Author: Jessica Leigh Hester / Source: Atlas Obscura
As the clock strikes midnight, ushering in January 1, the crowds packed into New York City’s Times Square are covered with a blizzard of confetti. Around one ton of the stuff dances toward the street, and many of the scraps are unique: In the month leading up to the revelry, passersby have been invited to scrawl wishes on the fluttering fragments, either in person or online. The festive flurries will twirl through the air and then gather on the street, like neon snowdrifts.
Shivering merrymakers wait hours for the big moment. Jennifer Rice isn’t among them.
Rice usually spends New Year’s Eve warm and cozy at home, she says—but surrounded by her collection of vintage confetti. Some highlights are now on view at the City Reliquary museum in Brooklyn.
Rice’s passion for the little specks was kindled when she read an article about restoring the Rainbow Room, a venue on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The landmarked space first opened to upper-class tipplers in 1934, and ran on and off until 2009. After a five-year closure, it reopened in 2014, with a new look. Many accounts of the renovation mentioned that crews had excavated decades-old confetti from beneath the dance floor.
Rice wasn’t sure whether the story was true, but she found it charming. How had something so flimsy, predestined to be swept into a dustbin and unceremoniously heaped into the trash, managed to survive under there? “I thought that…
The post Ringing in the New Year With a Confetti Collector appeared first on FeedBox.