Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress is continuing to recycle the same old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is something silly you believed to be true as a child?

I chose to respond to this prompt today, while it is mid- January, and my response is still somewhat timely.

When I was a kid, I wound watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve every New Year’s Eve. Was there even another New Year’s Eve show in the 70s and 80s?

I was always fascinated by the fact that they had the famous “ball drop” and the countdown to the New Year in a place called Times Square.

At this point, I didn’t know anything about the history of the New Year’s Eve party. According to this Wikipedia article, then- Times owner Adolph Ochoa decided to hold a New Year’s Eve party at his new headquarters for the New York Times. This party was an extension of New Year’s Eve fireworks displays that he had put on previously. I knew nothing about the fact that the publisher of the New York Times had the idea to throw a party on December 31 to “ring in the new year”. Nor did I that the name for the neighborhood Times Square was in reference to the New York Times building.

As a child, I believed that Times Square got its name because that’s where time started. It was as if New York City, Times Square in particular, was the temporal-nexus point of the entire space – time continuum, to borrow a line from Back to the Future, part II.

And it makes sense, from a kid’s point-of-view. When you grow up watching the ball drop, a ceremony that unofficially starts the new year here in America – a place called Times Square no less – it’s a safe for a child to assume that THAT is where time begins! Let’s not forget that Time Square is also referred to as “the Crossroads of the World”. Needless to say, this only added to the mystique of the Big Apple.

I think the even crazier part is that Times Square looked like absolute crap in the 70s and 80s. The neighborhood looks like something out of the movie Blade Runner. Today, all the big companies have their advertisements all over the area. Videos boards, some as tall as skyscrapers themselves cover the buildings.

Say what you want to about Rudy Giuliani – he is a crook, he is racist, he is crazy – but he did clean up Times Square in the 90s. Suddenly, it became THE place for corporate America to create a footprint.

And to think that it all started because a newspaper owner wanted to show off his new headquarters on December 31.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts

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• The Muscle of Empathy

The article “New York State of Mind” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.