When it comes to superlatives, the helium balloons bobbing down State Street in this Thursday’s annual Chicago holiday pageant, dubbed Field’s Jingle Elf Parade, deliver.
There are 15 helium balloons this year, up from six last year.
There is Kermit the Frog, the parade’s largest at 60 feet, and the first time this balloon design will be shown anywhere.
There are the contenders for cutest: newcomers Furby and Bear in the Big Blue House.
There is Mrs. Potato Head, who will sport earrings and a flowered hat, two elements of this bulbous creation that may have given balloon designers their biggest headaches.
And there is the trickiest maneuver of them all: getting these lighter-than-air creations under the “L” platform at State and Van Buren Streets.
That they will do, says Phil Purevich, the parade’s executive director, by coming down on their bellies and sliding through. It’s a challenge balloonmakers and handlers haven’t faced for 14 years; the parade moved from State Street to Michigan Avenue in 1985.
The parade’s return to State Street doesn’t worry Kemp Balloon’s Bob Kemp. He dealt with the Van Buren “L” platform 26 years ago, the first time he brought balloons here at the request of Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Kemp brought a hippo, among a few other creatures. But no one had told him about the Van Buren “L” stop. When they approached the tight squeeze, “it was like somebody rang a bell. Out of the audience, 35 young people started pushing on this balloon and it popped out the other side,” Kemp says.
Squeezing Kermit through the space should make interesting viewing — he holds 3,500 cubic feet of helium and requires 20 handlers to keep him in line, according to Steve Thomson of Dynamic Displays and Fabulous Inflatables of Detroit, which will also be parading Billy Blazes, Pegasus, Race Car Driver, Dennis the Menace and Gingerbread Kids and a Reindeer.
Other balloons scheduled to fly above State are a Toy Soldier, Snowden, a Jingle Elf, an astronaut and Louie the Lightning Bug.
