New York Today: Feeding Stomachs and Souls

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times It’s high season in the city’s soup kitchens.

Updated 12:34 p.m.

This week, the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens do what they do all year - only for a crush of people.

The Bowery Mission, at 227 Bowery, has been serving Thanksgiving dinners day after day.

On Thursday, the mission will dish out 7,000 meals - 1,500 at its chapel and another 5,500 at soup kitchens around the city.

Hannah Vanbiber, who helps manage the holiday banquet, told us how it works.

The mission procured 500 turkeys, 900 pies, 1,000 pounds of potatoes, 800 pounds of stuffing and 260 gallons of gravy.

Then, dinner had to be cooked.

And volunteers delegated to plate it.

“We’ve had V.I.P.’s pulling meat off turkeys in the back,” Ms. Vanbiber said.

(Katie Couric is among them this year.)

Others bring meals to tables arrayed around the mission’s chapel. Or they ladle hot chocolate and coffee in a tent outside, where people wait for seats.

“You know what’s beautiful?” Ms. Vanbiber asked.

“To see people go through the big red doors and know once they’re inside, they’re going to get fed. They come in here and they’re treated as someone valuable.”

Here’s what else you need to know for this Thanksgiving Eve.

WEATHER

Another inch or so of gust-driven rain this morning, tapering off after noon, with temperatures gradually falling through the 40s.

More than 3,000 homes on Long Island are without power because of the storm. Some roads are flooded in New York and New Jersey.

Winds should die down during the day but pick up again at night as temperatures drop into the 20s.

Tomorrow: sunny, cold, high of 35, and, yes, windy, with gusts over 30 miles an hour. Looks dicey for the big balloons.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect today but suspended tomorrow.

Air Travel: There have been weather-related delays at area airports. Check airport status or contact your airline.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his wife volunteer at a food pantry in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, at 12:45 p.m.

- Mayor Bloomberg attends the Inflating of the Parade Balloons on 77th Street and Central Park West. 5:30 p.m.

- You, too, can watch the balloons get blown up beside the American Museum of Natural History from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. [Free]

- Or make it a crafts day with the kids at the Poe Park visitor center in the Bronx. 1:30 p.m. [Free]

- Films of Merce Cunningham’s dances will screen at the Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. 1 p.m. [Free]

- Teens can draw, paint and learn from a teaching artist at the Brooklyn Public Library. 4 p.m. [Free; space is limited]

- Two giant 32-foot menorahs - the biggest allowed under Jewish law - will be lit at 6 p.m. One is at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street outside Central Park. The other is at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. [Free]

- The often reclusive Lauryn Hill plays the Bowery Ballroom. 8 p.m. [$106]

- Here’s a helpful map of streets that will close starting today for the big parade. [DNAinfo]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Nearly two-thirds of New York State voters support Mr. de Blasio’s plan to raise taxes on New York City’s rich to improve public education. [Wall Street Journal]

- Hundreds of photos salvaged from the muck of Hurricane Sandy on Staten Island are posted online for their owners to find. [New York Times]

- Federal authorities confirmed that a burial ground discovered by fourth- and fifth-graders beneath a Bronx park was used to bury slaves. [Daily News]

- William J. Bratton, the former police commissioner, is said to be Mr. de Blasio’s top choice to lead the Police Department. [WPIX-TV]

- A man built a 3,000-pound gingerbread mega-village comprising 164 structures inside his Bronx apartment. [New York Times]

- Smorgasburg, the food market connected to the Brooklyn Flea, is now a year-round thing. [Eater]

- Macy’s parade balloons from the 1930s look impressively creepy in retrospect. [The Wire]

- Scoreboard: Nets snag Raptors, 102-100.

AND FINALLY…

Foul weather has been a foe to the Macy’s parade balloons almost since the parade began.

In 1931, high winds loosed Felix the Cat and a blue hippo near the Empire State Building.

Felix hit a wire and burst into flames.

The hippo was spotted by a fisherman off Rockaway Point.

There have been nearly a dozen other mishaps, including the 1997 Cat in the Hat accident that seriously injured a woman.

Most times, though, only balloons were harmed.

In 1956, gusts “flattened all three of the parade’s helium filled monsters,” The Times reported.

They included Mighty Mouse, who “struggled valiantly until Thirty-Fourth and Herald Square â€" almost to the finish â€" when he became a wee mouse.”

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

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