Way to Go Hawks! Now basking in the shine of Lord Stanley's Cup for the first time in my lifetime, here's how the City of Chicago government is Planning the Parade route and downtown rally:"City officials are hoping for a safe, fun and stylish celebration at a ticker-tape parade and rally Friday for the Blackhawks after their Stanley Cup win Wednesday night.
The event will begin about 10:30 a.m. when players and some front office staffers will be on a double-decker bus traveling through the central business district and down Michigan Avenue in a parade that will end at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive with a “huge rally,’’according to Megan McDonald, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Special Events.
McDonald spoke at a 6 a.m. press conference with several other city officials Thursday at the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, 1411 W. Madison St."
But even in celebration, governing can be hard. There has been some early critique of the City planning, due to the Cubs-Sox game later Friday. City officials plan the rally to be over downtown by noon. They expect a crowd of about 350,000 to come down to see their champions and the Cup.http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/rock-report/2010/06/typical-chicago-cant-properly-plan-a-stanley-cup-celebration.html
Here Come The Hawks Audio
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Well, as I can personally attest to, the City was way low on its pre-rally estimates. But there is a social science that goes into estimating civic crowd accounts. As the Sun-Times Art Golab reports:
"If the city's estimate is correct, the multitude of 2 million that descended on downtown Chicago Friday could be the largest public gathering in a single spot in the city's history, topping the 1.5 million who attended a 1979 mass conducted by Pope John Paul II in Grant Park.
In the past, various parades and Independence Day fireworks celebrations have drawn estimated crowds ranging from 1 million to 1.25
The Air and Water Show regularly brings out more than 2 million, but that's spread over many miles of lakefront.
So when it comes to these mega-events, how does the city count a million-plus people?
In the case of the Blackhawks rally, the city started with data from Metra and the CTA, said Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford. "We also look at all the cameras along the route, the density of people in the camera shots, the aerial photos. We put it all together and come up with an estimate."
Langford said CTA and Metra reported "close to double" the number of boardings they got for the last Fourth of July celebration."
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