The Thanksgiving Parade From a 64th Street View

For the first time in many years, the Shaver family finally organized ourselves to get up at 4 a.m. and go to the Thanksgiving parade. For me, the picture above captures my excitement of seeing the parade in person. So much fun!

Lots more pictures below, and lots of tips if you plan to come to the 2010 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

First picture of the day: Metuchen train station at 5:15 a.m.

Several hours later, the parade begins at 9 a.m. Yay! (My feet already hurt from standing in one place waiting.)

But we had an excellent location on 64th Street at Central Park West! That’s Mike and Bradley — or rather, the backs of their heads.

Perfect weather too! Not cold at all, no rain, very little wind. No sun glare. You can’t ask for better weather than that for November!

Spiderman looks awesome!

The fun in going to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade is in being part of the crowd as the floats go by. There is oohing and aahing as the floats sway from one side of the street to the other, and lots of cheering. The floats are so big when you see them in person!

And everybody takes lots of pictures!

I kept changing lenses since I only brought one camera. Had the wrong one on when Kermit came at me. He’s HUGE!

Random celebrity. Know who that is? Wait, “random celebrity” is an oxymoron, isn’t it? Hmm. Well, the teenager standing next to me was super excited to see that guy.

I love this picture.

The Sesame Street float was a crowd pleaser for sure. The float was beautiful! For me, seeing “Bob” was really cool.

Pretty leaves on that float. Kids are cute too.

These dancers were so cute!

I should probably know who all these celebrities are. Anybody know who that is?

Any guesses about who’s behind the traffic light? Had my long lens on for this one too. I’ll give you a hint. He’s yellow.

Shrek was one of our favorites.

Those are Shrek’s ropes behind Brad and Mike. They wanted a picture of them with Shrek in the background, but to get the shot I would have had to give up my awesome spot up on that wall, jump to the ground to shoot from the ground up to the sky, catching Brad and Mike in the middle. Maybe next year.

Those floats are big!

That’s Ziggy Marley! He’s in the first picture of the blog post too — the confetti one. I love the colors in this picture! I also love that in seeing the parade in person you don’t have to endure the cheesy over-dubbed songs, not that Ziggy did one of those. I wouldn’t know, since I wasn’t watching on TV (yay).

Three teens standing next to me were having so much fun!

I love how in this picture, you can just barely see the tuba in the blurry background, but that’s it’s clarified in the cell phone camera’s image.

By the way, the bands were all REALLY good! My favorite was the band that played “Ghostbusters.” I mean, here we were at Central Park West (the location featured in the movie) with this band playing that song, and the whole crowd is singing along, “Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!” It was so fun!

Native Americans had a cool turtle for a float. More on that turtle later…

SNOOPY! Love this shot — I’m going to have to remember 64th Street for future Thanksgiving parades if I ever go again. It was an excellent location!

That was a pretty guitar float.

Here comes MY FAVORITE SERIES of pictures, starting with Toy Story’s “Little Green Men” or in this case, Little Green Dancers.

There’s Buzz. As Buzz was going by, the crowd on the left side of Central Park West was shouting, “To Infinity…” And the crowd on the right side was cheering, “And beyond!”

And this little boy’s Buzz was checking out Big Buzz. How cute! Bet you can see why it’s my favorite series of pictures!

Random performers. Know who these guys are?

I know who that one is! That’s Carly Simon!

Bradley said they should have a giant finger operated by some of the street people to tickle the Pillsbury Doughboy’s belly to make him wiggle down the street. That’s a great idea, Brad!

She was on stilts. It’s amazing to me that people can walk an entire parade length on stilts. But in this case, add piles and piles of string confetti to get tangled up in. Wow. How do they do it?

Festive cheering surrounds the Santa float.

If Mrs. Claus was on the Santa float, I didn’t see her. Side note: several minutes before the Santa float was heading my direction, my friend, Matt, called to ask me to take lots of pictures of the Santa float because a friend of his was on it.

I was lucky to be standing on a wall and have a pretty good view of the parade. So here’s the first shot of the Santa float. Is your friend in this picture, Matt?

Santa!

Here’s the next shot of the back of the Santa float. If she’s not in this on or the one above, she might have been on the other side of the float. So anyway, Matt, if you see your friend in either of these, let me know. I have more pictures with the same people in them.

More festive cheering.

It must be an honor to be selected to be part of the Macy’s parade. Congratulations to all those who were selected!

My men at the end of the parade.

At 64th Street, we were positioned near where the parade starts. This view is looking south. The marchers had at least two hours to go before reaching Macy’s at 34th Street.

4 a.m. came really early for all of us, but to get a good place to see the parade, you have to claim your spot. And don’t expect to hold a spot for your friends. The crowd frowns on people cramming in at the last minute and will not be very nice to you. A woman near us arrived in total tears because people were so mad at her for pushing her way through the crowd to where her friends had saved her a spot. Moral of that story: bring food and don’t expect you’ll get to leave for any reason unless you’re not planning on coming back.

Above, poor Greg looks so tired and hungry. But, alas, no turkey for us on Thanksgiving. We stopped in this diner around 70th Street and were so grossed out by the dirty water glasses they put on our table that we left. We’re doing our Thanksgiving dinner today!

Christmas trees are for sale all over the city.

Home! (I wish!) Ok, not really, because I love Metuchen, but sometimes I daydream about living in the city, and wouldn’t it be cool to live in a building named for my family? Awesome!

Check this out. I actually got a picture of the men on Thanksgiving Day in Manhattan and they’re not totally surrounded by mobs of people!

The clean up in Times Square. Remind me to tell you about the leaf blower story. Oh man. What a crazy city.

After the parade, pieces of floats drive home through the city. This is the head of the turtle from the Native American float, shown above.

I love the Macy’s parade. It’s so fun to see it in person. (I’m not a big fan of watching it on TV though. It’s such a different experience in person!)

I took this shot before the parade started. The people on our side of Central Park West were bonding after a rumor that Santa was in the crowd on the other side of the street. We were all cheering, “San-TA! San-TA!” He did not acknowledge our cheering. But it was fun anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!