Not me. I kick off my holiday by inhaling bus fumes near The New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. I am confused, nervous and have no coat on. My friends Bill and Catherine are in the same state.
Yet we’re happy. Perhaps it’s the clowns or the foam-pineapple people that surround us. Maybe it’s the giant bees or the marching bands. No, we are not on ecstacy or having a pre-holiday nervous breakdown. We are preparing to become the envy of our friends, relatives and coworkers. We’re going to be balloon handlers in the 74th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Or so we hope. Macy’s sends out confirmations to its 1,700 volunteer handlers, who are friends and family of Macy’s employees, a week or so before the parade. My confirmation promised I’d be on the Snoopy balloon. But a last minute e-mail informed me and my friends that we were now on the “SWAT” team. None of us knows what the heck that is, since–unbelievably–there are no parade balloons depicting the short-lived 1970s police show.
As we board the bus that will take us to the parade starting point on 79th Street, we look longingly at our bus-mates, all in colorful costumes or jumpsuits that match their balloon color. When we arrived at the hotel, where all volunteers get dolled up for the parade, they gave us only black, extra-large jumpsuits (no overcoats allowed with any costume).
By 7:30 a.m., when we get to 79th Street, things don’t look much better. All along the street, the giant balloons–Blue from Blues Clues, Big Bird, the Rugrats and a new dotcom entry, Jeeves the butler from AskJeeves.com–are in various stages of launch. Some are up, some are still in huge restraining nets, but all are surrounded by plenty of handlers. It looks like the subfreezing temperatures didn’t drive off volunteers.
We meet up with other black-clad SWAT team members at 79th and Central Park West, where the parade will begin before heading down Broadway to 34th Street. No one else knows what SWAT means, either, but dark rumors fly. “I hear we’ll be cleaning up after the horses,” one doomsayer offers. Says another: “We’re moving the sandbags.”
Then some good news: “They just picked two for Mickey,” someone says. Our hearts pound now. “I’m so nervous,” Catherine whispers. But it’s past 8:00, and no one else is among the chosen. With a desperate hankering to handle, several SWAT team members break away from the pack and begin behaving like pushy New Yorkers, going around to each balloon, selling themselves. The three of us, inspired by this hustle, follow close behind, winding up in front of the massive Rugrats balloon.
Rugrats is hooked up with enough handlers, but another balloon’s captain, Linda, comes to our rescue: “I need people for the fish!”
WHO LET THE FISH OUT?
We feel lucky for the first time. Linda takes us right behind Rugrats to behold the glorious fish. The fish balloon has been around since 1941 (this is its third incarnation), but since it has no corporate sponsor, or TV show based on it, it’s not easily recognizable. Yellow and red and the size of a school bus, it needs just 16 handlers. (The giant balloons, some of them 70 feet long and close to 50 feet high, need 40-60). Only six pre-assigned handlers have shown up. As other SWAT team members arrive to fill the void, we pick up bits of balloon-handler gossip from veterans assigned to the fish. “Rugrats isn’t that good,” one balloonist confides. “It’s hard to fly–it’s too tall and wide at the same time.”
Others clue us in about the Macy’s star balloon at the front of the parade–it might seem like a plum post, but you have to be on your best behavior, “because all the big Macy’s executives are up there.”
Clearly, prim and proper is not what the fish balloon is about. When a Rugrat handler’s line snaps away and is sent skyward, our team vets shout, “Rookie! Rookie!” We also begin a clever chant of, “Who let the Fish Out? Glub, Glub, Glub!”
I overhear a handler from the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee tell her captain, “Want to hear our balloon cheer? It’s ‘Who let the bee out–Buzz, Buzz, Buzz!’” I experience a moment of high-school-style fury, shouting angrily, “Hey, you stole our cheer!” and am about to hurl several insults about Cheerios in general when I realize I could do better later by exposing these copycats in a national online newsmagazine. (Honey Nut Cheerios Bee handlers, you are soooo busted!)
The rowdiness subsides momentarily as the parade begins at 9 a.m. Captain Linda, and our balloon pilot, Pat, tell us we must prep the fish for action. We unhook sandbags tied to the balloon lines and grab our lines’ spools–X-shaped handles with extra rope around them. We begin to let out our line and move our the fish in place. As balloons ahead of ours–Blue, Big Bird and Rugrats–slowly glide out of the street, Pat regales us with tales of how the fish was “ripped to pieces” in the disasterous 1997 parade, the one in which almost all the balloons were damaged by high winds, and the Cat in the Hat toppled a lightpost that struck a Manhattan woman, sending her in a coma for almost a month.
But the winds are kind today, well under the 23 mph limit imposed after the 1997 parade, and it looks as if all balloons are green-lighted. Our balloon, long since patched up, looks resplendent as an announcer shouts, “Fish balloon, join the parade!” and we turn into Central Park South, to the applause and cheers.
Catherine, Bill and I sport idiotic grins as we cart the fish down the first few blocks. We don’t notice the cold anymore, as we focus on our mission of making 2 million people–in crowds 50-people deep on some blocks–feel as happy as we do.
On that score, we’ve got advantages over the large balloons. We’ve got a rowdy crew, and a fish that’s allowed to “swim” because it’s so small–that is, we can pull its strings up and down. So our schtick for the route becomes whipping up the crowds to chant “Fish! Fish! Fish!” and then moving the strings up and down as their reward. Our enthusiasm, or some might say, obnoxiousness, begins to blossom as we approach Columbus Circle at 59th Street. We’re not swimming the fish so much as flailing it wildly about, as some of our male handlers, including Bill, yank the lines down hard, much to the delight of the squealing crowd.
Linda, our balloon captain, has gone over her safety signals with us before the parade: Crossed arms means “stop,” hands forward means “slow down.” Unfortunately, there is no hand signal for “Stop jerking the fish around violently,” so Linda got things under control by admonishing the handlers personally–Bill included. Linda says that after we pass Columbus Circle, there will be no rough “swimming.” But she says it with a smile, clearly enjoying the antics and even leading the crowd herself in our signature “Fish! Fish! Fish!” chant.
THE SASSY COPS OF NYPD
Linda gives us orders to trot our catch through Columbus Circle–the open space can be windy, and indeed, the fish fights my line as we cross. All that “swimming” has left my muscles sore, but relief comes in the canyons of midtown–the skyscrapers block the wind on all sides, and it’s easier to “swim” the balloon. We get more time to make the crowd cheer, and wave at countless kids on the street, and in the windows of buildings above.
But we do get some flak from New York’s Finest, who seem to appreciate the fish’s swimming, but not the fish itself. I have the following conversation with a cop near 38th Street:
“What is that?” the officer asks. “It’s a fish,” I say. “It’s just a fish?” “Yeah, it’s just a fish.” “Really? Just a fish.” “It’s just a fish!” “Nothing more?” “Nothing more!” Because of its low-profile, people get confused about the fish, or, in the case of the cops, mock it.
I overhear another man in blue: “That’s stupid!” I want to shout at him, but then I remember again that I can take care of things later in this article. (New York City Police officer, you are soooo busted!)
So I let it go (not the balloon, my anger), and head with the team toward 36th Street, where giant, glaring lights for the NBC and CBS broadcast crews have been set up to give an estimated 60 million Thanksgiving Day Parade viewers a clear view of the parade. All of the floats, marchers, performers and balloons are lined up and carefully timed to go through this light-bath, as are we, along with a caution from Linda about not swimming the fish too hard.
Stunned by the bright lights, we forget to lead the crowd in our fish cheer, but we come to our senses moments after on 34th Street, when the “Fish! Fish! Fish!” chant gets so loud that the balloon announcer, who has already introduced our balloon, asks for a second round of applause for the fish, its handlers and Captain Linda.
Linda beams, and we’re all deliriously happy as we round 34th Street onto 7th Avenue, where tarps are spread for balloon deflation. We must now deflate the fish that gave us so much happiness–we undo the giant zippers holding the helium (and no, we can’t breathe it in, we’re told), flatten the balloon out and roll it up into a bin.
It’s 10:30 a.m., and I realize that I’ve just had the most fun anyone can possibly have in subfreezing temperatures. I say a quick goodbye to Bill and Catherine, and head off into Penn Station to try to get to Long Island for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s chaos down there–a huge crowd of grumpy, frustrated travelers trying to find one another, jamming onto train platforms. I should be grumpy right along with them, but I float above it all, thinking of those three little words that mean so much: “Fish! Fish! Fish!”
