Ticker tape parade crowd estimates

General Questions
#1

The Powers that Be in NYC are estimating that a crowd of 3.5 million people watched the Yankees’ parade in Lower Manhattan.

According to news accounts, the parade route is less than a mile long. By some rough calculations, that would mean people would be standing over 600 people deep on both sides of the street, assuming you give everybody 2 feet to stand.

I have heard that the city includes people watching from windows of offices, but I think that this number is grossly exaggerated.

There looked to be a lot of people there, but 3.5 million people is liking taking everybody in Manhattan and Queens and stuffing them into a one mile stretch.

#2

Crowed numbers are calculated through a very tedious and exacting process:

  1. Take overhead photos of the crowd.

  2. Assign an underpaid, overworked intern to count the number of people in a photo.

  3. Assign someone else to count the number of such photos needed to cover the crowd.

  4. Multiply the above two numbers together.

  5. Realize that the above is not much more accurate than asking a ouija board.

  6. Take a wild-assed guess.

“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island

#3

Crowd numbers are figured this way, too. Gotta learn to proofread better :slight_smile:

#4

I didn’t have two feet to stand. (Leave me alone. Of course I had my two feet, just not two linear feet). I got turned sideways and had maybe 10 inches (leave that one alone, too, please). Additionally, many people were not directly on the parade route, but on side streets approaching Broadway. Liberty Park, along the route, was pretty full. And the newly reopened grounds at City Hall were packed. Finally, there was a ceremony right on the steps at City Hall with stadium-style seating. Call it 15K people there.

All that said, 3.5 MM is a Mayor-generated lie (He does that. Go figure.). I figure 1.75 – 2 MM, tops. It didn’t seem from my vantage point to be as crowded as last year’s parade. And it was nowhere near the turnout for the Rangers in ’94.

Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine

#5

The Rose Parade in Pasadena used to say a 1MM people attended the parade. Then the local paper started doing estimates and found out that the crowd was around 500M.
They stopped giving out estimates after the newspaper called them on it.