Bloomberg Vs. Thanksgiving

Mayor Bloomberg has found yet another way to tear a good-sized rip in New York's cultural fabric.

A few weeks back, he announced his proposal to bar automobile traffic from Times Square and Herald Square, allowing both areas to become the domain of pedestrians. Not a bad idea at all. But it has already had once unexpected, and thoroughly unwelcome repercussion. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade can now no longer follow its historic route down Broadway, and is now being forced to contemplate a trip down the much less glamorous path of Sixth Avenue.

Why the parade can't travel down Broadway for just that single day, I don't understand. Couldn't the rules be broken once a year for tradition's sake? The Macy's Parade is the only major parade that still uses Broadway, which, let's face it, is New York's most famous street.

Sometimes I think there isn't a single thing about New York that Michael Bloomberg understands.