Ticker Tape Parades

Thursday was the ticker tape parade to celebrate the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship after a 53 year hiatus. If Mayor Mamdani could have predicted the Knicks would win during his first year in office, then he should have run and won sooner. People qualified for Social Security or burial benefits waiting for the Knicks to win a championship.

I am not a basketball fan. I don't think I've ever been to as many 5 Knick games. I once had tickets in 1965 for a game at he Old Garden. In those days, they played a double bill with a high school basketball game from a New York, or New Jersey Catholic or Public high school, or something else preceding the Knick game. (Only boys in that era.) The something else for the game I would have seen would have been a performance by the Fabulous Magicians, a Harlem Globetrotter-type gaggle of players showing off trick shots and other and silliness.

My ticket became worthless when New York City suffered the first of its three city-wide blackouts that November evening. I save things, but apparently not that ticket. I have no idea if there might have been a refund, or a rain check. I never checked.

I once saved a ball of shredded paper from a Yankees' parade when we were in the Trade Center. The souvenir was lost in 9/11. I've always wondered if my father, who was 12 at the time, got off school for Lindbergh's parade in 1927. Among the many things I never asked him.

There are all sorts of occasions ticker tape parades have been held. Of course, now there is no ticker tape, and the office windows don't open. There is still a massive cleanup effort afterwards.

The sidewalk in Lower Broadway has brass plaques embedded in the pavement to show when there wee ticker tape parades.

For the Knicks, it was a 53-year hiatus between championships. I remember the prior two in 1969 and 1973. I don't think they had a parade for either of those two championships.

A parade is not a guarantee for a winning team. When the New York Giants won their first Super Bowl in 1987, grumpy Mayor Koch wouldn't sanction a parade. The team celebrated by holding a parade around what was then Giants Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey. Fairly comical. Nothing like a ticker tape parade.

When the moon-landing astronauts in 1969 were honored, the procession came up Park Avenue past our 33rd Street office on their way to the U.N. The moon landing was a big deal then, and astronauts were celebrities. I remember looking out of our 2nd floor windows at 2 Park Avenue to watch them wave from the back of a car.

No huge trucks teeming with players and media. The Knick parade proceeded so slowly toward City Hall it was thought that maybe it wouldn't get there in time for next season.

The Stanley Cup winning New York Rangers in 1994 got a parade. Nothing to rival Thursday's Knick parade. For the Rangers, the win snapped a 54-year hiatus between Stanley Cup Championships. Although the Rangers have made the final once since, in 2014, they are on a quest to equal the drought.

I remember watching the City Hall presentation when Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in his first term of office, just elected in January of that year, was the speechmaking mayor. Obviously, New York needs Mayoral turnover to win championships.

And I will never forget The New York State Assembly speaker, the now disgraced, convicted, jailed, and departed Sheldon Silver, who made a point of remembering how when he was growing up you could get into a Ranger game on the side balcony at the Old Garden on Eighth Avenue by showing your public high school GO (General Organization) card and paying 50¢. (True.) I remember saying to myself, Sheldon is still trying to get in for 50¢.

The 1994 parade was nothing like the Knick parade for parade-line viewers, or police presence. It was reported there were 10,000 of New York City's Finest assigned to parade duty to make sure there were no untoward celebrations, like smashing a CitiBike into a school bus, or setting it on fire, or trashing Bryant Park after a watch party. There are those who don't really know how to behave.. Celebrations seem to have grown in size, and trips are made to  the White House to meet the president. We are a country now armed with cell phone cameras and we want to use them.

It is certainly not reasonable to expect that the New York Mets will be providing a World Series win this year. The New York Yankees might, however. 

So, will a newly elected mayor get to present keys to the city to another wining team in his first year in office?

Stay tuned. Lots of people love a parade.

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