):
I think winds is the average, and then gusts as
high as how I see it on like Aci Weather.

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
You know. Apparently one of these injured women who was
hitting the head by the falling street lamp, Kathy Corona,
was in a coma for almost a month. When she awoke,
she still had a dent in her skull as wide
as a tennis ball. After she recovered, she'd sued Macy's,
who settled out of court in two thousand and one.

(01:41:42):
But here's where it gets truly weird. In two thousand
and six, Yankees picture Corey Little was flying as private
four seater plane when he accidentally crashed into a condominium
complex on East seventy second Street called the Belaire Apartments.
The afore mentioned Kathy Corona, the coma woman lived in
this building and the engine from the plane landed in

(01:42:03):
her bedroom. Presumably she moved out of New York after this.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
That is really one of those is there a God
and does she hate me? Kind of things.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
I don't think she was home all the time. But still,
despite this policy about not flying balloons in high winds,
there have been a few mishaps in recent years. The
last major incident involving injury took place in two thousand
and five when the Eminem's balloon hit a lamppost near
Times Square, causing the light to fall and hit two
women in the crowd. I believe they both were okay.

(01:42:38):
And then in two thousand and eight, a Keith Herring
balloon took a turn a little too wide and rammed
the broadcast booth with Al Roker, Meredith Fierra, and Matt Eliora,
temporarily taking them off the air. There's got to be
a clip of that on YouTube. I should have looked
that up.

Speaker 2 (01:42:54):
It's so funny to me that Keith Herring became this
like live laugh Love graded like America thing, like so
recognizable because so many other of his drawings have like
huge dicks in them. Yeah, like frequently right next to
that dog that's everywhere, And people were like, no, we
just want the we just want the baby with the

(01:43:14):
rays coming out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
Thank you. He choose to engage with no other part
of this man's legacy. I think the hospital down the
street from where I live, Woodhall Hospital, has an original
Keith Herring mural, because I think it was a I
think at the time in the eighties it was on
the i'd say the cutting edge of AIDS research, an
age research. But it treated.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
Yeah, he's a fascinating guy. I mean, he he It's
it's funny too that people do would would get up
in arms about him quote unquote selling out because he
was a big sellout. He had like he was would
sell his own stuff like prints and stuff out of
like a pop up and soho. He was very much
about like just making one and he wanted to make money,
which good good on him.

Speaker 1 (01:44:00):
But yeah, a lot of dicks. So that was two
thousand and eight. Due to COVID nineteen, organizers switched to
a TV only parade in twenty twenty, eliminating spectators from
the route and requiring the dramatically scaled down group of
handlers to wear masks during the abbreviated parade route outside

(01:44:22):
the Macy's flagship store. So the parade endured, but the
biggest disaster may be still to come. Apparently there was,
or maybe still is, a macy Thanksgiving Day Parade movie
in the works, the premise of which involves oversized balloons
coming to life.

Speaker 2 (01:44:40):
Yester, Yeah, yeah, I hope it's a horror.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):
I hope it's a hard R horror. I imagine it's
a kid's movie. Yeah. I don't think it's like Stefpoff
marshmallow Man style. I mean that would be cool. It
wouldn't be anything.

Speaker 2 (01:44:56):
If Macy's is actually signing off on it, it wouldn't
be any uh anything vaguely edgy.

Speaker 1 (01:45:04):
Yeah no. But for this year, twenty twenty three, I'm
thankful that this cherished piece of monoculture remains relatively untainted.
So we've reached the end of our discussion of Macy's
Thanksaving Day Parade. Hoigel, how do you feel? Did I deliver?

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
You?

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
Did? You? Did?

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
You?

Speaker 1 (01:45:23):
Did? I can? I can?

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
Yeah, I can wholeheartedly say. Between intrusive thoughts, Woman Pilot
and the Woman, the Woman.

Speaker 1 (01:45:33):
The sky fell on twice. This was a truly beautiful episode. Well, folks,
I am truly thankful that we get to be here
and be giant nerds together, me and my dear friend
Alex Hoigel. I get to spend this time with you, Alex.

Speaker 2 (01:45:52):
This is this is so nice, making truly foul jokes
that will never see the light of air. Uh yeah,
you know, I'd love to sometime, maybe even this Thanksgiving.
Maybe we can just live stream it and share a
piece of pumpkin pie before I get too drunk and

(01:46:16):
start yelling at the football teams that I know nothing
about who's playing?

Speaker 1 (01:46:23):
How the Patriots doing? Jordan that bad that I know? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):
Great, I love that all right. Well, thanks for listening, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
This has been Massachusetts. The show will deliver that will
deliver that message in person this Thanksgiving for you. I'm
Alex Igel and I'm Jordan runs Hog. We'll catch you
next time. Happy Thanksgiving. Too Much Information was a production

(01:46:57):
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:46:58):
The show's executives are Noel Brown and Jordan runtalg.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was.

Speaker 2 (01:47:06):
Researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtogg and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (01:47:09):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows

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The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: Everything You Didn't Know

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