Workers installed 192 glittering Waterford crystal triangles on Times Square’s New Year’s Eve ball Sunday in preparation for a pandemic-limited celebration that will lack the usual tightly packed crowds of revelers.
The ball is a 12-foot geodesic sphere covered with 2,688 crystal triangles of various sizes. Some new crystals are swapped in every year. This year’s addition features a new “Gift of Happiness” design represented by a sunburst of bright cuts radiating outward.
The ball blazing with 32,256 LED lights will be dropped at 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to ring in 2021.
The New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square will be a celebration of perseverance, honoring essential workers and featuring Gloria Gaynor singing her anthem, “I Will Survive."
Organizers had announced previously that the annual event will be virtual this year, with no public audience as in other years, and aimed at broadcast viewers.
The broadcasts that usually set up shop in Times Square will be there. Organizers said they would be honoring essential workers as the “Heroes of 2020" and designate a group of them as Special Guests, an annual tradition since the 1990s.
