Stamford Downtown Parade Spectacular 2023



On Saturday, I went to the Inflation Party for the Stamford Thanksgiving Balloon Parade. These are events that I have been going to for my entire life, so much so to the point that I am now friends with some of the people in charge of the events. This year, however, things seemed a little different compared to previous years.

When I got there, they had already started inflating some balloons. While it’s not strange that they started inflating balloons before the scheduled start time, what seemed strange at first was that they were using leaf blowers. We then found out that this was a change they had made this year as a way of saving helium. This makes sense, as the balloons don’t need to float at the Inflation Party, they just need to be inflated. The leaf blowers were also very powerful, as the balloons were each inflated in a matter of minutes, and they were also fully inflated compared to previous years. The people in charge of the event also seemed more excited than in recent years, which makes sense as the weather on the parade was going to be the best it has been in years. I even had some nice conversations with one of the balloon suppliers, who remembered that I was in college, and was excited to hear that I had graduated and am looking for jobs.

The next day was the parade itself. The weather was the best it had been in years. It was not super cold, and it was not windy at all. As the weather has been a concern for the parade several times in the last ten years, this was a nice surprise. It was great seeing them fly all fifteen balloons and watching them spin most of them. Some of the highlights included some cool dance groups, one of which was called Hoop Girls. My cousin’s daughter is part of that group, and while she didn’t march with them in the parade, she was very happy when they went by, she waved at all of them, and one of them waved back at her. Another cool dance group that was in the parade was The Pulse in Bedford Hills, New York. Some of the dancers in the group are from our town, and some of them even live in our neighborhood. My mom even recognized the person driving the car playing the music they danced to and called out to her to get her attention. At first, she waved at my mom just to be nice, as she didn’t recognize her right away, but then, when she recognized her, she got very excited to see her. Some performers from the group Kidz Bop were on a float in the parade, which is impressive because they had a show in Wallingford a few hours later. The best part of the parade was seeing them fly all fifteen balloons. All the balloons flew great since there was no wind, and they were all inflated perfectly. They had many great balloons this year, but my favorite was the Astronaut. It was a long balloon, and it looked cool with how it was carried down the street, as we were essentially watching a balloon that looked like it was flying past us. It was also cool to see the balloon of Arthur again, as the last time he was in the parade before this year was 20 years ago, and it was also great that it was the same balloon that they used to have. Another interesting balloon was a hand that was making a Peace Sign, which my mom described as looking like something out of the movie "Yellow Submarine."

I hope you all enjoyed reading my writeup of these two amazing events I went to over the weekend, and I hope you will want to go to them next year!


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