One minute before midnight on New Year’s Eve, high above street level, Treb Heining closely monitors a digital clock below the Waterford crystal ball towering over Times Square, and soon the crowd loudly joins together in a final countdown chorus.
“ … 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …”
By the time fireworks blast off on the hour and “Auld Lang Syne” echoes from 42nd to 59th streets and Sixth to Eighth avenues, “confetti king” Heining has already given a quick radio command — “Go confetti!” — to team leaders in charge of 100-plus volunteers scattered around seven buildings surrounding Times Square.
As thousands dance and cheer, packed shoulder-to-shoulder at street level, and couples (and perhaps strangers) passionately kiss, Heining joins the volunteers in hoisting huge handfuls of confetti into the air, one bunch after another, after another. The two-inch-square pieces of paper quickly engulf the area in a vibrant, fluttering blizzard, upstaging the ball drop for those on the street below and turning several Midtown blocks into the largest, most colorful snow globe on Earth.
Now in his third decade of orchestrating the stunning spectacle, Heining — who turns 72 on Jan. 18 — says the experience never gets old.
“Every year on New Year’s at midnight, I cry. It is an emotional, wonderful thing for me every year, you know?” Heining recently told The Post in a video call from his longtime business, Glasshouse Balloon Co. in California.
“My grandkids have gotten me big shirts that say ‘cry baby’ on them because I definitely … ” he continued before pausing briefly as the confession caught in his throat. “I wear my emotions on my sleeve.”
The typically upbeat Heining, with his broadcast-ready voice and signature red glasses, launched the city’s first Times Square confetti barrage on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, 1992, after nearly two decades running pioneering, large-scale balloon businesses since 1979.
Both his routine and his emotions rarely waver, he says, whether it includes engaging with dozens of volunteers — some repeat, some newcomers — during a 7 p.m. “confetti dispersal engineer orientation,” or fending off anxiety as the clock ticks closer to midnight.
“I am completely nervous at 11:50 when I’m pacing up and down on my setback with a walkie-talkie, ready to give the cue. It never changes,” he told The Post. “It’s a complete honor to have the job, to be the gatekeeper for so many people, to be a part of something that’s so amazing, that goes out around the world, for everybody to see, you know? It’s a huge honor.”
He’s come a long way from filling and selling balloons at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, at age 15. Post-college, he segued into sales and production work for Famous Amos cookies before being convinced by entrepreneur David Klein — who created the Jelly Belly candy line and with whom he is still “close friends” — to harness his Disney roots and form his own balloon company. Since then, he has staged balloon drops and large displays for 18 Super Bowls, three Olympic Games and many Republican and Democratic national conventions.
His annual New Year’s Eve gig includes wrangling upwards of 3,000 pounds of confetti — packed into 75 boxes of about 45 pounds each — that are released from building windows and setbacks, including at the Marriott Hotel, the former Bertelsmann Building at 1540 Broadway, and the Minskoff Theatre, where “The Lion King” performs.
Thousands of the tiny slips of paper include scrawled messages, solicited online and via a Wishing Wall in Times Square, with writers seeking to “get skinny,” buy “a new car” or simply “fall in love.”
Heining was especially touched by one message he noticed several years ago that read, “I wish that my mom’s cancer goes away” — and included a phone number.
He and a volunteer called, and Heining introduced himself, telling the woman on the other end — he still doesn’t know if it could be the mom or daughter — that their message would be released over Times Square that night.
“I’m waiting for them to say something, and they’re silenced, you know?” he recalled. “And they’re sobbing on the other end of the phone. Sobbing. And she eventually said, ‘Thank you so much.’ And it was just … It was wonderful,” he continued, choking up.
“The message thing is so, so amazing, because some of them are written by kids, and they’re really rudimentary, and other ones are very touching. And it makes you realize, as a human being, how fortunate we all are, because so many people are carrying such a load.”
He’s also been moved by more direct, face-to-face connections with many “dispersal” volunteers, who come from faraway countries including Russia, Sweden, Norway, England, Australia and New Zealand.
“Over the years, boy, I know we’ve covered the globe,” he said.
But one encounter in particular from just two years ago will be among the many that stick with him.
While passing through the lobby of Midtown’s Renaissance Hotel for a meeting just days before the new year, he encountered a “wonderful” family of visitors from Germany — husband, wife and two daughters — who had no particular plans for the big night.
Heining told their shocked tour guide to suggest they join the confetti crew — and they did.
“The confetti goes off that year. It was spectacular, as usual,” he remembered, with the visiting foursome joining in to disperse the confetti blizzard.
“The wife comes over to me, in a beautiful long coat — because they’re from Germany, they know how to dress warm and all that stuff — and she gives me this big hug,” said Heining, his voice again starting to catch. “And it got to the point, you know, where you want to let go and everything. She didn’t let go.
“And she’s hanging on to me, and she whispers in my ear, ‘This is the greatest New Year’s we’ve ever had in our lives.’”
It’s one of those heartwarming moments “that are hard for me to talk about,” he said.
“Come on — stuff like that stays with you forever, you know?”
The post New Year’s Eve never gets old for the ‘confetti king’ of Times Square — he’s still an emotional wreck at midnight after 3 decades on job appeared first on New York Post.
