Been There, Done That

The Pink Panther

With Thanksgiving safely behind us, I thought I'd dip into the archives once again. While I've never been to Times Square on New Year's Eve, I have been to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (known for all my life hereabouts in New York as the 'Macy's Day Parade') several times, and sampled it from many locations.

These pictures are from November 22, 1990, which may have been my third time there. My first time I was running uptown and down, following the balloons, and taking pictures from Herald Square to Central Park. Another year I happened to run into a friend at Jamaica Station on my way in. She worked for Macy's and got me into the bleachers on 34th Street with her.

But this time I was with Sherry, and we decided to stay in one place for the entire parade. So sometime around eight in the morning we staked out a spot in the center of West 44th Street, at the exact spot where the parade made a left/right dogleg turn to follow Broadway. Which put us in a position to see the balloons head-on as well as in profile.

Macy's Lifeguard

While the crowds were sparse when we first arrived the crush soon followed. I'm not sure how long we were there, a few hours at least. Being first, though, we kept our great spot at the front of the barricades. After we wriggled our way out we took the subway uptown and had Thanksgiving breakfast at the diner on 69th and First. Then we went back to her apartment and watched a raucous session of the British Parliament on CNN after Margaret Thatcher quit her job.

I bet Sherry remembers nothing of this.