Macy's - more than just a department store

Thanksgiving to me has always meant the smell of cooking and the crackling sound of football - family gatherings and overeating. It's also meant waking up to the sounds of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In my opinion, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the best parade in the world. Not only do you have the standard marching bands and floats - you have dancers and balloons AND (this is the best part) - Broadway shows performed right in front of you! It's a glorious mix of music and dance and spectacle. While I'm not a big parade-goer in my everyday life, this year I was thrilled to be able to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade for the first time. I started talking about it in August.

Most New Yorkers were a little blase about the parade. They had seen the floats and balloons before and many complained about the cold weather or the fact that their parents had dragged them year after year against their will. Their childhood memories of the parade were quite a bit different from my own. I was undeterred by their stories, however. I was still anxious to see the parade for the first time. I even put off a trip to North Carolina to visit my mother by a day - just so I could witness the spectacle.

The night before the parade, I invited some friends to my neighborhood (yes - that's not a type-o - something was actually happening in my neighborhood....amazing) to see the balloons blown up outside the Natural History Museum. One by one my friends bagged out on me, but I took puppy in the early evening to see the balloons anyway. The crowd was dense with strollers and screaming kids, but the balloons were pretty amazing. They lined them up, shoulder to shoulder on either side of the museum and slowly started to fill them with helium. As they started to grow, the balloons took shape and really seemed like they were coming to life. It was like watching a flower bloom in quicktime - and at six stories high it was a really big flower. The crowds however, were not amazing and puppy didn't care too much about the balloons, so we didn't stay long.

The next morning I woke up at 6:00 to take puppy back to the scene. We made our way first down Columbus Avenue where bus after bus rumbled down the center of the street carrying parade participants. These were the balloon handlers, the dressers, and the dancers of the parade and 100% of them were in costumes. The buses seemed to be pre-organized, so each bus carried a group of around 100 people with the same outfit. A bus would stop and 100 people dressed in bright blue jumpers would file out (not unlike a prison movie). The bus behind it would stop and 100 people dressed like Harry Potter would file out. The next bus would stop and 100 people dressed like oversized leaves would file out. If you were on any kind of prescription medication and unaware of the parade later that morning - this would be a truly trippy experience.

The balloons were still on either side of the museum, but were now tied down, like something out of Gulliver's Travels.

I made my way past the museum and over to Central Park West where every single float in the parade was lined up - tip to tip - for over 12 blocks. It was incredible. You could walk up an touch these floats with their bright, beautiful colors and eclectic themes. There was a float shaped like a boat, a float shaped like New York City, a float shaped like a giant teacup with bears around it and of course, the last float with a giant hill, an oversized sleigh and eight life-sized reindeer - waiting for Santa. I felt like a kid in a toy store. I don't think my mouth closed all morning.

I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, so I decided to head home with puppy before the parade and take a quick nap. On my way home, I saw the marching bands starting to file in. On 86th and 85th street, rows and rows of marching bands were walking down - taking up the entire street with waves of bright colors and musical instruments. They filed down the street and towards the back of the floats to await their next instruction. It looked like an ocean of marching band members - it was amazing.

After my nap I made my way back to the museum where I set up right before the starting line. The crowd was dense, but nowhere near as crazy as the night before. I'm sure there are areas of the city where it gets super packed, but where I was people were pretty mellow and everyone could see the action.

The balloons were much more impressive as they were carried down the streets by handlers. Now they no longer seemed like oversized toys - but like toys that had come to life. They were huge - overwhelming. When they floated by, they would block out the sun for several moments.

The floats were also more impressive in movement. Now they were accompanied by dancers and music and the occasion pop super star (hello Kayne!). The dancers were lovely and the marching bands - well, the marching bands kind of just sounded like marching bands - but they were from all over the country and seemed very excited to be there.

I had a tremendous amount of excitement leading up to the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. Local New Yorkers tried to downplay the magic of they day, but I wouldn't be deterred. And I was right not to. The parade exceeded my heightened anticipations - and was one of the most magical things I've witnessed so far in New York. I absolutely loved it.

Hot "Child" in the City

This city is competitive. It moves fast. Bars are open until four. Restaurants serve $14 martinis that could double as hot tubs. Hundred of clubs, trendy wine bars, and strip clubs dot the streets. It’s almost as though the city has a large “Adults Only” sign at its entrance. In reality, however, that’s not the case. Kids live here too!

I was reminded of this on Friday night at the Armory, a monstrous structure that looms over midtown east. The armory is so expansive it’s almost overwhelming in a city that constantly forces you to shrink, squeeze and hunch to fit into smaller and smaller spaces. It’s so large in fact, they installed an entire carnival there over the weekend. The carnival had a large slide, rotating swings, food booths, a tiny magician tent and an enormous, flashing Ferris Wheel that loomed over the activities in the center of the room.

Usually, Friday activities for me involve standing around in a crowded room with fellow 25-42-year-old professionals dressed in black and sipping alcoholic beverages out of sparkling, over-sized glassware. This Friday evening involved very few people taller than my waist. To be fair though, I was wearing heels.

These little “whipper-snappers” screamed, squealed and ran around the expansive room with abandon. They flew down the slide, watched the magician with wide-eyed wonder, and periodically stood still just long enough for their parents (or nannies) to snap their picture. Admission to the carnival was only $5 – so it felt like every kid from Manhattan and the Bronx was there. It was an abrupt reminder that kids share this city too.

When I started to take note however, I noticed kids everywhere. A handful of kids take the subway to school in the morning with their parents. I’m not sure where they go and I don’t see them every day (some mornings I’m running a little later than others), but they always get off on 79th street. Their over-sized backpacks and lunch boxes stand out in the mass of briefcases and power ties. I started to notice other evidence of children in Manhattan as well.

Nearly every weekend you’ll see a frazzled, exhausted mothers on the train with a sleeping toddler in a stroller. Manhattan generally is not built for strollers. The sidewalks are narrow and packed with people, and the subways only have elevators at express stops, so bringing strollers into and out of the subway almost always takes two people. Doors are narrow and heavy and have you ever tried to take a stroller through a rotating door? Me neither, but it sounds like a bitch. Even if you’re willing to take on the challenge of a stroller in Manhattan, some places just won’t allow you. The pizza place next to my building has the largest dining area in the five boroughs (I’m convinced). Even they have a sign on the front door that specifically prohibits strollers. Trying to navigate a stroller in a typical Manhattan restaurant is impossible so a sign is unnecessary. It would be easier to bring an unruly St. Bernard with you to dinner.

A colleague of mine just had a daughter last week. I was shocked to learn yesterday that he lives my neighborhood. “The upper west side,” I asked, when he told me. “But you just had a child!” He apparently is ready to take the stroller challenge head on.

I have a good friend who was born and grew up mere blocks from my current residence. In the past few weeks, I’ve met some of his elementary, middle and high school classmates. So I know these native Manhattanites exist, it just took a random Friday carnival for me to put the reality of their childhood in context. They didn’t ride a yellow school bus, they rode the nine train. While I took 8th grade Social Science, they enjoyed classes in philosophy, origami, and current events (where the required reading included the New York Times. In eighth. grade.). They didn’t have a backyard to throw the ball around, but they did have access to a 90 acre park. They didn’t get a drivers license when they turned 16 (many of them still don’t know how to drive) because they’ve been hailing cabs since they could hold out their hand. Instead of Cheerios, they enjoyed bagels for breakfast. Their building blocks likely created Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. Instead of movies, they went to the theater. I saw a little boy at Gatz last weekend who liked he was about 8 years old. The 2:00 PM show let out about 9:00 PM. If I was 8, it would be torture to sit in a dark theatre for seven hours. Heck, as an adult I was dubious and I dropped some serious cash to do it! So native New Yorkers are out there. They grow up in a forrest of concrete. Their parents tackled the challenge of strollers, private schools, and precocious dispositions to successfully raise children in Manhattan.

As I grow older myself, it’s encouragig that this opportunity exists. I was in a marketing training this week and the instructor presented a case study of baby formula. He showed a series of pbaby pictures and talked about the psychographic segmentation of women with children. The instructor, raising his voice over the ticking of my biological clock, revealed that every woman in his example lived in New York City. I smiled to myself. Yes, it would be a huge pain in the ass, but having a family in the city was possible. I had a case study, my friend, the subway school kids and a midtown carnival to prove it.

Footnotes: I wrote this blog yesterday and when I got home last night, I had the movie "Babies" waiting for me in the mail from Netflix. Ha ha, Universe, you're hilarious.