Well we woke up stupid early again for the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving parade and I figured I would try to live blog some of it.

06:13am —

Folks out earlier this year than normal. Didn’t realise they started early. We’re already three lines deep. We prefer a bit of a buffer because of the cameras pointed at us, but still. Kinda crazy. That tower in this picture is where Julia Roberts used to live. And one year we did this, I swear up and down that Paul Giamatti came and joined us and refused to tell us what he did for a living until I realized, afterwards, who he was.

06:17 — Guy named Ron whose grandparents are from Florissant is beside us giving out donuts like it’s IV bag vodka at the Halloween parade.

Until he offered a donut to a cop.

“Whoops. That’s not a joke. Would you like a donut ma’am? Them? Sir?”

“No.”

“Ah. Happy… Thanksgiving?”

Doh.

The militarised tanks are out in force, one more change from our incompetent and allegedly criminally fraudulent mayor. The one that now has sexual misconduct accusations on top of it all.

Expect militarised drones. Expect body scanners. Expect more biometrics that are useless for security and only present as one more system of controlled oppression from your surveillance state. This is not the dystopia you expected, it’s all of them at once with a nice patina of Brave New World and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Plutarch Heavensbee slathered on top.

06:24 — Skyline has changed a ton since 2018. Let alone since Hurricane Sandy.

You can see it here, the pencil thin places for international billionaires to park their assets, faceless grey tall grass growing in the urban jungle to hide those feral cats:

06:27 — Had a few chances again to watch it from a tower this year, but this and the marathon and the Halloween parade are our hometown parades, so why wouldn’t we want to experience this with our neighbours and… all of the midwest tourists normally glued to NBC?

It reminds me always of the Little Egypt parade. Not the stuff on camera, on the ground.

We have met tons of folks this way and it’s the great pleasure of living here, meeting so many folks. Several have been in our home.

Lots of first timers today.

Only a few folks up in the buildings above.

06:46 — Still haven’t let in the bleacher people. The line was stretched south for blocks and blocks. I searched for eight blocks for a bathroom (been posting these while walking and walked for a half hour or so).

06:53 —Spoiler alert: the turkey camps out just north of us until it’s 165° in the dark meat. They do not spatchcock it.

I suppose a spatchcocked turkey float would be more of a Halloween parade thing. Perhaps that should be a thing next year.

Letting folks in.

These clowns. They were talking it up in Jersey accents. Ron Donuts was shouting, “We love you clown people!”

He was also saying, “Five minutes more.”

It was not five minutes more.

More of that in a second.

This is pretty standard. Even in Little Egypt’s parade.

07:00 — Announcer: “Good morning New York City! Welcome to the Macy’s Day Parade! We are officially one hour and thirty minutes away!”

New Yorker translation: “You could get to New Haven Connecticut by commuter line before this frigging thing starts.”

07:13 — Frigid.

My toes started going numb.

Sun started to peak up. We’re positioned for it to be right across from us every year, sort of a reverse Manhattanhenge — the sunrise.

You’ll see they add the wood to cover all the railing and trees. Why?

Armor.

That whole street filled up and people will climb on this super fancy gates just to see.

And that, my friends, is why we wake up at 4am.

07:24 — Ginko and pigeons perfect for sunrise.

Gosh it was a perfect day.

A You’ve Got Mail morning.

08:00 — The guy in the crane needs long underwear man.

Later on, the One Piece balloon sucker punched that pole.

Ron Donuts who roots for the Rangers swore it was gonna pop. I… thought it might too honestly.

08:06 — No those aren’t leaves. It’s litter. I mean NBC confetti.

08:16 — Filling up.

08:22 — Snoopy locked and loaded. We are within walking distance now — not us, so much, but the timing. Ten minutes away is about walking distance time for NYers.

You’ll notice Snoopy, in traditional dog fashion, is sniffing the turkey’s butt.

08:27 — Guess Goku livestreams now?

08:30 — Balcony crew arrived countdown begins .

08:37– Turkey’s done.

No spatchcocking.

This is when Ron Donuts started shouting, “HI SARA!” He pulled his methodology from the marathon: he figures Sara’s a solid midwest name and with all the bands and Jews, he’s bound to hit someone named Sara.

Also, Ron Donuts shouted, “You’re the best people, turkey people!”

“Hi Sara,” Ron Donuts shouted. “You’re the best people, Snoopy people!”

08:48 — Freezing, man.

Need a fire.

Don’t be a killjoy, Smoky, I’m just cold, brother.

“Hi Sara,” Ron Donuts shouted. “You’re the best, Smoky people!”

By this point, Ron Donuts had a cheering section and the Australian aunts next to me were losing their mind. They thought he was the funniest American to ever descend from cowboys disposed against British colonnial rule. Nevermind their entire island.

08:58– If you didn’t notice, every single bass drum is so decorated.

Around this time, the shoe car from the bowling float broke down in front of us.

Now old Ron Donuts had been shouting “Hi Sara,” Ron Donuts shouted. “You’re the best, band people!”

But when the car broke down, our cheering section lost its mind.

“There’s enough midwest dads here, gotta be a mechanic!”

“A single shoe broke down: someone quick, get a balloon Cinderella.”

“Shoe! Shoe! Shoe! We’re here for you shoe.”

It seems, for us at least, the broken down shoe was the best part of the parade.

And that, my friends, is why you go.

Because we were standing with 400 strangers, probably 30% from the region and 70% from St. Louis and Bartow and Illinois (no one we knew, by the way, but a guy had read Bloody Williamson so he was excited about me citing it in Bell Hammers).

But all of us became united for an old busted down shoe.

And that’s a New York morning.

09:02– My nephews would have been proud.

Before we go to the next photo, you need to queue up some music.

You ready?

Let it play a bit.

Here we go.

Brace yourself:

Our vet used to do the NYPD horses.

He did a lot of big animals at the zoo.

He was a boxer in the old style.

Who was featured on the cover of National Lampoons.

And told me the dirtiest old man story about that cover I’ve ever heard. Sort of story you can’t really do much about because you’re holding your dog down while she’s getting shots and you don’t want to distract the vet, so you just have to keep listening to it.

Fistbump.

“Hey Sara! You’re the best SpongeBob people,” and so forth saith Ron Donuts.

I’m here for the jet.

One way becomes a Michigan turn on candy cane lane.

If he gets too close to the sun, he’ll burn. It’s sort of a middle oven rack thing.

Local news had Paw Patrol under a net. It was a very impounded situation.

Local news here is the same quality of bad as your local news, minus decent journalism, but it all takes place in the Oscar awarded movie set of NYC, so it’s even more surreal.

Fallon’s crew with their back turned.

I could have shown closeups of Keenan and other celebs.

I didn’t want to.

I wanted to show this one because seeing the back of famous people and giving them their space is much more what NYC is normally like.

4′ of space.

Let them chill.

They’re just people like you and me, don’t make it weird.

Still gunning one of these years for a macro picture of just the bell and the buildings behind.

Kung Fu Panda kicking us to Macy’s.

I won’t be showing Santa mainly because I was enjoying him. And I purposefully missed a ton of stuff just to be a bit present.

But also because it’s Advent, not Christmas. And Hannukah too.

It’ll be Christmas when it’s Christmas.

Resisting the idea that it’s Christmas yet is part of resisting capitalism and corporate marketing, which is what this thing mostly is.

However, I hope telling some stories about the folks on the ground shifted the perspective a bit.

They got the shoe back up and running.

Cinderella didn’t come.

We made fun of Texas and Florida, as is New York tradition.

Donuts were passed out.

Children laughed.

People probably wore diapers, but the Lenwich bathroom line was thirty people long.

I bought a Thanksgiving sandwich.

Then we went home for our Turkish Thanksgiving meal.