Stuff You Should Know - How Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Works

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

For almost a century, Macy’s department store has kicked off the holidays in America with a grand parade. And when you march thousands of clowns, lip synching celebrities, bands, and giant balloons through New York things get remarkable. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh. There's Chuck Jerry's out there dressed as a turkey, dressed as a pilgrim, weirdly. And that makes us, of course, Stuff You Should Know, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Edition. That's right. This is an episode we've wanted to do for a while. And there's a lot here.

It's really pretty interesting. Do you watch, by the way? I'm just curious. Oh, too. If I missed one, I would just be in Shambles' crime. Really? I love the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for sure. I don't think I've ever watched one.

Really? Oh, Chuck, man, I'm really surprised, especially in the 80s, too, that you didn't watch it back in the day. Yeah, it's great, man. It is a very fun thing to watch. It's full of glad tidings and cornucopias with pumpkins and stuff, and it's great.

I mean, I feel like it's on at houses that I go to. So it's not like I don't have never seen bits of it. Right. But I've never popped a popcorn and sat down and be like, I'm gonna get my parade on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people do that. Weirdos.

But for the most part, it's meant to just kind of be seen as you see it, you know what I mean? Like, you'll see some of it and then, you know. While you're making your trimmings and stuffings. Yeah, or you can sit down and watch bits of it. But if you sit down from nine to 12, I'm quite sure there are plenty of people out there who do do that, but there, you know,

for the most part, it seems like something you just kind of watch here or there, you know, further in the line. And I know we talked about it at some point because I did tell the story about Emily and I going to, we were in New York over Thanksgiving a couple of times, and both times we went the day before to watch the balloons being blown up.

Yeah, that's an event. That's a lot of fun. That's an event in and of itself. Inflation day is what they call it now. Yeah, it's really a good time. And just little kiddos everywhere. And can't wait to go back with my daughter one day once it's safe to do so.

Yeah, and one of my friends, Molly, she worked for Macy's for a very long time. Okay, well, Molly has been in the parade. This is going to be her fourth time as a matter of fact. And she said some of her best memories, texting her about it, asking her some questions. And she said some of her best memories ever were formed because everybody's just in the best mood

and watching the parade and you're just marching down the street waving and everything. She said it's just amazingly cool. Yeah, and I think, can we go ahead and drop the fact of the episode for me since you said that? Okay. Is that making you nervous? Yeah, which one?

Well, I never knew this, but you know, except for the performers and the hosts and stuff like that, everyone you see in that parade works for Macy's. Yeah, or they're a friend or a family member of a Macy's employee. Yeah, I never knew that. And I'm sure like a straggler might get in there, but it is largely Macy's friends and family and employees.

Yeah, so very cool. And that's actually to kind of get into the history of this. That is a tradition from the very beginning. So like the first ever Macy's parade wasn't even a Thanksgiving parade. It was called the Macy's Christmas parade, even though it was on Thanksgiving still. Back in 1924, there were a lot of recent immigrants

to the United States from Europe who were working for Macy's who said, hey, we've got these parades that kind of celebrate things over in Europe. We should start doing one here. And they actually led to the first Macy's Thanksgiving, well, Christmas parade in 1924. And so all the clowns and the cowboys and the people pulling the caged wild animals,

they were Macy's employees. And that's always been the case ever since then. Created by immigrants to the United States, everybody. Yes. Rich American tradition, I love it. So except for a three year break during World War II, they have been launching this Thanksgiving Day parade for 96 years.

Yep. It has morphed and changed over the years from sort of a small thing to a very big thing to an event, one might say, an entertainment event. About a quarter of a million people showed up on that first one. And I think, what is it, like three and a half million people now

go in person generally? Yeah, and we should say generally, traditionally, we got to qualify with that because the 2020 parade, thanks to the pandemic is going to be different and we'll talk about it. But like, yes, under a normal year in the last like decade or so, three and a half million New Yorkers

or people show up on the streets of New York to watch this thing. And then like 50 million more watch it on TV. Amazing. So quarter of a million at that first one, ads read a marathon of mirth is coming to this Macy's Christmas parade. And it was about a six mile route in that first year.

And it was pretty long for a while. And then they narrowed it down there. Like we can't go six miles anymore. This is getting ridiculous. No, it started in Harlem and went all the way down to Harold Square where Macy's flagship store is, which is where it ends. It's a hike.

Yeah, six miles. And on that first marathon of mirth, like I said, they had caged animals that they dragged along and they did that for the first few years. And then they realized like, actually the animals, they're scaring all the little kids. They're not delighted like we thought. So they stopped borrowing them from the Central Park Zoo.

It also wasn't much fun for the animals, I'm sure as well. And so they replaced the animals with floats. I think in 1927, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and that was a good idea because they're like, what do kids not like are angry tigers. What do kids like are happy balloon tigers? Yeah, especially when it's cold out, you don't want your pants to be wet.

That's right. By the mid sort of 1930s is when the Christmas parade really made the transition to the Thanksgiving parade that we know and love. And that's when pop culture started to be a thing. And people, you know, Felix the cat was a very first character balloon in 1927. And traditionally, celebrities started taking part

in about 1934. I think Eddie Cantor was the first big celeb who was a pretty interesting guy. If you want to look him up, old banjo eyes, Eddie Cantor. Yeah, so not only was he the first celebrity to take part, he was also the one and only celebrity to have a balloon based on him too. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised by that.

Or yeah, that's the only one. Yeah, you'd think Orville Redenbock or something would have a balloon. I don't know. I'm hoping that this really tips the scales in our favor though. Man, that would be amazing. Mine would be mostly beard.

You know, it'd be cool as if they made a balloon of us as the thing with two heads with Rosie Greer and Ray Milan. Yeah. You remember that movie? I sort of do. Like Ray Milan is like a terrible, like horrible racist like old rich guy who pays to have his head put on Rosie Greer's body and they have to like get along.

The first deep fake. I guess, I guess maybe. So parade wise, boy, that's a deep cut. That's a good movie though. They shrunk this thing down like I said to about 43 blocks that we see today. The balloons and the floats just got bigger and bigger of course, the rocket started kicking their way in in 1958.

And then in 77 with the addition of Jean McFadden who was the Macy's Day planner, the parade planner. That's when they started doing the big Broadway performances. Yeah. Jean McFadden, she was from Texas and so of course everything's bigger in Texas. She injected that idea into the Macy's Parade which was already like a big deal by the time she came along

but she really blew it up and turned it into like just this incredibly huge event that it is today. And she also as we'll see brought in sponsors too which definitely altered the complexion of the parade for the better and the worse really. Yeah, I think so. They plan the parade for about 18 months. So if you do the math there, there's about six months

where there are two parades being planned at the same time. Can you imagine? Yeah, I bet you it's pretty segmented though. I bet it's not too confusing. I would be totally bald I think if I were in charge of that. And then last year in 2019, it was the 93rd Parade. They had 26 floats, 16 giant helium character balloons and 40 heritage and novelty balloons and 11 marching bands.

Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, especially up from four horse drawn floats to where they've got now 26 and those giant character balloons. Those are the ones you always see. But in addition to those, there's all those other balloons you mentioned too. Like there's a lot going on in this parade. I mean, it's a three hour parade for Pete's sake

that over two and a half miles, it still takes three hours or so much to it. Yeah, and it's interesting, there are a lot of balloons and over the years, you know, what happens is this parade acts like a time capsule. So whatever's going on in 2019, they're gonna try and feature like very 2019 things. And over the years that has paid off,

you know, you've got your timeless characters that are always there, but sometimes you're gonna have characters like in 99 when they had the Ask Jeeves float, or I'm sorry, the balloon. And, you know, that one didn't age so well. Ask Jeeves went away, Jeeves retired. Right, he retired for sure.

But at the same time, like fortunately, somebody like videotape that and you can go on the internet now and see footage of the Ask Jeeves balloon, you know? Like it's kind of the point though. It's like, it does transport you to 99 when you see something that kind of was only 1999. Or if you go on, if you watch the 2008 parade,

you'll see Rick Astley, Rick rolling the parade. Like he comes out and sings like never gonna give you up. And that is about as 2008 as it gets, you know? So like, yeah, it's like these time caps and you can go watch an entire parade on YouTube right now. One of my favorites is the 1980 parade. Or remember the Where's the Beef balloon? Right?

Right. She was great. Man, she was great. Or the I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler lady? Yeah. Or the time to make the doughnuts guy. Oh yeah. Or in 99, I think they also had the Fight Club float,

which was fantastic. It was, it was just Edward Norton staring at his hand with a lie chemical burn growing on it. We're kidding about all this, by the way. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Where's the Beef lady might have. She was pretty big. She was very big.

She was. So maybe we should take a break. Okay. And really get into these balloons after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so Balloons, like we said, first came about to replace those poor animals from the Central Park Zoo, which was a good move. And there was a guy who really put the first stamp on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. His name was Tony Sarg. And this guy is just such an amazing character.

He has his own American experience documentary about him. I watched that. I have not seen it. I saw a clip of it to make sure we were pronouncing his name correctly. That's what I did, but I got wrapped up. Is it good? Yeah, it's good.

It's short and sweet. Did you see the beginning part, that little stunt he did? About the sea monster? Yeah. It was pretty great. I mean, that was a Macy's Day float. I mean, it wasn't a Macy's Day float,

but it's essentially what it was. I think it was originally and he borrowed it. Oh, was it really? I'm pretty sure it was used in the parade and he repurposed it. So I guess for those of you, the million of you who don't know what we're talking about, this guy, Tony Sarg, he was a puppeteer, a designer,

and he was responsible for creating the first floats and balloons in the Macy's Parade. He was also a bit of a prankster and he took one of these, a sea monster balloon from the Macy's Parade and had it come ashore on Nantucket as like a sea monster. It was like this early 1930s prank, but he was just this whimsical, great guy

who really kind of took this humdrum parade and turned it into like a major annual event for the first time. Yeah, he was, you said he was a puppeteer. He is the father of American puppeteering. So very big figure in puppeteering in the United States. And yeah, he's what really, I think it was basically in the history of the parade,

you can look at Tony Sarg and you can look at Gene McFadden, it's kind of being the two people that really injected the most, I don't want to say enthusiasm because everyone's always been enthusiastic about it, I'm sure. Magnificence. Yeah, magnificence. It's the Sarg McFadden effect.

It's a good band name. Yeah. So in 1928, they had a little promotion. It's kind of funny to look back on these promotions over the years and little things that you try that don't necessarily work out, but this was one of them. And they said, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to release five balloons, like release them. And they have slow release valves and they're going to just sort of float around the country and get lower and lower and lower. And about a week later, they're going to land. And if you gather this thing up, traveled to New York city and bring it back to Macy's. I guess, could you bring it back to your local Macy's?

I wonder. I think you had to, I don't know. Anything I say would be a guess. Okay. But you bring it back to Macy's and you get a hundred bucks. And that ran for four years until a dangerous thing happened, which was people started using their airplanes to try and go catch these things.

And they said, you know what, let's, we did it for four years. Maybe we'll just kind of trim that down now. Yeah. I think it was our, either civil air patrol or Tuskegee airmen episode where we talked about like that was about the time when flying was like this cool new thing that people were trying.

Right. And they were also dummies. So they would do horrible daredevil stuff like that. Which, you know, that is to Macy's credit that they stopped doing it, rather than they're like, yeah, let's see what happens. Let's keep this going. You ever been to that flagship store?

I have. They have like the original escalators in there. And you can tell. That's all I can think about when I, in fact, sometimes I'll go to New York and I'll ride that wooden escalator just to do it. It's so cool because if you look through like the gap between the handrail and the stairs,

you can see the army of monkeys cranking the levers to make the thing go up. No. It stinks so bad. It's a monkey poop. Yeah. So, all right, thanks to our buddies at Mental Floss. We know that how these balloons are done these days.

They are hand drawn at first, which you might, you know, kind of assume. And it's kind of cool how they used to do it. They used to create an actual model and immerse it in water to see how much, to kind of calculate how much helium they would need to float this thing. Today, you can use just math and science and computers to do all that and figure it out.

But you still start with that pencil sketch. Then you submit it to a 3D modeling software. You're gonna fine tune it. And then you're gonna 3D print a few of these things. They probably do a bunch because I would want to take one home. But they print a couple of them to use. One to use that the actual hand paint to say,

like, here's how it's supposed to look. Like every part of it is painted exactly right. And then another one is a blueprint that's gonna guide the cutting of the fabric and the heat sealing of the fabric and everything like that. So the dimensions of the balloons vary, obviously, according to what kind of character it is.

But most of them are about five or six stories, about 60 feet long, about 30 feet wide-ish. And they actually have to employ engineers and aerodynamic experts just to make sure these things do what they're supposed to do, which is float with guidance from their human friends on the ground, which we'll talk about. But they don't want that Kermit arm

dragging along down behind them like it's a gimpy or something. Or even worse, like flying higher than the head. No, unless it's supposed to. Well, sure, if it's supposed to, but what kind of world is that? Well, I don't know. You know, he waves his arms about in a crazy way.

He does. Kasey wanted to do something fun like that. I've been corrected for sure. But they make these balloons. It's not just one big balloon. It's a bunch of different chambers and they do this for a few reasons. One is because one, like let's say you do want that arm.

Let's say it's the Where's the Beef Lady high-fiving somebody. You're gonna want that arm higher than the head in that case, so more helium, less air. Right. And also, if Where's the Beef Lady, which never existed, the balloon that is, like let's say her leg popped or something, the whole thing wouldn't go down.

They'd be able to still float her. Yes, and that's the other reason to have it in chambers too. Plus I believe it's easier to make in different parts, different components that you end up putting together too. So where do they do this though? They have what's called, it's one of the most magical places on the planet

from what I can tell from videos I've seen, Macy's Parade Studio. And they used to have it in a Tootsie Roll factory in Hoboken, which is a pretty new Jersey sentence. And then they moved to a different part of Jersey, Munaki, not to be confused with one of our former favorite words on the podcast. And they went from 16,000 square feet

in the Tootsie Roll factory to 72,000 square feet in 44 foot high ceilings. So now they can build these balloons and test them indoors in their enormous magical parade studio. Yeah, and here's another cool little fun fact. Up until the 80s, they would repurpose the balloon sometimes, which I think is pretty cool and efficient.

The smile balloon, the little smiley face from 1972, just one year as smiley guy, was actually made from Elsie the cow, which was Borden's mascot. And then after that, repurposed into a hot air balloon for old Alvin and the chipmunks in their float. I love that fact too. Pretty neat.

They also have something kind of newer, I think it started in 2005 maybe, it's called the Blue Sky Gallery, where they're like, how about you famous artists submit some designs for a balloon that you would make? And so there's like a Yayoi Kusama balloon, there's a Kaws balloon, a Takashi Murakami balloon, but then the balloon of balloons,

and I'm not sure how many times it's flown, but it's first flying, first flight was in 2008, is a Keith Haring balloon. So you know, like his little kinetic figures? Of course. It's one of those, a black and white kinetic figure, and he's holding a red heart over his head. So I guess in that case,

you would want the arm above the head. Right. And it turns out that apparently Keith Haring had, for a very long time, wanted to design balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but died before he got a chance to. Yeah, he died of complications from AIDS in 1990,

and I think this is a lovely tribute, you know, in 2008, on the 50th anniversary of his birth to do this. I think that was really, really neat, and it was wrangled by his family. Yeah, that's sweet. His father and his siblings, which is really, really beautiful.

Yeah, and keep an eye out for the Keith Haring balloon, because it makes another appearance later in this episode. That's right. So what you were talking about was inflation day, right? Where people go and watch the balloons being inflated, and it's the day before, into the wee hours before the parade, and it's outside of the Museum of Natural History, right?

Yeah, it's really cool. It's, I mean, don't expect to go and have just a very leisurely, you know, it's pretty hectic, you know, there, if you think there are a lot of kids at the parade, it felt like there were even more kids at the inflation day. But it's fun, it's relaxed, you walk around. It's the opposite of what you just said.

Well, no, I mean, it's not like, it's not an organized thing, that's what I meant by relaxed. You can just kind of wander about, and... How close can you get? I mean, you can get really close. We got over, we have a great picture, we recreated probably 15 years later in front of Kermit, so we did a 19, whatever, I don't even know the years,

but they're about 10 or 15 years apart. That's cute. Yeah, it's good. And they use up something like 350,000 to 400,000 cubic feet of helium to fill all those balloons every year. Yeah, and if you listen to our helium podcast, and we talked about the helium shortage, we're actually good right now.

There have been three major shortages over the years, and apparently 2020, we're doing great because of the pandemic. Oh, people aren't buying like balloons and stuff as much? That's what I read this article, and that's what it said, and said that we're like flush with helium right now. Well, yeah, so apparently Macy's used to be

the number two consumer of helium in the world after the US armed forces, but apparently that was true 60 years ago or something, since the advent of medical imaging and aeronautics, they started to kind of use a lot more helium than Macy's, but still, I mean, 400,000 cubic feet of helium, it's nothing to sneeze at. No, and I think they drop about a half a million bucks

on helium every year, don't they? Sure. That's a lot of money. Yeah, we should say apparently they don't ever release numbers. Like every number that I found, I guess is a guesstimate, an estimate, or just a straight up guess.

Mark Twain's three most hated lies. So the helium is actually, I think 1928 is when they started using helium, which is pretty close after the debut of balloons in the parade in the first place. I think it was 1927 that they really started, right? Yeah, they used air at first and had people with sticks, and it was kind of like a big marionette,

which makes sense with Tony Sarg, but I think everyone was like, this is for the birds, man, we need to get some helium up in these things. And they've used helium ever since, except for I think 1958, because of the first helium shortage. Yeah. They went with air.

Yes, and so because you have helium, that means that those balloons can float away, like if they're not held down. And so they're held by ropes. On that inflation day, when they're blown up, they throw netting over them and then put sandbags on the net and connect the things to like sport utility vehicles,

basically to keep them from floating away overnight. But then you can't just keep it under a net during the parade and drag it along the ground. You wanted to kind of float up in the air a little bit. So they need something like 80 to 90 handlers per gigantic balloon. That surprised me. And there's usually, and this is under normal circumstances,

up to 3000 balloon handlers. Again, all Macy's employees are friends and family at Macy's employees. That's right. If you want to be a handler in your, let's say you work in the cosmetics department at Macy's, they're going to size you up and say, step on the scale, need to weigh at least 125 pounds to carry these things.

Okay. They're going to check your ID to make sure you're over 18. Yeah. It's like getting in the club. Sort of. They're going to make sure you're in good health. And if you want to, you can go to training, but I think only the team leaders have to go

to the training where they're going to learn about aerodynamics and geometry and physics. They're going to practice. They got to, you know, they're going to take you out to a field with a real balloon and practice and say as team leader, you're going to be in charge of this thing. You're going to have a pilot and a captain and two drivers.

Right. And I think the pilot is the person walking backwards that you see on TV, kind of guiding it along with a rope, right? Yeah. Yeah. But while they're managing the balloon in that sense, they're not actually the leader. They take their orders from the leader leader.

Right. And there's also apparently a NYPD representative or a cop, basically, who's also trained in balloon handling that marches along with every single balloon too. I love that. But they're like highly trained in balloon handling. The NYPD is generally from what I understand. So, should we take a break?

Yeah. I think we should take a break and maybe talk about some of the foibles over the years, because those are always fun. It is fun. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

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And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

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loves to see a well-timed, well-honed parade that goes off without a hitch, but sometimes it's kind of fun to see a balloon going a little crazy because of the wind. It adds a little excitement. It adds a little something else, a little air of what is going to happen now, maybe. And I don't think people root for that, but when it happens, it's always kind of fun.

It's thrilling. It is thrilling. And in fact, if you want to see a crowd react, how a crowd reacts to an out-of-control giant character balloon in New York City, go look up Barney the Balloon 1997 Macy's Parade and just thank me later. That crowd is screaming and thrilled. It could be in 1927 or it could be in 1997.

Or it could be Cloverfield. It could be, but they're clearly, it's that kind of scared where you're, it's like roller coaster. It sounds like several hundred thousand people on the same roller coaster right then. But that was just one year. In 1997, it was a particularly bad year.

There have been people who have been seriously injured when balloons go wrong. One of the first injuries came in 1993 when an off-duty police captain was injured by a street light that fell on him when a Sonic the Hedgehog balloon ran amok and knocked the street light over onto the cop. And I think he like broke his shoulder,

something horrid like that. Yeah, that seems to be sort of a, and it's not common because it doesn't happen that much, but it seems like lamppost and street lights, which really goes to show you how big and heavy these things really are. In 97, like you were talking about,

besides Barney, they had big wind gusts that year, about 40 miles an hour. But there was a cat and a hat balloon hit a lamppost and it knocked this decorative arm to the ground and actually put a woman in a coma for about a month. And if you think that is interesting, the same lady, her name was Kathleen Corona, she recovered and she went on to be the same lady

who's, remember when that Yankees pitcher, Corey Lydell, crashed his plane into a building in 2010? Yeah. That was her apartment. I know. So that's, man. That woman has like a specific New York strain of bad luck. I know, and it was a cat and a hat.

So like, I don't know, how many lives does she have? Oh, that's a great question. She's on at least three now, the third one. I think it might move. She may have by this time, in 2005, there was a big incident with the M&M's balloon that yet again hit a street lamp and knocked it onto a pair of sisters who were injured.

And then we said before that the Keith Haring balloon was going to make another appearance. And it did in that 2008 parade because it sideswip the NBC broadcast. And apparently I haven't seen it, but it scared Al Roker and Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer quite badly for a second there. The urban legend is that it knocked the broadcast off the air,

but that's not true. Not true. Because of these accidents, they're always trying to make it safer. Giuliani, when he was mayor there, he appointed a task force to review the 97 cat and the hat balloon accident. And in 98, there were some rules that came out that said,

you know what, if the winds are 23 miles an hour or higher or if it's gusting 34 or higher, then you can't fly these things. Yeah, so think about that. That was a big enough incident. Again, a woman was put in a coma, but it was a big enough incident that the administration of New York City

got involved and appointed a task force to figure out how to make this work. This is a few things if you step back and think about it. One, like these balloons can pose a danger to some extent if they go wrong and they can under certain circumstances. But two, the Thanksgiving parade is so beloved that they're like, we're not going to stop this.

So we need to figure out what to do to make it safer. New York's not a nanny state. No, which is funny because Mayor Bloomberg who created the soda tax, which is like the pinnacle of the nanny state in some people's eyes, he still wouldn't change things. He appointed his own task force after that Eminem's incident.

And they still were like, we can just figure out how high each balloon should fly. That's another thing we should do. So New York has taken steps. The city of New York has taken steps to ensure that that parade keeps going on regardless. And one of the things that they do that I saw, they have contractors that come through the night before

and they take street lights and the arm, the posts that go over the street that hold the street lights, they take those down on the parade route. Two and a half mile stretch of New York. Overnight, they take down all of those arms and they take down other street lights, street lamps. They trim trees that might get in the way. And from what I saw in those incidents

where at least with the Eminem balloon, if not also the cat and the hat balloon, they went out of the way. I think the handlers didn't keep them in line because of the gusts. And they went out of like their normal route onto a street lamp that hadn't been taken down. Should have gone to that training.

I guess so. So those are balloons. You've also got your floats. These floats really started when in 1969, like the big spectacle floats, when float designer Manfred Bass got on board. Yeah, this is another big, big moment. It was. Manfred Bass was like, you know what?

We can only make these things so big because they have to travel from New Jersey to New York and we're not putting them on a barge. We're going through the Lincoln tunnel. So he said, how about this? How about we figure out how to collapse these things and fold them down and then fold them right back up so we can get them through the Lincoln tunnel

and then we can just pop them right back up. And that collapsibility is what really changed the game in the 1970s when these floats got to be really, really big. And it takes three to five months to build them, up to $100,000 to build them. And it kind of goes the way of the balloons as far as just sort of starting out with a sketch and then eventually a little 3D model.

Yeah, they start out with architectural drawings from the sketch and then make the models and then they start building and they make them out of like, these things are like welded metal structures. They're like really sturdy and they have to be because like the Santa Claus float, the one that the current incarnation that was designed by a guy named Joel Naper.

Pringle? Joel Naper stack, I think N-A-P-R-S-T-E-K. It's an amazing float. Like it's four small houses, snow-covered roofs with Santa's reindeer swooping down the roofs and Santa is on the top of the sleigh, which in reality is like three stories up. And I guess it's enough to keep Santa's

bowl full of jello intact. They're that sturdily made. You've also obviously got tons of costuming going on. They've got about 5,000 costumes in their costume house. They're led by Kimberly Montgomery and the costumes are estimated to be about worth two million bucks, just the clauses, each Mrs. and Mr. Santa Claus. They cost about 20 grand each and they reside

in the little specially made cedar chest all year long and they add about 700 new costumes a year and then end up dressing about 4,200 individuals a year in costumes, which is mind-boggling. Yeah, and they do it in like a couple of hours. It's his four hours, that's, you really gotta be on your game. I've been on movie sets, that's very impressive.

And then there's one other thing that a lot of people don't think about. All of those costumes have to be washed and laundered after the parade, which I would not want to be on the wardrobe team just for that, you know. I bet you they send that stuff out or maybe they have in-house stuff.

Yeah, I don't know. So remember Tony Sarg, the amazing puppeteer, sorry, the father of American puppetry. Thank you. He was from what I could tell the first parade host. I don't know if that's supported by the facts or not, but I saw it mentioned in a couple of places and I traced it back to one site that said it

and I can't find out if he was or not. But I believe he was, if not the first parade host, one of the early parade hosts, because in pretty short order within, you know, less than a decade, that parade started to be broadcast, at least locally on the radio, I think, and starting in the 30s. And then very quickly after that,

it was broadcast in the 40s and CBS picked it up and started broadcasting it nationally in the late 40s, early 50s, and then NBC picked it up. And when you have a broadcast, you need to have a host. And so from what I saw, Tony Sarg was the first host and then eventually as the parade got bigger and bigger, he was supplanted by more nationally recognized figures. Yeah, and for many years, it was kind of kid-friendly stuff.

Not that they ever like, you know, went blue and had like, you know, Richard Pryor doing it or anything like that. But kid-friendly, meaning like Captain Kangaroo and stuff like that. They did have Andy Kaufman like on one of the... Yeah. One of the floats ones.

But he was ironically very kid-friendly at times. You're right, that's true. He was in a dirty comedian. That's true, man. But that changed, I think, in the 50s. Jackie Gleason, who was certainly not kid-friendly, he was a host and then basically it kind of just became like, you know, let's get as big a celebrity in here as we can.

And they got bigger and bigger, which of course, you know, there's a lot of eyeballs on this thing in person and at home. And so they said, you know what we should do? We should probably try, like this thing costs us a lot of money. We should probably offset some of these costs by allowing people to sponsor some of these balloons. So they did that and selling sponsorships

has become a great way to alleviate those costs. Yeah, and we should also say that they are like adamant that they're like, this is not, we have never said that. So that's like, but it's all out there. A bunch of people have done a bunch of number crunching and stuff and reported that it costs about four and a half million dollars to put on the parade and that they have something like nine million dollars

in balloons and floats and studio space and costumes. And then again, like you said, about a half a million dollars worth of helium. So that's a bunch of cash. And when Gene McFadden came in and said, wait a minute, you guys aren't selling sponsorships, let's get sponsors in here in the late seventies that really changed everything.

And so now from, I think CBS news, if not Bloomberg, somebody reported that the rumors companies pay about 200 grand to sponsor a new balloon, which I have to say, these are like national, sometimes global companies. That seems low to me, don't you think so? Sure, when you look at like advertising for the big game. Yeah, 50 million people, plus another three

and a half million in person, everybody's in really good mood, all looking at the same thing. That just seems like a bit of a deal to me, which makes me wonder if it's way more than that in reality. And then CBS news also said that it supposedly drops to 90 grand after that initial year, because you don't have the cost of designing and building it.

It's just, it's been in storage for a year and they just have to fill it up again. Yeah, and there've been a lot of celebrity appearances over the years, some I think a little more, some make sense, some don't make as much sense. Yeah, I love the ones that don't make sense. I didn't get what didn't make sense though about Miami Vice, that's one I didn't get.

So to me, I picked this. It's Miami Vice in New York in the fall, almost winter time. It's the Big Apple Float, which makes sense, but it's also Miami Vice on the Big Apple Float. And then the speakers blaring Glenn Fries, you belong to the city. That's like one of the least holiday themed songs anyone's ever recorded.

But it's a Miami Vice song. I know, but it just doesn't make any sense. Like just have Philip Michael Thomas on, they're waving at people. You know, everybody loves Tubbs, Rico Tubbs. Why have you belong to the city? Like a real downer like song playing in the Thanksgiving parade, it just struck me as weird.

That was the Miami Vice theme, would that be better? Much better. It's upbeat, it's energetic. Can you imagine you belong to the city just dragging you down on a nice, Thursday Thanksgiving morning while you're standing out there, you'd be like, get on with that, keep going. I don't know.

I mean, I'm living in a river of darkness under the neon lights. Exactly. Don't ask me. What else, 1979, there was Buck Rogers himself, Mr. Gil Gerard on the Ocean Spray Cranberry Float. You're right. Gotta put somebody up there.

Andy Kaufman on the Rocking Lion Float. So two facts, one, Andy Kaufman was the first celebrity to ever ride the Rocking Lion. So instead of a rocking horse is a rocking lion. Yeah. Okay. He was late. So they actually had somebody fill in,

I don't remember who until he made it onto the parade route. And then three, that is one of the oldest floats still in the parade. So when you see the Rocking Lion on the parade, you can be like, Andy Kaufman once stood there. I know there was, I think like five or six years ago, there was a bit of a kerfuffle with the Rock Band Kiss. You know, the parade is, they can't sing live, you know?

That's just not how parades work. You can be lip syncing. And depending on how things are going and the weather and the wind and the sound, sometimes a lip syncing is better than others. But I think the deal with Kiss was they got really kind of mad afterward because they thought they were going to be on the Gibson guitar float,

which was this huge kiss worthy float because Kiss does the big, big thing. And they were like, Paul Stanley, you got to play Gibson guitar up there. He's like, I don't play Gibson guitars, I never have. I'm not going to play Gibson. So they said, all right, well, you can't be on the Gibson float, but we got a float for you.

And they put them on, I mean, you can look it up from 2014. It was a little underwhelming for Kiss. What, did the Ocean Spray Cranberry float? No, it was just a, just sort of a flatbed with rails. And it was not, not the most impressive float. Did they at least have bales of hay on there? No, no bales of hay. It's worth watching.

Interesting camera work, cutting way to things that are not Kiss while they're playing. It was, they were pretty, pretty upset about the whole thing. You mentioned lip syncing. I mean, like this parade is well known for bad lip syncing. There's a great one. If you go watch, again, that 1980 parade,

one of the guys from Little House on the Prairie, Dean Butler, is doing a horrible lip syncing job to don't fence me in. And it's definitely worth watching. I think it starts at the 4840 mark. Just go check it out. And then I guess John Legend was on and, you know, he's well known as a very, very talented musician.

Sure. I felt compelled to actually tweet out an apology saying like, hey, I'm sorry, I know I was lip syncing. I actually don't lip sync at my concerts, but these floats are not set up for concert quality sound production. They just can't possibly handle this equipment. And so we lip sync instead.

And that's just part of the parade. And I guess he was forgiven because everybody loves John Legend. Yeah, the whole thing with live music at a parade, it works for this because it's televised. But if you've ever been to like a local parade where they have bands on a flatbed, it's just the worst because it's like...

It sounds terrible. Well, it sounds terrible. It's like, hey, do you want to hear 17 seconds of a song? Right. Because that's all you get. And, you know, the band's up there having a good time, but no one watching it enjoys it. No.

So there was another great lip syncing episode in the 1989 parade that you can go watch. Just look up Melba Moore holding out for a hero, Marvel superheroes. Yeah, that was pretty great. And it's just this weird... So Melba Moore is great Broadway talent. She was also a huge disco queen, right?

And for some reason she's lip syncing to Bonnie Tyler's holding out for a hero. She had plenty of her own hits, but it's a cheap MIDI Casio version of holding out for a hero. But then bizarrely, Chuck, have you seen this one? I did. So pre-Marvel like cinematic universe version Marvel,

these puffy, terrible costumes, version 1989 Marvel, superheroes are all like gyrating as her backup dancers for some reason and helping her dance. And it was named by the advocate magazine as one of the 10 gayest moments in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade history. I love it. And brother is it.

I love it. He's the advocate. That's very fun. I think you should take the most infamous one though. Well, yeah, this wasn't lip syncing necessarily, but in 1964, is that the one? Yeah, this is when they got the Munsters. They got Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis,

Grandpa and Herman Munster to recreate their characters and dress up and ride a parade float. In fact, the Munster coach, which was great. And apparently Fred Gwynne just got ripped and worn drunk. He brought a brown bag bottle of liquor on board, said it was nerve tonic to everybody and just got hammered and was like cussing at people.

And he was cussing at the hosts and the driver of the car just had to like, I think he was the show's producer. He had to just crank the music way up so no one could hear him. Yeah. Can you imagine seeing a drunk Herman Munster shouting at you, shouting curses at you.

And the hosts that year were longtime hosts, Lauren Green from Bonanza and Betty White. I know. It's like the two nicest humans. Right. And he apparently shouted like the mother of all expletives at them over the Munster's theme song. I love that.

That's great. God bless Fred Gwynne. So Chuck, if you want to go under normal, in a normal year, if you wanted to go, there's a few things you should remember, right? There's some insider tips. Yeah, it starts at nine. You should show up as early as six.

They recommend insider tips say west side of the street on Central Park West from 59th to 75th is a good place. If you are sleeping in and having mimosas, you may want to go down toward the end of the route and catch things because they're going to end up there later, obviously. It's also less energetic further down. Like the highest energy stuff is closest

to the beginning from the 90s. That makes sense. Yeah. And Herman Munster is going to be plowed by the time he gets to the end of the route. Exactly. So it's actually a reason to come under. Maybe that's what you want.

Yeah. They don't sell tickets. If you see people in seats at the end of the route, that is reserved for Macy's friends and family. Bring your kids, but don't bring your strollers because they're just a nightmare. You can bring a blanket if you want to sit on the curb. You don't have to burn it afterward.

But Jean McFadden said, you know what you do is bring a plastic garbage bag because you can wear it as a raincoat, as a windbreaker. You can sit on the curb with it. You don't have to burn it. And at the end, you can pick up a little trash and be a good New York citizen. Yeah.

I thought that was pretty great. Totally. So for this year's parade, for the 2020 parade, because of the pandemic, they're actually not going to have the parade whine two and a half miles through New York in front of three and a half million people packed cheek to jowl on the street.

Instead, it's going to be TV only. It's not going to be anybody watching the parade in person. And the whole thing's going to just be shot and take place in front of that Macy's Herald Square flagship store. And apparently, they're all going to socially distance to wear masks. And it's going to be pandemic-rific,

but the show's still going to go on. Yeah, I thought this was a good compromise. And while you won't be able to go in person, I think people on Thanksgiving Day that love to watch it in full or have it on in the background, it'll still be there. That comfort food will still be there on your television. And hats off to them for figuring this out.

Yeah, agreed. So that's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about it, go on to YouTube and watch Old Parades and then watch the one this Thanksgiving. It's going to be the 94th.

Since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Australian voting. OK. Hey, guys, I was just listening to the Voter Suppression podcast. Thought I'd touch base. Where is that from? Is that from like a Wallabies corner accent?

I don't know. It's a good one. Yeah, totally. I'm just trying to put my finger on it. The system we have in Australia works super well. Voting is compulsory. It's on a Saturday. And there's always a sausage sizzle going on

so you can get to snack as well. That's great. So this stops voter fraud. Everyone is accounted for and well fed. And for people who say it should be a person's Democratic right not to vote if they don't want to, then they have the option of putting in a dummy vote or just getting a fine of about $200.

Most people in Australia are amazed at how silly the US system is. It is. But the US does have good podcasts, so there's something. I just went into something weird at the end there. I'm not sure what that was. And that is from Jackie. Jackie, that's great.

Yeah, I was really, I didn't realize that other countries have compulsory voting where you're 18, you're automatically registered just from turning 18. And then you have to vote in every election from that point on. I love it. And thank you for Jackie sitting that in. Yeah, it feels so weird to do the opposite

of trying to not to get people to not vote. You know, doing the opposite of that seems right. Yeah, I agree. And as it turns out, Jackie is a pretty prominent Australian artist. Is that right? Oh, well, thanks for listening, Jackie. Hopefully, we've had some influence in your art

and that it wasn't one of your darker periods. If you want to be like Jackie and get in touch with us from your home country that Chuck might do an accent of, we would love that. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.