Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll find out about the new New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square. We’ll also get more details on what Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and President Trump talked about during their meeting in the Oval Office on Friday.
Unless you look closely on New Year’s Eve — and who looks closely when the countdown is on and the confetti is about to fly? — you will probably not notice that the ball that drops in Times Square is new. You also may not notice that:
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it has almost twice as many lights as the ball it replaced;
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it is slightly larger, somewhat rounder and driven by a more powerful motor than its predecessor;
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and it is covered with round crystals that refract the light from LED “pucks.” (The old ball had triangular-shaped crystals.)
The new ball will be more than a centerpiece of the New Year’s celebration in Times Square. It will be a year-round destination where, for a price, ticket holders will be able to go up to a viewing deck to see it up close. Some will be able to take a piece of it home.
The tickets will start at around $45 per person, and, for $295 per person, a ticket holder can take a crystal from the ball as a keepsake and also write a New Year’s Eve message on confetti. The ball will flash the message in Morse code for the world to see. In a city where affordability is an everyday topic of conversation — and framed Zohran Mamdani’s winning campaign for mayor — the company behind One Times Square says that the prices are “commensurate with other premium packages,” including V.I.P. offers for Broadway shows and tickets to other observation decks.
One Times Square, the trapezoidal building that has provided the platform for the ball drop for more than a century, has undergone a $550 million makeover. The displays inside are technology-driven.
But Michael Phillips, the chief executive of Jamestown, the firm that owns One Times Square, said some of the displays acknowledged the technology of the past and the history of the building. The building opened around the time that the company run by Guglielmo Marconi, the wireless radio pioneer, moved to establish an international distress signal. That figured in the story of the building later on.
One Times Square “really started as a communications building,” Phillips said.
“It was the home of The New York Times, with direct access into the subway, so that the newspapers could be printed and distributed throughout the city immediately on the then-new subway system,” he said.
And then, in 1912, the unthinkable happened: The supposedly unsinkable Titanic hit the iceberg.
The Times had wireless operators whose jobs included listening for distress calls from ships. They worked on one floor of the building and would put bulletins in a dumbwaiter to be lowered to the newsroom on the floor below, where copy boys would carry them to an editor. The wireless operators would signal when something important was coming down in the dumbwaiter by jiggling the rope that carried it up and down.
When they passed along the distress call from the Titanic, they yanked the rope — hard. In minutes, the newsroom mobilized to cover one of the defining events of the years before World War I.
The Times started the tradition of celebrating New Year’s Eve almost as soon as the building was finished. In 1904, it shot fireworks from the roof. In 1905 and 1906, it tried something that promised safety to neighboring buildings made of wood, a flashing electric light display. The ball drop began the next year.
That first ball no longer exists. Jamestown has created a replica of it, with wood from the early 20th century that was salvaged and repurposed, along with steel that Jamestown “harvested” as it expanded the building in Times Square. Later New Year’s Eve balls will also be on display, including the one that dropped from the mid-1950s until the mid-1990s.
The ball’s looks have changed over the years: It became an apple in the 1980s. The apple gave way to rhinestones in the 1990s. The new ball, which replaced one that had been used since just before New Year’s Eve 2008 and was decommissioned in January, has three sizes of crystals, made by Waterford — “infinite joy,” “infinite light” and “infinite beginnings” — that can be changed later to go with different themes.
And the confetti messages? Phillips said visitors could use them to continue the tradition of New Year’s resolutions. “Some of us do it,” Phillips said. “Some of us achieve them. Some of us — you know. But it’s something that’s universally embedded in our collective consciousness.”
Weather
Today will be sunny with a high near 51. Expect clouds to move in tonight; the low will be around 41.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Thursday (Thanksgiving).
The latest Metro news
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Doula care at risk: Doula services remain free in New York City for now. But health experts fear that Medicaid cuts under the Trump administration might lead to increased maternal deaths among Black and low-income women who rely on government health insurance.
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Protesters disrupt Metropolitan Opera performance: “Carmen” came to a temporary halt on Friday night after two protesters leaped onto the stage. The Met said that a guard had not been at his post.
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Congressman’s aide is accused of faking an attack: Natalie Greene, who worked for a New Jersey Republican, claimed that she was the victim of a politically motivated slashing in July, a narrative that quickly unraveled when investigators found spare zip ties in her Maserati, prosecutors said.
What Mamdani and Trump talked about
What did Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and President Trump talk about in the Oval Office on Friday? In a television studio over the weekend, Mamdani said he had made the case that the National Guard was not needed in New York City and that crime was under control.
Trump told reporters much the same on Saturday, saying that he had no immediate plans to send the Guard to New York. “Right now,” Trump told reporters, “other places need it more.” But Trump said that his plans might change if he felt that New Yorkers needed the Guard’s assistance.
Mamdani said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” that he had made it “very clear” to Trump that “what we wanted to do was to deliver public safety and affordability, and the N.Y.P.D. would be the ones to do so.” He said on Sunday that he had also told Trump that federal agents should not be targeting law-abiding immigrants.
Mamdani said that he and the president were “establishing a productive relationship.” That was in line with what Trump said during their meeting. “I expect to be helping him, not hurting him,” said the president, who called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job” during the campaign.
METROPOLITAN diary
Beautiful night
Dear Diary:
It was our friend’s birthday, and he wanted the best Thai food in the city. So, of course, Queens it was.
Still in scrubs after a 12-hour shift, we feasted on raw shrimp over bitter melon, tender duck breast enrobed in panang curry, and a whole red snapper peering through a curtain of Thai basil.
The food made us sweat too much, and the drinks made us laugh too loud. By the time we left, it was 10 p.m.
Woodside Avenue was quiet. The storefronts were closed. But we didn’t want to go home. Then, from down the street, we heard the echo of a microphone.
Through the window of a dark restaurant, we saw a man illuminated by a disco ball who was singing from his chest.
He waved at us. We waved back. He unlocked the door and invited us in.
Over a bucket of cold Singha, we sang “Happy Birthday.” The owner brought out a brownie topped with a blazing flare on the house.
I apologized for the intrusion.
“Please kick us out any time,” I said.
He smiled and handed me Post-its and a pen.
“Just make a list of songs,” he said.
Another bucket of beer appeared, along with some peanuts. It was a beautiful night, and we had found something dumb to do.
At midnight, our party split off for Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
I whispered a hoarse goodbye and made my way up 76th Street, grateful that I was home already. In Queens.
— Ileen Park
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Lauren Hard, Tara Terranova and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post In Times Square, a New Ball for a New Year appeared first on New York Times.
