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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

For non-Americans who might take this article at face value: As an American this has never been a tradition in my family or any I've known, and it's not a Thanksgiving staple on any radio station I've listened to. (America's huge and diverse, so YMMV of course.)

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Thank you for that. Also as an American, I too have never heard of this. When I saw the words Alice and restaurant, I thought back to the TV sitcom called Alice from the 1970's-1980's who worked at Mel's Diner.

As far as American Thanksgiving staples I'm aware of, it's:

* Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

* (American) Football

* Turkey dinner

* Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (+ maybe Garfield)

I think it's a northeast thing. But not everyone in the northeast knows it, either. You're more likely to know it if you have to drive for at least an hour for Thanksgiving dinner and you like to browse radio stations.

That's interesting - I thought it was ubiquitous. Everybody I know acknowledges the tradition. Just another highly regional thing, I guess.

Dr. Demento played it every year near thanksgiving, which was syndicated nationwide but very niche.

Your mileage does vary lol. WERS out of Boston played it once today and said it will be on again at 5 PM.

It was a WBCN noon tradition back when WBCN was alive.

FWIW this seems to be a NY focused publication and my understanding is that the tradition started on WNEW. I grew up listening to it, but I have no idea how far it’s spread outside of the NYC metro area.

Seattle here, it’s a yearly tradition :)

Midwest here, hear it every year, usually on the radio, but you know, sometimes gotta fall back to queuing up a recording.

Also midwest here, and never heard of it or the person who performed it.

FWIW I've heard this song exactly once, driving into Dallas around 22 years ago on the classic rock station to go watch an NFL game. I was amazed by how long it went on.

The only reason I remember it is the same riff is used in The Doors (who I really got into around the same time) song "WASP".

Listening to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving is a tradition I grew up with in Northern California.

Do you also drive to Alice's Restaurant up on Skyline at LA Honda road?

Amusingly, that's a different restaurant than the one in the song; in fact, that restaurant is named after the song.

Plus, you _can’t_ get anything you want at the Alice’s Restaurant on La Honda road. I was so disappointed.

you certainly can’t get Alice.

In the song, it’s a restaurant owned by Alice but not called Alice’s Restaurant

It's very big in the tri-state area around NY. At a recent friends-giving I brought it up and everyone except one person who grew up in the midwest didn't know what this was.

Same, I've never even heard of this person or this "tradition". Not something anyone I know listens to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlo_Guthrie

Woody's son, but he's eclipsed his father in some ways.

The comment I was looking for, as a European. Thank you!

It mainly became a tradition in those pop radio markets which were already well-established during the Vietnam war, and where there was wide sentiment against the idea of being drafted into the military to fight for someone else's country. A lot of young people (now boomers) would have rather been doing something worthwhile for America itself instead.

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