By Gus Saltonstall
There are few busier days on the Upper West Side than the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the annual event comes with neighborhood street closures.
The Upper West Side, specifically between West 77th and 59th streets, gets filled with millions of people trying their best to watch the passing procession of balloons, floats, marching bands, and more.
The parade kicks off Thursday at 8:30 a.m. from West 77th Street and Central Park West, making its way downtown to Macy’s Herald Square store on West 34th Street.
The local street closures begin, however, before the parade sets off.
UWS Street Closures
The following street closures begin at midnight on Wednesday and last through noon on Thursday, according to Macy’s.
This means these streets will be closed all day Wednesday, including for the inflation event, and then for the first half of Thursday. While Macy’s says on its website that these streets will be reopened by noon on Thursday, the closures are reopened at the discretion of the NYPD and generally remained closed into Thursday afternoon.
- Central Park West will be closed from West 72nd to 86th streets.
- West 72nd Street through 85th streets will be closed from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue.
- The 79th Street Transverse will be closed in Central Park.
Here are more of the neighborhood street closures on Thursday, according to the NYPD. These closures will also be reopened at “the discretion of the NYPD.”
This list does not include the streets already listed above.
- 71st Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
- 70th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
- 69th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
- 68th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue
- 67th Street between Columbus and Central Park West
- 66th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West
- 65th Street between Columbus and Central Park West
- 64th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West
- 63rd Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West
- 62nd Street between Central Park West and Broadway
- 61st Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway
- 60th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West
- 59th Street between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue.
- The entirety of Columbus Circle.
You can see the full list of street closures — HERE.
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The street closures are open to pedestrians to watch the parade though, correct?
Yes they are but it will be rainy so you might have a better shot this year.
70th street isn’t closed?
Heads up.
Wednesday at 4pm.
Huge crowds at 72nd and Columbus.
Trash overflowing and piling up on the sidewalk
On 86th and Broadway there have been hordes of people getting dropped off from tour buses who then pile across the crosswalk to take the downtown 1 at 86th St. I don’t want to think about what that platform looked like today. It was bad enough watching them trying to get across the street and down the stairs. I have never seen this before. We have lived here for over 30 years. I don’t know why all of sudden we became a tour bus drop off zone.
Maybe a better policy response would be making the balloon inflation and UWS portion of the parade a ticketed event. It would be free for residents and area workers but everyone else would have to pay a fee to get a ticket which I would have the Columbus Avenue BID administer. The proceeds from the tickets would benefit the Columbus Avenue BID and likely pull in enough money to fund activities for the BID the rest of the year. You could even throw in discounts to local businesses with the paid tickets or even have a special version of the Columbus Avenue open street during the balloon inflation. I wonder if Nicole Paynter from the BID is reading this and what she thinks.