I went to a ticker-tape parade today.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Holy cow. I’ve seen pictures of ticker-tape parades before, but this is the first time I have ever been to one. It was pretty wild. I played hookey from work to attend the White Sox victory parade today, and even though I’m a. not really a Sox fan and b. definitely not a fan of large crowds, it was really cool. Some of my coworkers thought I was nuts to take the day off to go, but I’m glad I did. Victory parades aren’t exactly common in Chicago, after all.

How much paper was there floating around? Here’s a picture from USA Today.

Hours later I was still picking pieces of paper off my sweater and out of my hair.

2

There were piles of it on the street, like snow after a blizzard. The street cleaners were out in force afterwards.

I saw a little kid all in sox gear standing kneedeep in a pile of tickertape getting his picture taken. So cute.

3

Man, it’s times like this that I’m so pissed that I don’t work downtown any more. Nobody has ticker tape parades in Schaumburg.

4

I work in Rolling Meadows. But I have accrued an insane amount of vacation time, and I wanted to go, so hey, why not? I was a little peeved that the route went right past my old office building on LaSalle, though. (Great location, hated the job.)

I saw a bunch of people scooping up the ticker tape for a keepsake. No doubt if I did that, I’d find it in some box five years down the road, wonder why I had a bag of shredded paper, and toss it out.

5

Now i’ve always wondered about these things - where in the heck does all the paper come from??? How does it get up there in the first place? Planes going by frequently and dodging the high rises or folks with buckets standing on the roofs of strategic buildings?

What gives?

6

zelie, most of the paper seemed to be coming from open office windows. I was about a block away from the Chicago Board of Trade, and people were dumping boxes of shredded paper out the window. One guy must have been saving up, because it looked like a paper waterfall from his window.

The city also had cannons shooting up bursts of confetti along the parade route.

7

Based on the remains, it was leftover newspaper and office paper. There was some stuff in white and black, the Sox colors, that looked custom for the event. The buildings had tickertape “cannons” and they asked people not to throw stuff out their windows. At one time it would have been real tickertape, what with the exchanges so close by!