Here’s What the Thanksgiving Parade Looked Like in Pandemic New York - The New York Times

It’s a yearly Thanksgiving Day tradition: Millions of spectators crammed onto long city blocks, hanging over barricades and balconies or pressed against the windows of towering office buildings to watch giant balloons, depicting cartoon characters like Pikachu, hovering just a few feet above the street.

But this year, as with everything in 2020, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a ritual marker of the holiday, was drastically different.

Warnings from officials to stay home because of the pandemic kept millions indoors this year, and police barricades were put in place to ensure nobody got too close.

On 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, Karin Schlosser, 52, stood behind one of the barricades taking photos of the floats and balloons.

The balloons this year included the characters Boss Baby and Red Titan from ‘Ryan’s World.’.

Police barricades kept the public at least two blocks away from the staging area.

Henry Danner, of the Bronx, recalled going to the parade with his family as a child and watching his cousins perform in marching bands.

Danner, 34, a freelance photographer and journalism student at Columbia University, said he was most interested in witnessing and documenting what it was like to attend a parade during a pandemic.

Kaitlin Lawrence, 31, and Zeev Kirsh, 40, tried to inject the event with a little levity when they decided to attend the parade in turkey costumes.

The couple said they first met before the pandemic and later bumped into each other again while cheering on hospital workers at N.Y.U.

Capitanio said she wanted her children “to see something, but it’s not easy.” Her daughters peered through a row of metal barricades, trying to see the balloons down the street.

“That energy was missing,” said Susan Tercero, executive producer of the Macy’s parade

Tercero said she still hoped that viewers enjoyed this year’s production