The New York Knicks will celebrate their first championship in over 50 years with a ticker tape parade down Broadway's Canyon of Heroes on Thursday. What does that actually mean? It's a quintessentially New York celebration because it started here totally by accident. When the statue of Liberty was unveiled in 1886, over a million people marched down Broadway to get a glimpse of it for the first time. The crowd remained in the drizzle until after the salute had been fired, despite the fact that there was little hope of a salute. The excitement of the moment, among those who stood on the sea wall held the Barge Office during the ceremonies were Gen. Slocum and several of his aides, a large space in front of the Barge Office was kept clear by the police during the entire afternoon. Wall-street didn't have a holiday yesterday, but it managed to have great sport in its own way with that part of the big procession which was diverted down Wall Street in an attempt to counter-march up town. The police cordoned the four-story-els of the Fire Department, the serried lines of the Grand Army men, with their fluttering mariachis and the noisy mobs of college boys with their clarion cries. The street was packed, and many were the strangers and pretty country cousins gazing in open-mouthed wonder at the colossal buildings. All this display was so much more than a many man of office boys who, from a hundred windows began to unreel the spools of tape, that record the fateful messages of the ticker. In a moment the air was white with curling streamers. Hundreds caught in the meshes of electric wires and made a snowy canopy, and others floated downward and were caught by the wind. This was altogether too much fun, and the office boys had to give way to their elders. More and more of the tape went swimming through the air. It was dappled in the face of solemn horsemen; it was jiggled tantalizingly just out of the reach of the college youth, and the pretty country cousins were tickled under the chin with carefully directed points until they screamed in their windows and started throwing ticker tape, that is, little tape that would come out of the telegraphic machine that would give them the current prices of stocks. It was called that because it made a ticking sound and looked like rolls of tape, thin paper. So they just started throwing them and it became a thing. It's happened over 200 times. That section of Broadway now known as the Canyon of Heroes, where they put a plaque in the ground for everyone given the honor. They were much more common back in the day than they are now. Now it's usually just sports teams, but back then they do it for pretty much anything. Astronauts, Olympians, foreign leaders, American presidents, kings and queens, and the biggest one ever was for VJ Day when Japan surrendered in World War II. The Department of Sanitation collected and measured it and had 5,438 tons of it. That in the modern context, in 2008 only used 36 and a half. They don't use ticker tape anymore. Now it is confetti. And yes, they don't really do it every time a leader visits New York anymore. They do do it though for sports teams. The Mets, the Rangers, the Yankees, most recently the New York Liberty and Gotham FC, even individual athletes like Jesse Owens and Sammy Sosa have received the honor. But this will be the Knicks' first ticker tape parade because in 1970 and 1973, then-Mayor John Lindsay was not a fan of the big celebrations. He wanted more informal, smaller gatherings at City Hall, and so they didn't get one. So make sure you make it count on Thursday for this team, but also the 1970 and 1973 ones too.
