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Mamdani inauguration will close off Broadway on New Year’s Day
The new mayor’s inauguration party — traditionally held on the steps of City Hall on New Year’s Day — will spill out into Broadway this year, taking over seven blocks of Broadway from Liberty to Murray on Thursday, January 1.
The “first ever inauguration block party” will take place from 11a to 3p, but I am sure the streets will be closed all day. The actual inauguration ceremony will take place at 1p. Eventgoers will enter at Liberty.
The event is free, but registration is required. There will also be a livestream of the event.
The transition team’s website says to bring snacks and drinks, but there will be no public toilets inside what I am imagining as a seven-block chute with police barriers on either side.
NB there will be subway changes as well:
- R will skip City Hall in both directions.
- Fulton Street 2/3/4/5/A/C/J/R exit will be closed on Broadway.
- Park Place 2/3 exit will be closed on Broadway.
- There will be no access to City Hall plaza or park from the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall 4/5/6/J station. All riders entering or exiting the station will be routed to the the Reade Street entrance.
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This is the kind of planning that has me very apprehensive about his time as mayor. Let’s have a big party for thousands of people and not think that anyone will have to use a restroom. What will those people do? Pee on the street? How much would it have cost to bring in some port a potties? Thoughtlessness under the guise of magnanimity.
What better way to flip off Manhattanites that didn’t vote for him (i.e. Tribeca and BPC) than throw a party in their neighborhood and leave it a mess? Gotta love it.
Get ready for this type of apprehension for the next four years from a couple that feels “uncomfortable in their new Manhattan home” (per the Vogue interview with the new first teenager).
But hey — free buses are coming!
City Hall predates our neighborhood by more than a century. The celebration is being held adjacent to City Hall as is appropriate.
Why not instead reward the precincts who supported Mamdani with this treat of an event? Bushwick, Greenpoint, Jamaica?
As Mamdani himself said in his victory speech, “To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too. This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organizer I met outside of Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night. A New Yorker who lives elsewhere, who commutes two hours each way from Pennsylvania because rent is too expensive in this city.”
Thank you JP. To add an exclamation point, from Wikipedia:
“The cornerstone of the new City Hall was laid on May 26, 1803.Construction was delayed after the City Council objected that the design was too extravagant… The building was not dedicated until 1811, and opened officially in 1812.”
(predating “TriBeCa” by ~160 years)
As JP said, you’re being purposefully uncharitable by viewing this as some oblique attack on a neighborhood that largely didn’t vote for him (though of course, many people within it did).
I’m 41, so not a youth anymore, but did it ever occur to you that the condescension so many feel free to direct towards younger people (i.e., “first teenager”) is registering clearly, and maybe pushes the younger generation to vote for people within their own age bracket, who might understand and respect them as the adults they are a little bit more? Rama Duwaji is 28.
How terrifying, and thank God you are finally asking the hard questions instead of, say, noticing that this city has survived marathons, parades, protests, street fairs, SantaCon, and New Year’s Eve for decades with the exact same level of bathroom planning. But you are right, this is the pivotal moment that illustrates his clear unfitness for office. Blue plastic toilets were left out of his leadership.
I can only assume Broadway will instantly become a post-apocalyptic urinal, and our society will collapse as the mayor will not be personally handing out citations for public peeing.