Jane: This is But why: a Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions
from curious kids just like you, and we find answers.
Amelia: Hi, I'm Amelia. I'm eight years old, and I live in
Portland, Oregon, and I have a question about the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade, and my question is, how do those big
balloons hold on just a tiny string?
Jane: Do you enjoy parades? I do. I love seeing all the people
walking by, often in amazing costumes. The parade floats are
cool too, where trucks pull a trailer that's been decorated to
look like a boat or a bear or a tropical paradise. Sometimes
people ride in the floats, and I especially love the marching
bands, usually from nearby elementary and high schools, and
sometimes professional musicians as well. One of the biggest
parades in the world is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
in New York City. It happens as the name might have given away
on Thanksgiving Day, which is always the fourth Thursday of
November in the United States.
The New York City government says about three and a half
million people line up along the parade route through the streets
of the city to watch the parade in person, and about 50 million
people watch the parade on TV. That's a lot of people! So when
the folks at Macy's asked if we'd like to go behind the
scenes to see what it takes to actually make the parade, we
here it but why we're happy to say yes. So you know, the parade
happens on Thanksgiving Day. It's about three hours long from
start to finish, wrapping up right around noon. But how long
do you think it takes to work on the parade so that everything is
ready to go for the millions of people who watch it? Couple of
weeks, a couple of months? How about a couple of years? That's
right, it takes almost two years to prepare for each parade. That
work is done by a lot of different people, including
artists, sculptors, carpenters and designers, and the work is
overseen by this guy.
Will Coss: I'm Will Coss. I'm the executive producer of the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Jane: If you had a group of kids from all over the world, ages
five to 10 sitting in front of you crisscross applesauce. How
would you describe an executive producer of a parade?
Will Coss: Sort of like your teacher? I have an opportunity
to review all of the work that our very talented team here at
Macy's studios creates and we work together as a community to
execute one of the largest and most fantastic parades in
America.
Jane: The But Why team met up with will cost at the Macy's
studio in Moonachie, New Jersey, just a few miles from New York
City. We pulled up to a pretty boring, looking big building in
an industrial complex with lots of giant warehouses and big box
stores. From the outside, you probably wouldn't think anything
all that exciting to you would be going on inside, but once you
open the doors, it's magical.
Will Coss: That's the trick. That's intentional. Yes, we're
going to hear a lot of noise in just a few seconds. We're headed
out to our 80,000 square foot studio where all of our
balloons, our floats, and all of the other theatrical elements
are designed and made here at Macy's Studios. Let's go.
Jane: It is magical and it smells good.
Will Coss: It smells good. Yes, there's a variety of things that
are happening right here. Right now, we're standing about 25
feet above our ground level, and this is an opportunity for us to
look over the entire studio, which is broken up, similar to
classrooms in different sections. So we have our
animation and automation, which is essentially all of the things
that move. We have our metal shop, which is all of our
internal structure, so we call it the bones of each one of our
floats. Then we have our carpentry section, which builds
all of the beautiful elements around our floats. And then on
the other side, over here, we have another very important
department, which is our sculpting team.
Jane: I like, I can't even it's so cool to see there's a lot of
styrofoam. There's some Styrofoam pieces that have been
painted, and there's a giant float that has a bear and a
moose that are being built on it right now.
Will Coss: Yes, so that giant bear and moose that you see
started as one cube of Styrofoam, and our artists here
at the studio take the designs that are started on a computer
and transfer them to the beautiful, giant pieces of art
that you see here.
Jane: We were perched high up on a balcony overlooking all the
action. People using welding machines that shot sparks into
the air. Other workers using belt sanders to smooth out big
pieces of wood. Some people were sculpting those giant pieces of
Styrofoam into recognizable characters, and still, others
were spray painting that foam to make it water resistant and
colorful. Will took us down onto the main floor to get up close
and personal.
Will Coss: Watch your step, Everyone a little, slippery.
Jane: There was a lot to see, like puppets.
Will Coss: This puppet will be 12 feet tall, so it's going to
be a giant puppet, and it will be controlled similar to
traditional puppet, but instead of strings, it'll be metal wires
that'll be connected to some motors to help us move and
adjust the puppet along the parade route
Jane: To make everything for the parade. There are a lot of
tools.
Will Coss: This is our carpentry shop, so similar to your
woodworking stations and woodworking shops at school,
maybe just a little bit bigger, because the things that we built
are a little bit bigger, but all of the similar things you might
have. We have our saws, we have our drills, we have our tables,
our cutting tables, and this is where the carpenters and our
carpentry team start all of their work and start to assemble
pieces that then get put onto our floats.
Jane: Yeah, your class could probably have a dance party in
here. It's a big space.
Will Coss: We actually have dance parties here too, but,
yes, very big space. A lot of wood, a lot of saws, a lot of
tools up on the board on the wall, and everything is very
neatly organized here at the studio, we want to make sure we
know where everything is so we actually have pictures of our
tools on the wall that remind us where to return things when
they're missing.
Jane: I love that. Yeah, it's like a almost like a sticker of
the tool itself, so you know exactly what to put there. You
don't even need to know the name of the tool. You just need to
match the shape.
Will Coss: Yes, we like to keep it simple and easy.
Jane: Not everything is made by hand. Will showed us a giant
tool called a CNC machine. CNC stands for Computer Numerical
Control, and the machine is basically a robot that cuts
wood. The people design the shapes they want, and then the
computer can cut out those shapes precisely every time. All
of this work in the carpentry shop and the welding area and
the sculpting area eventually becomes a scene or a display
that goes onto a float. Will walked us over to a float bed.
Without anything on it a float bed is just a flat trailer that
gets hitched onto a car or truck, but when the team builds
a whole design on top of that flat bed, it becomes something
really cool. But why is it called a float?
Will Coss: Call them floats because they give you the
impression, or we try to pretend that there are these stages that
are actually floating down the streets of New York City. We
build them 30 feet tall, but also we cover the wheels with
what we call skirts, which is essentially different types of
fabric that float in the wind, and gives you the the impression
that the floats are actually, literally floating down the
street, but there's some wheels underneath there.
Jane: Now you have to make sure that they will fit on a street
so they can't be too wide. And then some streets have power
lines and other things. How do you make sure that they're not
so tall, and how do you get them to New York City from where we
are in New Jersey?
Will Coss: That is a great question. Each one of the floats
that we design will fold down like a transformer to about nine
feet by 12 feet. If you think about your school bus,
everything in the parade folds down to about that size. And we
take all of our floats from New Jersey through the Lincoln
Tunnel, up the highway in New York City and up to Central
Park, and that's where we reassemble everything. So we use
giant cranes to pick up all of the pieces and put them back
together, sort of like a Lego puzzle right on the streets the
day before parade.
Jane: So if I was driving along through the Lincoln Tunnel with
my family the day before Thanksgiving, I might just drive
by this whole long line of folded up parade floats.
Will Coss: Yes, there's over 75 units that come from New Jersey
all the way to New York City, and we're out in the streets,
and everyone gives us a big wave and cheers us on. It's our own
little mini parade before the parade.
Jane: That would be almost as fun as seeing a parade. Yes,
yeah, absolutely. Next we headed over to the paint studio.
Remember, all of these areas are in one giant, 80,000 square foot
warehouse, you could fit my house that I live in into that
space more than 50 times. So it's really big. That's how they
can fit in all the various materials that are needed for a
giant, three hour long parade.
Will Coss: We use over 2,000 gallons of paint every year for
the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, we have every color
imaginable, and then our team of professional painters also
custom mix colors to get the perfect shade depending on the
project that we're working on. We have a team of painters who
are painting different elements right now. This is sort of like
a sunburst. It's going to be what we're calling a little bit
of a dream catcher for one of our floats. So that'll have a
couple of layers that will spin and give you this nice dreamy
effect.
Jane: We are now in a sea of white foam. Hi, I'm Jane.
Cameron: My name is Cameron Carnevale, the lead sculptor
here, and we are working on several projects, Pop Mart being
one of them. That's what everyone's on right now, each
doing an individual character. We've got a little bit of
Netflix, Stranger Things.
Jane: This is the monster behind you.
Cameron: It's behind me, isn't it? Yes, it is, yes, all 10 feet
tall of it.
Jane: How do you carve foam?
Cameron: We used a bunch of things, from kitchen knives to
sort of a hot wire that will cut through the foam.
Jane: And then you have to coat it and paint it so that if it's
a little bit rainy, it's not going to disintegrate. It'll
stand up to any kind of weather.
Cameron: That's right. So it gets, we call it a candy
coating, like an M & M on the soft shell, and, yeah, protects
it from from everything, and it gets painted all pretty.
Jane: So if somebody ever dents one, are you like, Oh my God.
Oh, that work!
Cameron: No, it's okay, because we can fix that. We can patch it
up. Nope, no problem.
Jane: We wanted to get a better look at the monster behind Cami.
It was a scary character from a TV show called Stranger Things
that's very popular with adults and older teenagers.
Will Coss: So we're walking up to the Demogorgon, which our
sculptor, Justin has expertly sculpted. He's 12 feet tall. And
then we had to take it all apart, put all of the armatures,
which are the pieces of metal, which is essentially like our
bone, like our skeleton. We made a skeleton, and then we added
the character back to it. And Justin, right now is putting all
the pieces on it and putting all of the latex which will give it
an actual realistic finish. So the legs will move up and down,
the head will open and close. So after Justin is done putting all
of the latex finish on it. It'll go over to our paint team to
become the actual puppet. It was designed to be.
Jane: Right? It's not going to look too scary or too real, it's
just white styrofoam.
Will Coss: Yes, yeah. So we've talked a lot about floats and
all of the work that goes into it. Now we're going to walk over
to the other favorite part of our studio, which is our balloon
studio, and that's where we make all of the giant character
balloons that you see in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Jane: That's right, we're going to be talking balloons next.
This parade is perhaps most famous for the giant helium
balloons that float high above the city streets as the parade
marches through New York City. We're going to learn all about
how they're made, and yes, answer your questions about
balloons That's coming right up.
This is But Why. I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're on a
field trip behind the scenes at the creative studio in
Moonachie, New Jersey, where artists, designers, carpenters,
welders and a whole team of other people work year round to
get ready for one of the biggest parades in the United States,
the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I love seeing how things
are made, so I am always up for a factory tour. The Macy's
Parade is really well known for having giant balloons that float
through the streets. And when I say giant, I mean really, really
giant. Some of the balloons in the almost 100 year history of
this parade have been more than 100 feet tall or 100 feet long.
Your school bus is maybe 35 or 40 feet long. So imagine how big
those balloons are. We wanted to see how they are made and answer
the questions you've sent us. So we asked our guide, Will Coss,
executive producer of the parade, to take us inside the
balloon making part of the warehouse.
Will Coss: Okay, so we're standing outside of two double
doors that we're going to push through and see the wonderful
balloon studio here at Macy's Studios.
Jane: You're making it sound very exciting.
Will Coss: Here we are.
Jane: And it is.
Will Coss: We are now in the iconic Macy's balloon studio,
and in this facility, we design and we put together all of the
pieces that make up every one of our balloons. Right now we have
Super Mario.
Jane: So if you were standing here with me, you would see a
giant head of Mario himself, but his nose is not inflated, and
neither is his mustache.
Will Coss: Correct. Yes, we we inflate and deflate certain
areas of the balloon to help us work on certain specific spaces.
Right now we were painting the eyes, so we deflated the nose,
and then we'll re inflate it once we're done,
Jane: I feel like he's staring at us.
Will Coss: Might be.
Jane: He's following us with his eyes. It's like the Mona Lisa.
You know, while we're here in the balloon studio, we have a
lot of questions about balloons, specifically including, how do
you make balloons?
Molly: Hi, my name is Molly. I'm four years old. I'm from
Henniker, New Hampshire, and I wanted to know how are balloons
made.
Sage: My name is Sage, and I'm five years old, and I live in
London, and my question is, how are balloons made?
Ari: My name is Ari. I am from Castleton, New York, and my
question is, how do you make balloons?
Cora: Hello. My name is Cora, and I am six, and my question
we're from Wisconsin, and my question is, how do you make
balloons?
Jane: Basic ground party balloons that you blow up with
your mouth are made in a factory where balloon molds are dipped
into liquid latex that dries and gets rubberized and sometimes is
stamped with designs. The metallic balloons that sometimes
come in fun shapes and get filled up with helium are
usually made with a material called mylar. They are made by
having a front and a backside that are exactly the same shape,
and then the two pieces are melted together and blown up.
But the balloons made for the Macy's Parade are so huge they
have to be made by hand, one at a time, from a different
material.
Will Coss: The Macy's balloons are made from a very special
material that's designed specifically for the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Jane: And what is that material called? Or can you not tell me,
Will Coss: it's magic material for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day
Parade balloons.
Jane: That's code speak for I'm not going to tell you.
Will Coss: Yes, it's a special fabric that is proprietary or
designed specifically for Macy's and our balloon fabrication.
Jane: So the fabric feels kind of like a tarp that you might
put down over a lawnmower or on your picnic table, but maybe a
little bit thicker,
Will Coss: Yes, and it has a similar sound when it crunches
up together.
Jane: Well, it makes sense that you need your own kind of
material, because you're making enormous balloons. If you've
ever seen the parade, these are balloons that float high above.
They look like they're floating in the sky, but they don't float
away, because people hold on to them. But they are giant, way
bigger than you or me, and they are made specifically to look
like a special character or something famous that you know,
like maybe Snoopy or Mario, and so they have to be able to have
this material that can make something in that shape and
size, and be able to withstand New York City, November, wind
and rain and maybe snow.
Will Coss: Yes, the material is an important part of making
these balloons and making them successfully. The size depends
on the type of character that we're doing. Our largest balloon
right now is Spider Man, which is almost 70 feet long, many.
Jane: How many school busses is that?
Will Coss: That's probably two school busses long, two and a
half school busses long. Minnie Mouse is one of our tallest
balloons at over 60 feet tall. So these are giant. When we say
giant, they are giant. We're standing here next to Mario
right now, and from the floor we just come up to about his ear,
and that's his hea. is the only thing that's inflated. So
they're quite big. Some of our balloons have over 200 pieces
that get melted together to make our giant balloons, and that's
what the team over here is doing right now on the heat sealers.
Jane: The heat sealing machines look kind of like giant sewing
machines, except instead of having a needle and thread to
attach the various pieces of fabric, the heat sealing machine
melts the pieces together.
Jen: My name is Jen, and I'm a balloon fabricator at the Macy's
Parade studio.
Jane: You've got a ton of fabric here. It looks like you're
making a dress for Cinderella or something.
Jen: I's not Cinderella, but I'm sure you guys do know who I'm
making which I'm not sure if I can say I can. And it's Derpy
from KPop Demon Hunter. So very exciting. I'm most pumped about
this balloon. I know we're not supposed to pick favorites, but
I might have one. And yes, I'm sitting at what's called a heat
sealer. So we use really high heat to melt the pieces of the
balloon together before we go and clean and paint it. So it's
really exciting and quite fun.
Jane: How do you know where to melt the pieces together?
Jen: I have a really wonderful team here that works on the
computer to mark out the pieces for us. So we have digital
markings that allow us to match it up like, almost like a puzzle
piece. And we attach the puzzle pieces together so that we get
from hundreds and hundreds of little parts one big, awesome
balloon.
Jane: And then on this fabric itself, there are lines and
there are numbers, so you're following those directions when
you're using your machine.
Jen: Absolutely. Thank goodness I learned how to count, because
if not, we would not have a cat, but maybe some other animal. So
yeah, we use a series of letters and numbers as codes to go ahead
and build and we also have really fun little miniature
models of the balloons that also help us put the pieces together.
And I use it as a guide to ensure that I'm doing the right
thing.
Jane: It looks like you're holding an arm.
Jen: It is. This is derpy's Sweet little arm, and we're
currently working on building out his limbs. And last bit is
his body. So we're moving along really well.
Jane: Every balloon starts out white and then gets painted by
hand after it's all put together. The paint really
brings the balloons to life and lets you know exactly what
character is floating up there in the sky. And we got a
question from one kid who feels like a certain favorite
character is being unfairly overlooked by the parade.
Mary: My name is Mary. I live in UK. My question is, why didn't
Minnie Mouse get brought out in the Macy's Parade, and why
didn't Daisy Duck get brought out in the Macy's Parade?
Because they're the boy's girlfriends.
Jane: Mary, I think, doesn't know that Minnie Mouse was
debuted in the parade last year, I believe. So Minnie is here,
but not Daisy.
Will Coss: Minnie is here. We were excited to bring Minnie to
the parade last year. Every year, we try to find a
collection of characters that are known and loved, and our
team sits around a table and talks about all of the most
exciting characters to include in any one parade, and last year
was Minnie. We've got some special surprises this year.
Jane: Are there any that you can tell us about that we don't have
to that we don't reveal until our episode comes out on
November 14?
Will Coss: So we have Mario, who will be joining the parade this
year. Shrek will be returning to the parade this year. We have
Pac Man, who is a legendary video game character that we're
really excited and be Pac Man's first time in the parade this
year, and the one and only Buzz Lightyear will be returning to
the parade this year, celebrating Toy Story. So super
excited to see Buzz.
Jane: You talk about them like they're alive when you put them
away after the parade, do you like say goodbye to them and
tell them to have a nice sleep. Are you like see you next year
or maybe in 10 years?
Will Coss: Yes, we do. We we treat all of our characters as
our family. We spend a lot of time with all of our characters.
So after parade, we do take great care and making sure that
we fold them in a very specific way, and then we we store them
in what we call our hampers. So if you think about your hamper
at home, where you put your dirty laundry, a giant version
of that is where all of our balloons get rolled up and
folded into, we cover them, and then we store them at one of our
storage facilities until the next parade.
Ezra: Hi, I am Ezra. I'm four years old. I live in Pittsburgh,
and my question is, why do balloons float inside the sky?
Henry: Hi, my name is Henry, and I live in Los Angeles,
California. I'm five and a half years old, and my question is,
why do balloons float?
Tom: Hello. My name is Tom. I'm six years old. I live in
Potomac, Maryland. My question is how do balloons float on air?
Becks: Hi, my name is Becks. I'm six years old, and I'm from
Canada, Alberta. And my question is, why do balloons float, if
gravity is pushing down?
Arthur: My name is Arthur. I am four years old. I live in
Auckland, New Zealand. My question is, why do balloons
float?
Tyler: Hi, my name is Tyler, and I'm five, and I live in
Sunnyvale, California. And my question is, how do balloons
float?
Gabby: How does the balloon stay up? My name is Gabby, five South
Burlington.
Evelyn: Hi. I'm Evelyn from Hinesburg, Vermont, and I'm
four, and I want to know how some balloons fly and some
don't.
Tilda: My name is Tilda, and I'm seven years old, and I live in
Sydney, Australia, and my question is, why do balloons
float up with helium inside, but not without helium, like with
your breath and things like that?
Riley: Hi. My name is Riley. I am nine years old, and I live in
Auckland, New Zealand. My question is, why, when you blow
up a balloon with air, it sinks to the bottom, but when you fill
it up with helium, it floats?
Jane: What makes balloons float?
Will Coss: Our Macy's Parade balloons float because we put
something called helium inside of the balloon. It's a gas
that's lighter than air, so once we put enough of that helium,
similar to your party balloons that you'll see on on anyone's
party or celebration. We just do them in a giant form. So there's
a lot of helium, a lot of gas that goes into the balloon,
which allows it to float up in the air. And then once we're
done with the parade, we release the helium, we fold it back
down, and we store them for the next parade.
Jane: And you said something very important, which is that
helium is lighter than air, so the helium rises and the balloon
is pretty light, even though it's big, so the balloon, which
is holding all that helium in, rises along with that gas.
Will Coss: That's correct. Yes, they're actually heavier than we
might think. They're a couple of 100 pounds, with all of the
fabric and the paint. But at 70 feet long, we have a lot of
space for helium, and once we fill that with helium, the
balloons rise, and then our balloon handlers grab onto what
we call bones and hold them and walk them down the parade route.
Jane: Yeah. Amelia wants to know about that.
Amelia: I'm eight years old, and I live in Portland, Oregon, and
I have a question about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
And my question is, how do those big balloons hold on just a tiny
string?
Eleanor: Hi, my name is Eleanor. I'm four years old. I'm in
California. My question is, how many people take to hold one
float.
Jane: How are those big balloons held on such tiny strings? And
Eleanor is wondering about how many people it takes.
Will Coss: We have over 90 tiny strings on any one giant balloon
which covers the entirety of the character. And each one of those
strings gets held by a person which walks the balloon down the
parade route, and each one of the strings is fastened to the
balloon itself in a very secure way. We actually design and
engineer the balloon with a special material to reinforce
the handle, what we call handling lines. So it's if you
think about a piece of clothing, and you've got a label stitched
into the clothing, you've got a little design stitched in. It's
sort of an extra layer of stitching that goes into these
lines to make sure that they're strong enough to hold.
Jane: And I think you said some of the balloons have 90 of those
strings. Are there 90 people on the ground holding each balloon?
Will Coss: There's at least 90 people on our giant balloons.
Everyone holds one string, which is attached to a bone, which
they'll hold in their hand. And in addition to the 90 people on
our giant balloons, we actually have little carts that also help
to keep it safe and secure on the ground.
Jane: Because otherwise it would float away.
Will Coss: Otherwise it could potentially float away if
everyone released it. So if everyone, if there was big wind
gusts, and everyone decided to let go, we still hold our
balloons to the ground using what we call a vehicle patch.
Jane: You know, it's really interesting, because not only do
you have people here who are artists and engineers and
carpenters, but you also have to have people who understand
things like weather and wind gusts, and not just, well, it's
going to be cloudy and a little bit windy, but like, it's going
to be cloudy and a little bit more windy on this part, or when
we. Go around this building, you're going to get a wind gust,
and you have to take that into account when you're building
these things. And then on the day of the parade, you need to
know, because you've got these huge balloons and floats and all
of these things that really you need to be able to control with
the weather conditions.
Will Coss: On each one of our balloons, we have what are
called pilots and flight managers. So that's the team
that walks out in front of the balloon to help us understand,
okay, this corner is going to have a big cross wind, so we
might want to bring the balloon down a little bit so we have a
little bit more control over it.
Jane: So some people are talking constantly during the parade to
each other to make sure it goes smoothly.
Will Coss: The entire team is talking. We encourage the team
to continue to talk and to make sure that the people who are
leading the balloon are communicating with all of the
team that are holding the balloon so they know exactly how
high to fly the balloon if they need to bring it down, if they
need to move to one side of the street or the other side,
depending on the weather.
Jane: Do they yell at each other, or do they have headsets?
They yell?
Will Coss: We've tried headsets. We've tried a variety of
communication devices. Just projecting and raising your
voice seems to be the most effective way to get the get the
communication across. So there's yelling, there's hand signals,
there's also whistles that we use at certain points to help
people understand where they need to be and where they need
to move.
Jane: Can you tell us a whistle signal so that if we are ever
watching the parade, we can interpret.
Will Coss: We use single whistles if we're raising a
balloon or lowering the balloon, so you'll hear it. And that's
one two, and that's how many essentially rotations we'll use
to make a balloon go from the ground to 20 feet in the air,
and then there's a three chirp whistle that'll be a stop
signal.
Jane: What about turn left?
Will Coss: Turn left is just a hand signal.
Jane: So now you'll know if you ever overhear a whistle or a
three chirp whistle what's about to happen with those big
balloons. It's a massive undertaking to put this parade
together. Will told us there are more than 5000 people who are
part of the parade each year. There are lots of performers
dancing and singing and playing instruments, plus all those
people who hold the balloons or stand and wave on the floats.
Will took us up to the third floor to look at the costume
room, and it was massive, too, and filled with everything from
bowling pin to cherry pie costumes to cupcakes to clouds
with propellers to outfits that match the Spider Man balloon and
on and on, rows and rows of costumes. Now it's not that easy
to get a job in the parade. In order to be a balloon handler,
for example, you have to meet certain height and weight
requirements so that you're strong enough to hold down the
balloon. Remember, it's filled with a lot of helium. And all
the volunteers are people who work at Macy's, or are the
friends and family members of people who work at Macy's. As
for Will Coss, he's not holding a balloon or marching in the
parade during the event itself. He's in a TV production truck.
Will Coss: Which is where the producers, the director and all
of our technical crew look at all the cameras and select all
of the different shots that you see on your television screen.
Jane: So you might be telling a camera operator. Quick, go down
and show one of the handlers. They look great in their
costume, and they're holding that bone and that string really
well. So quick, let's get a shot of them. Now, zoom up and let's
see the face of Mario, because his mustache and his nose is
inflated now.
Will Coss: Exactly, exactly, yes.
Jane: What's your favorite part of the parade?
Will Coss: My favorite part of the parade has to be what we
call step off, which is the moment we say 3-2-1, confetti
blows, and it's the official start to the parade. There's
just an excitement and an energy up on the Upper West Side. We've
spent the last 18 to 24 months building to that moment, and
it's the moment where we officially start the parade and
begin the celebration for all of New York City in America.
Jane: I bet that is a pretty exciting moment for the
thousands of people in the parade, not to mention the
millions who are watching. For many people watching the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade is an annual tradition. What
traditions do you have during the holidays that make you feel
happy and connected to your family or your community? For
me, on Thanksgiving, I like to gather with my aunts and uncles
and cousins and all of their kids in Maine for a big family
get together. Some of us like to run in a race in the morning
called a turkey trot, and we all like to contribute to making the
meal that we share in the afternoon. If you celebrate
Thanksgiving, I hope you have a good one. Thanks to Christine
Nealon and Will Coss at Macy's for helping us understand all
the stuff that goes into making the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I
always love a chance to get behind the scenes at some place
cool and learn about all the work that goes into it and all
the different kinds of people who have jobs making interesting
things. That's it for today. Our show is produced by Sarah Baik,
Melody Bodette and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont Public and
distributed by PRX. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. Joey
Palumbo is our video producer, and you can see a lot of what we
talked about in this episode on our But Why Kids YouTube
channel. If you like our show, please have your adults help you
give us a thumbs up or a review on whatever app you use to
listen to us. And as always, send us your questions about
whatever makes you curious. Have an adult record you and then
send the file to questions@butwhykids.org We'll
be back in two weeks with an all new episode until then, stay
curious.