There are lots of furnished apartments in NY, but you won’t want to be inside of yours on New Year’s night, especially when you are lucky enough to now be living so close to Times Square. What started as a simple celebration has transformed into a global tradition. People everywhere tune in and celebrate in person what has become a worldwide symbolic custom that is near and dear to the human heart.

How the Celebration Got Started

Everybody living outside of the city will be patiently waiting on the ball to drop on their TV screens, but you’ll be able to see it live since you have a furnished apartment in NY now. CBS didn’t broadcast the first televised New Year’s Eve event until the late 40’s. But, it was over 100 years ago in 1904 when the first location of what is probably the most popular newspaper publication in the world, The New York Times, was started right there in Times Square.

The location is where the official opening celebration of the newspaper was. They stayed there for ten years before moving, but the paper relocating didn’t stop people from visiting the same area annually to ring in the New Year. The whole event just kind of stuck, and is definitely here to stay. Buyers actually get their leases to furnished apartments in NY purposefully at the end of summer or fall seasons, just because they know they want to be in the city when the Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration is underway.

The ball that drops on New Year’s Eve is called the Waterford Crystal. It may look small on television, but it weighs close to 12,000 pounds. There are over 2600 crystal triangles on it (each is about 4 or 5 inches wide), and, according to the Official Times Square Website, the 2014 version will be called “The Gift of Imagination”. What lights the ball up is over 32,000 Philips Luxeon Rebel LED’s. This year, it is supposed to look like a kaleidoscope of red, blue, green and white.

How You Should Schedule your New Year’s Evening

Over 20 million people will watch the ball drop on TV, but not you. Now that you have a nice, furnished apartment in NY you can plan on being there. The key is to plan early. Not 9pm, not 7, not even 5. Broadcasts from years past show that people start crowding the main area in Times Square at around 3pm. 43rd and Broadway is the best place to be in town that night, so if you want to hold down that location with your friends you have to be what is called a “Dedicated Celebrator” and get out there before everyone else does.