Nude York City: Bodypainted model hauled to jail after Times Square spectacle (SNSFW)

By Thomas Durante
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Police were called to New York's Times Square yesterday after an art exhibit turned a model into an exhibitionist.

Handcuffs were the only thing Zoe West, of Kingston, New York, was wearing when she was taken into custody on Tuesday evening.

The 21-year-old beauty was splashed with paint for famed local bodypainter Andy Golub in a stunt that drew onlookers ranging from tourists to office workers.

Crowd-pleaser: Tourists and workers alike gathered to watch Andy Golub paint model Zoe West in New York's Times Square

But not everyone enjoyed the spectacle.

At about 5 p.m., several NYPD officers showed up and took the woman into custody, binding her with handcuffs and hauling her off in a police van.

Miss West said there was nothing against the law about her modelling.

She told the New York Post: 'I don't believe there is truly anything wrong with what I did and with what he was doing.'

Colour me bad: Zoe West is led into a police van after her arrest while serving as the canvas for bodypainter Andy Golub

Miss West, whose ModelMayhem.com profile promises she would do 'NO EROTIC NUDE WORK EVER,' said the charges were later dropped.

Mr Golub is no stranger to gawkers in Times Square either, as he’s been there to perform his art several times over the last few years.

He was charged with public lewdness in a similar stunt last month with two other models.

The 45-year-old told the Post that Miss West was aware of the risks and posed for him anyway.
He said: 'I explained all this to my model, so she was completely aware.'

Naked ambition: Zoe West said she was aware getting arrested may have been one of the risks when she was bodypainted in Times Square

First photos from Broadway's $60 Million 'Spider Man' arrive

KA-POW! Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

by Adam Green | photographed by Annie Leibovitz

from http://www.vogue.com/

» Vogue Slideshow Gallery «

In 1962, the Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee came up with a story about a teenage geek named Peter Parker who gets bitten by a radioactive spider at a science exhibit and discovers that he has acquired superhuman strength, extrasensory perception, and the ability to crawl up walls—not to mention a flair for costume design. As drawn by Steve Ditko, a cultural icon named Spider-Man was born, and since then he has swung from the comic-book page to the cineplex screen and into our dream life, fighting crime on the streets of New York and protecting mankind from villains bent on global domination. Now the world’s most famous webslinger is facing his scariest adversaries yet—New York theater critics and audiences—as Julie Taymor’s long-delayed rock musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, with songs by U2’s Bono and the Edge, finally drops in on Broadway in January.

On a fall afternoon shortly before the start of previews, the many thousand moving parts of the $60 million production—already infamous as the most expensive of all time—are still syncing up inside the newly renamed Foxwoods Theatre (no gambling jokes, please) on Forty-second Street. In one rehearsal room, the Edge is listening to vocal arrangements. In another, the choreographer Daniel Ezralow, a Momix founder and frequent Taymor collaborator, is working with a group of arachno–chorus girls, who, requiring eight stiletto heels each, could be described as unusually leggy. Onstage, Spider-Man (Reeve Carney) and the Green Goblin (Patrick Page) duke it out on the roof of set designer George Tsypin’s pop-up Roy Lichtenstein–meets–Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Chrysler Building as Mary Jane Watson (Jennifer Damiano), trussed in a harness courtesy of the aerial-rigging designer Jaque Paquin, dangles fetchingly from a stone gargoyle.

In the middle of it all, wearing a headset microphone, sits Taymor, back on Broadway following her 1997 triumph with The Lion King. Slim and snub-nosed, the 58-year-old director still exudes the passion and precocity of the bohemian enfant terrible who burst on the scene in the early eighties with visually stunning pieces rooted in the rituals of Asian theater—masks, puppets, dance—and the power of mythology. And though she hasn’t exactly been letting the savanna grass grow under her feet since The Lion King (her acclaimed Metropolitan Opera production of The Magic Flute and her new film adaptation of The Tempest open this month), it is that show, a marriage of avant-garde stage wizardry and Disney schmaltz, that remains her signal achievement. Instead of trying to reproduce the movie, Taymor took the bold step of transforming it into a purely theatrical experience, creating magic by exposing all her tricks—those giraffes were clearly actors on stilts—and inviting audiences to take an imaginative leap.

It’s not difficult to see why Taymor, with her penchant for folk tales and fascination with the cycles of life, would be attracted to the epic tale of an ordinary boy who must cross the thresholds of death and rebirth to claim the mantle of hero. “Spider-Man is a genuine American myth with a dark, primal power,” Taymor says. “But it’s also got this great superhero, and—hey!—he can fly through the theater at 40 miles an hour. It’s got villains, it’s got skyscrapers, it’s colorful, it’s Manhattan. I knew it would be a challenge, but I saw the inherent theatricality in it, and I couldn’t resist.”

Taymor and her cowriter, Glen Berger, have taken the basic contours of the familiar story and added elements of their own, including a geek chorus that comments on the action and a new supervillain drawn from Greek mythology. And Taymor will be using all the weapons in her theatrical arsenal, from the low-tech (shadow puppets depict the death of Peter’s uncle Ben) to the high- (giant LED screens project mutant ne’er-do-wells wreaking havoc on world capitals). “To me, where theater has it all over film is that it’s in the moment, it’s tactile, you feel it,” she says. “You’re completely immersed in it—right here and right now.”

To help create that immersive experience, Taymor turned to her frequent collaborator the brilliant Russian designer George Tsypin, who has a gift for haunting dreamscapes. He removed the orchestra pit and the proscenium, bringing the audience and the action together. (When Spider-Man makes his first entrance, he swings from the back of the set to the foot of the stage, landing mere inches from the innocent bystanders in the first row.) In one sequence, the fisticuffs between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin atop the Chrysler Building lead to Spidey’s jumping off the ledge—and suddenly the scenery shifts to a forced perspective that makes us feel as if we are staring down the side of a skyscraper into the street. Next thing we know, Spider-Man and the Goblin are whizzing through the air over our heads, locked in mortal combat, landing on a platform attached to the first balcony. “The people in the cheap seats are going to get quite a show,” says Taymor. If everything works, the audience should feel the vertiginous thrill of having landed in the pages of an expressionist comic book sprung to life. With a cast of 41 and no fewer than 37 scene changes, Taymor is clearly working hard to keep all the balls in the air. “I know it’s too much, but is that bad?” she asks. “Seriously, if you don’t want to do something ambitious that’s never been seen before, why do you bother?”

Taymor designed most of the masks herself, but for costumes, she turned to Eiko Ishioka, a 1988 Tony nominee for M. Butterfly, who is known for her bold, graphic style and eye for the hallucinatory. “Julie wanted me to add elements of crazy fantasy to create a world that was dangerous, risky,” Ishioka says. “Something that makes audiences go, ‘Wow!’ ” Her eye-popping evildoers—the spiny Green Goblin, the Tin Man–meets–Lizzie Borden Swiss Miss, the blood-red Carnage—recall her luxuriantly nightmarish creations for Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As for Spidey’s signature skintight suit, Ishioka’s version evokes the aerodynamic uniforms she designed for the 2002 Canadian Olympic speed skaters. With a revamped spider symbol, mottled arachnid markings, and muscle-emphasizing, comic book–style shadings, the costume is part of an overall strategy, Ishioka says, to “bring the 2-D world into 3-D.”

Now donning the Green Goblin’s wings—the originally announced Mary Jane Watson and Green Goblin, Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming, bowed out last spring when the show’s producer ran out of money—is Patrick Page, an excellent actor with a knack for playing chartreuse-skinned villains, most recently in Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Page relishes portraying bad guys, he says, “especially when they’re not only insane but genetically modified.” As Peter’s girlfriend, Mary Jane, Jennifer Damiano brings the girl-next-door sex appeal, emotional vulnerability, and powerhouse singing voice that earned her a Tony nomination last year for her performance in Next to Normal. At nineteen, Damiano is well on her way to achieving what for her character, an aspiring actress straight out of high school, remains only a fantasy. “The other day, Julie and Glen were talking about changing Mary Jane’s dream of winning a Tony to winning an Oscar because that’s what kids these days dream about,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Well, not all kids. . . .’ ”

Various names were bandied about for the title role, including Taymor’s Across the Universe star Jim Sturgess, but the director wound up going with a little-known rock-’n’-roller named Reeve Carney after she saw him perform with his band. “He looks like a prince,” says Taymor, who cast him as just that in The Tempest, “but he’s gawky and skinny, like an indie artist.” Carney, whose stunts are performed by a team of Spideys, says he strongly identifies with the role: “I’m a gentle, thoughtful person offstage—at least I try to be. But onstage, I turn into a bit of an animal. I guess that’s the Spider-Man in me. I feel more invincible onstage than anywhere else, though if you think about it you’re really more vulnerable up there.”

That duality is something that U2’s Bono and the Edge understand. “Most kids who end up in bands are not necessarily the cool jocks,” says the Edge, who points out that Peter’s central dilemma—how to be a superhero without destroying his personal life—would resonate with most rock stars. These particular rock stars, whose full-throttle songs (“With or Without You” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” for instance) pulse with unabashed yearning, are the first to write a score directly for Broadway (Elton John doesn’t count). They were motivated in part because, despite their band’s astronomical success—22 Grammys, 155 million records sold—as artists, they still haven’t found what they’re looking for. “When we started out, we’d do shows where we were really shite or really great, but we had no control over which was which,” Bono says. “With time, we’ve gotten very good, and it makes me nervous. Because the difference between very good and great is huge. Getting to great requires putting yourself out of your depth.” The score that he and the Edge have written has the intensity and lyricism of their best work, and while some of the songs will sound familiar, one can also hear the influence of pop, world music, and, “dare I even say it, show tunes,” says Bono, adding, “It’s a rock score, but in the way that Sgt. Pepper is a rock album.”

It remains to be seen which of Bono and the Edge’s two power ballads from the show will serve as the headline for the reviews: "Rise bove" or "Boy falls from the sky." My Spidey sense tells me that Taymor and Co. might just pull it off. After all, from his debut in Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy #15 to his ongoing cinematic exploits (a big-screen “reboot” was recently announced, starring Andrew Garfield), Spider-Man occupies a special place in the pop-culture pantheon, partly because whether you’re a genius director, a Broadway neophyte, a pair of Irish rock stars, or a kid reading comic books under the covers by flashlight, he’s the kind of hero to whom we can all relate. As his creator, Stan Lee, tells me, “It doesn’t matter what your color or national origin—once the mask goes on, it could be you inside that Spider-Man costume.”

The Twenty Hilarious Historic Photos of New York City

by: Raju
from: http://smashingusa.com/


The New York City is one of the most popular city in United States, officially named the City of New York, and the most densely populated major city in North America. The city is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture, and is one of the world’s major global cities with a virtually unrivaled collection of museums, galleries, media outlets, international corporations, and stock exchanges. In 1524 the first European explorer enters New York Harbor.

An old woman carrying a heavy load on Lafayette St. February 1912.


Camel cigarette advertisement. Times Square, Feb 1943.

Chorus girls arriving in New York City, from England, in 1926. George Grantham Bain.

View from 27th floor. December 1931.

Clam seller in Mulberry Bend. Around 1900.

Gramercy Park, Manhattan. Check out the decorative ironwork. Photographed by Berenice Abbott. November 27, 1935.

Grand Central Terminal. October 1941.

Italian Festa.

A girl carrying kimonos. Thompson St, February 1912.

Suffragettes on way to Boston. George Grantham Bain Collection.

A row of hanging oppossums.

Produce market on Washington Street. 1952.

52nd St. and E. River. December 1931.

School children around May poles in Central Park.

S.S. Coamo leaving New York. December 1941.

Rear view of tenement, 134 1/2 Thompson Street. Lewis Wickes Hine. February 1912.

The Mall, Central Park. Around 1905.

View from Empire State Building to Chrysler Building and Queensboro Bridge. January 1932.

Washington Market, 1917.

Huts made of salvaged materials. Notice the baby carriage. Photographed by Berenice Abbott. October 25, 1935.

source

All About The Times Square New Year's Eve Ball

Each year, millions of eyes from all over the world are focused on the sparkling Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year's Eve Ball. At 11:59 p.m., the Ball begins its descent as millions of voices unite to count down the final seconds of the year, and celebrate the beginning of a new year full of hopes, challenges, changes and dreams.

New Video: Making the New Year's Eve Ball

For 2010 Waterford Crystal has designed a new sparkling "Let There Be Courage" triangle. The crystals feature a unique interlocking ribbon pattern woven into the Celtic knot. The triangles, each about 3/8" thick and 6.8 ounces in weight are custom made and built to exacting standards to withstand the stresses of high winds, precipitation and temperature fluctuation that exist over 400 feet above Times Square. 288 are being installed alongside crystal installed in previous years. Waterford has also released a New Year's Eve iPhone app called "Clink-Clink"! More >>

The "New" New Year's Eve Ball

On November 11th, 2008, The co-organizers of New Year’s Eve in Times Square (Times Square Alliance, Countdown Entertainment) unveiled a new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball at a press conference at Hudson Scenic Studio in Yonkers, New York.

The new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball is a 12 foot geodesic sphere, double the size of previous Balls, and weighs 11,875 pounds. Covered in 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS, the new Ball is capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million vibrant colors and billions of patterns producing a spectacular kaleidoscope effect atop One Times Square.

The organizers also announced that the new Ball will become a year-round attraction above Times Square in full public view January through December.

“For one hundred years, the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball has attracted millions of revelers to Times Square on December 31st to celebrate the beginning of the New Year” said Jeff Straus, president of Countdown Entertainment and co-organizer of Times Square New Year’s Eve. “The new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball will be a bright sparkling jewel atop One Times Square entertaining New Yorkers and tourists from around the world not only on December 31, but throughout the year.”

“The New Year’s Eve ball is bigger, better and brighter than ever, just like Times Square itself,” said Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins. “And like Times Square, it’s not afraid to show off. That’s why we’re proudly putting it on display year-round so visitors to the neighborhood can enjoy a true Crossroads of the World icon.”

WATERFORD CRYSTAL created an exclusive “Let There Be Joy” design for the crystal triangles on the new Ball. Designed and crafted by Waterford artisans in Ireland, “Let There Be Joy” features the design of an angel with arms uplifted welcoming the New Year on each of the 1,728 new crystals. The remaining 960 triangles are last year’s “Let There Be Light” design of a stylized radiating starburst.

"The new 2009 Times Square New Year's Ball represents the perfect blend of time-honored craftsmanship and state of the art technology," says Pete Cheyney, Director of Corporate Communications for Waterford Crystal. "The theme for the Waterford crystals on this year's Ball, "Let There be Joy" reflects our belief that New Year's Eve is a time when happiness and optimism for the future should be at the forefront of everyone's thoughts. We at Waterford consider the Ball to be of our Company's greatest achievements."

PHILIPS LIGHTING provided the new solid state lighting technology for the Ball, resulting in an astounding increase in impact, energy efficiency, and color capabilities. Capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million colors and billions of possible patterns, the 32,256 Philips Luxeon LEDs in this year's Ball represent more than three times the number of LEDS used last year, to deliver a brighter and more beautiful New Year's experience than ever before. And this year’s Ball is 10-20% more energy efficient than last year’s already energy-efficient Ball, consuming only the same amount of energy per hour as it would take to operate two traditional home ovens.

"At Philips Lighting, we are proud to be driving innovative and energy-efficient solutions for the world's broad range of lighting applications - from celebrated landmarks to consumers' homes -- and we're especially delighted to be the official Lighting Partner to the iconic New Year's Eve Ball in Times Square," said Philips Lighting Company Director of Corporate Communications Susan Bloom. "Now bigger in size and incorporating even more powerful and energy-efficient Philips Luxeon LEDs than last year, this year's Ball will deliver a New Year's Eve experience that will be brighter, more beautiful, and more sustainable than ever before."

FOCUS LIGHTING created a spectacular and unique lighting design that utilizes over 3,500 lighting cues to orchestrate the colorful moving patterns of light radiating from the Ball. Theatrical techniques were used to show the beauty of each facet of each individual crystal, making the sparkle visible whether viewed from 5’ away (as members of the press have seen it) or from 500’ when viewed from the streets of Times Square. It is like accenting a performer on a stage.

“We tried to create a beacon of light in the sky over Times Square,” says Paul Gregory, Principal Lighting Designer for Focus Lighting.

The companies listed below also provided essential contributions to the development of the new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball:

E:Cue Lighting Control provided lighting control system

Hudson Scenic Studio provided structural engineering design and development

Landmark Signs assembles and operates the Ball

Lapp Group provided power and control cabling

Lighting Science Group provided the 672 LED modules and technology integration

History of the Times Square New Year's Eve Ball

Revelers began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square as early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year's Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square.

The first New Year's Eve Ball, made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the company he founded, sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the ball.

As part of the 1907-1908 festivities, waiters in the fabled "lobster palaces" and other deluxe eateries in hotels surrounding Times Square were supplied with battery-powered top hats emblazoned with the numbers "1908" fashioned of tiny light bulbs. At the stroke of midnight, they all "flipped their lids" and the year on their foreheads lit up in conjunction with the numbers "1908" on the parapet of the Times Tower lighting up to signal the arrival of the new year.

The Ball has been lowered every year since 1907, with the exceptions of 1942 and 1943, when the ceremony was suspended due to the wartime "dimout" of lights in New York City. Nevertheless, the crowds still gathered in Times Square in those years and greeted the New Year with a minute of silence followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks parked at the base of the tower - a harkening-back to the earlier celebrations at Trinity Church, where crowds would gather to "ring out the old, ring in the new."

(Above) New Year's Eve Ball, 1978. Photo credit: The New York Times.

In 1920, a 400 pound ball made entirely of wrought iron replaced the original. In 1955, the iron ball was replaced with an aluminum ball weighing a mere 200 pounds. This aluminum Ball remained unchanged until the 1980s, when red light bulbs and the addition of a green stem converted the Ball into an apple for the "I Love New York" marketing campaign from 1981 until 1988. After seven years, the traditional glowing white Ball with white light bulbs and without the green stem returned to brightly light the sky above Times Square. In 1995, the Ball was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones, strobes, and computer controls, but the aluminum ball was lowered for the last time in 1998.

For Times Square 2000, the millennium celebration at the Crossroads of the World, the New Year's Eve Ball was completely redesigned by Waterford Crystal. The new crystal Ball combined the latest in technology with the most traditional of materials, reminding us of our past as we gazed into the future and the beginning of a new millenium.

About "Time-Balls"

The actual notion of a ball "dropping" to signal the passage of time dates back long before New Year's Eve was ever celebrated in Times Square. The first "time-ball" was installed atop England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball would drop at one o'clock every afternoon, allowing the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers (a vital navigational instrument).

Around 150 public time-balls are believed to have been installed around the world after the success at Greenwich, though few survive and still work. The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, where a time-ball descends from a flagpole at noon each day - and of course, once a year in Times Square, where it marks the stroke of midnight not for a few ships' captains, but for over one billion people watching worldwide.

The Times Square New Year's Eve Ball 2000-2007

The 2000-2007 version of the Times Square New Year's Eve Ball, designed by Waterford Crystal, made its first descent during the last minute of the 20th century, at the Times Square 2000 Celebration.

The Ball was a geodesic sphere, six feet in diameter, and weighed approximately 1,070 pounds. It was covered with a total of 504 Waterford crystal triangles that varied in size and ranged in length from 4.75 inches to 5.75 inches per side.

For the 2007 New Year's Eve celebration, 72 of the crystal triangles featured the new "Hope for Peace" design, consisting of three dove-like patterns symbolizing messengers of peace. The remaining 432 triangles featured Waterford designs from previous years, including the Hope for Fellowship, Hope for Wisdom, Hope for Unity, Hope for Courage, Hope for Healing, Hope for Abundance, and Star of Hope triangles. These crystal triangles were bolted to 168 translucent triangular lexan panels which were attached to the aluminum frame of the Ball. The exterior of the Ball was illuminated by 168 Philips Halogená Brilliant Crystal light bulbs, exclusively engineered for the New Year's Eve Ball to enhance the Waterford crystal. The interior of the Ball was illuminated by 432 Philips Light Bulbs (208 clear, 56 red, 56 blue, 56 green, and 56 yellow), and 96 high-intensity strobe lights, which together create bright bubbling bursts of color. The exterior of the Ball featured 90 rotating pyramid mirrors that reflect light back into the audience at Times Square.

All 696 lights and 90 rotating pyramid mirrors were computer controlled, enabling the Ball to produce a state-of-the-art light show of eye-dazzling color patterns and a spectacular kaleidoscope effect atop One Times Square. The now-retired 2000-2007 New Year's Eve Ball is the property of the building owners of One Times Square.

Times Square without cars?

Advocates of a radical new plan want to create a pedestrian mall and light rail system in the heart of New York City.

By E.B. Solomont

ALL ABOARD: A proposed light rail system would bisect New York's Times Square. (Photo: Vision 42)

More than 356,000 people walk through the heart of New York City each day, but imagine how many more could traipse through if Times Square was closed to cars?

Advocates of a radical new plan want to close 42nd Street to car traffic and create a light rail system to run across the island of Manhattan, from the Hudson River on the west to the East River on the east. Such redevelopment would boost the local economy and improve transportation, according to Vision 42, a citizens’ group formed in 1999 by the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility. It would also offer a less polluting travel option than the exhaust-belching buses that currently take New Yorkers across town at a snail’s pace, The New York Times reported.

At a cost of $500 million, the light rail would stop at every avenue and run from one side of the city to the other in about 20 minutes, about half the time it currently takes to ride a bus across town.

So far, property owners along 42nd Street support the proposal — but the city isn’t so sure. But even though city officials aren’t rushing to embrace Vision 42’s idea, they have launched “Green Light for Midtown,” a project to alleviate congestion in Times Square, where traffic moves an average of 4.2 miles per hour. The city has created several pedestrian malls in midtown, and over Memorial Day weekend officials closed several blocks around Times Square to cars.

But proponents of Vision 42’s plan say the city needs a permanent solution.

Vision 42 advocates pointed out that light rail lines have stimulated economic growth and development in other cities, such as Dallas, Portland, Ore., and Phoenix. According to a study by the consulting firm Urbanomics of New York, closing 42nd Street to cars and adding a light rail line would boost the economy in Manhattan: Pedestrian volume would increase by 35, translating to some $380 million more in sales among the street’s 126 stores.

Indeed, proposals to expedite cross-town traffic in Manhattan have been kicked around for years. An older proposal, which lost steam in the 1990s, would have created a trolley line along the south side of 42nd Street, with the north side open to vehicular traffic. But New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg favors extending an existing subway line – the No. 7 – to reach farther west.

“The real gain here is you could handle three times as many people with roughly the same cost,” said George Haikalis, an engineer and a co-chairman of Vision 42. “A lot of people have expressed interest in this, but have not signed on, because they’re awaiting interest from Mayor Bloomberg.”

Amazing HDR of the Bright Lights of Times Square in NYC

Times Square Unveils A Dazzling LED New Year’s Ball

by Evelyn Lee

This New Year’s Eve Times Square in New York is set to debut a dazzling new LED-encrusted New Year’s ball! Composed of 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs, the 12-foot wide energy-efficient orb weighs in at 11,875 pounds, making it twice the size of any ball previously dropped overhead in Time Square. A marriage of tradition and new technology, the stunning new sphere will be ringing in the 100th anniversary of the New Year’s Eve ball.

Size certainly matters when designing an orb descending from the heavens high above the heads of those gathered in the cold of Times Square, but that’s not to say we still can’t cut back on the energy consumption. The new ball is 20 percent more efficient than last year’s, consuming roughly the same amount of energy needed to power two consumer ovens through a holiday feast.

All of the LEDs will combine to create more than 10 million different colors and billions of different patterns, making it a spectacular sight for onlookers in the streets and on TV. If you’re not within sight of Times Square or won’t have your eyes glued to the television on New Year’s, no worries - the new ball is slated to become a year-round addition to the lights of Times Square, with various different programs built-in to commemorate additional holidays and special events.

We’re hoping the dropping of the New Year’s Ball will bring forth another great year full of sustainable innovations. Stay tuned to Inhabitat to find out just what 2009 has in store.

+ Philips Luxeon

Via Cleantechnica

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Eco-Friendly Billboard for Times Square

In Times Square, a Company’s Name in (Wind- and Solar-Powered) Lights

By GLENN COLLINS

The first eco-friendly billboard is coming to Times Square, entirely powered by the sun and the wind — but there is one small catch.

Enlarge This Image

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

An eco-friendly billboard will be installed above the Chase sign at 7th Avenue and 42nd Street.

Enlarge This Image

Gigante Vaz Partners NYC

The billboard, seen in a rendering, will have four 45-foot stacks of wind turbines to power it.

When there’s no sun, and no wind? The $3 million billboard goes dark: there is no backup generator.

“We think if that happens, it’s just fine,” said Ron Potesky, a senior marketing vice president for Ricoh Americas Corporation, the office equipment and document-storage supplier that owns the sign.

The billboard — traditionally called a “spectacular” on the Great White Way — weighs in at 35,000 pounds. It will be 55 feet off the ground at 3 Times Square, wrapping around the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.

Fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels, the sign will be “a first for Times Square,” said Barry E. Winston, a Times Square billboard consultant not involved in the Ricoh project, who has been a sign expert for more than 50 years.

Wind turbines for the vast sign, which is 126 feet wide and 47 feet high, have arrived in a warehouse in Deer Park, N.Y., where preliminary testing is being done. Construction will begin this month, for a lighting ceremony on Dec. 4.

Ricoh would not say how much it was paying for its three-year lease, but based on recent deals, the lease would most likely cost in the low six figures, as much as $200,000 a month, according to sign rental experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are contractually forbidden to make public statements.

Such a cost would not be unusual for a sign across the avenue from 1 Times Square, where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

By generating its own electricity — enough to light six homes for a year — the sign could save as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per month, according to Ricoh, which estimated that the sign would prevent 18 tons of carbon from being spewed into the air yearly.

The “passive” sign is not studded with light-emitting diodes like so many others in Times Square, but will be lighted by 16 300-watt floodlights. It will feature custom-printed opaque vinyl sheeting bearing the red-and-white Ricoh logo. The sign will be green, nevertheless, a message “to customers, other companies and the world that resources and energy can be used creatively,” Mr. Potesky said. “The point is that there are ways of being environmentally friendly to the planet, even on a billboard.”

Unlike the tall propellers in a typical wind farm, the cylindrical Ricoh drum turbines have no sharp blades. They will provide 90 percent of the sign’s power; the rest will come from the solar panels on the sign, feeding electricity to eight collection batteries up in the sign. The drums are so perfectly balanced, Ricoh says, that their rotors could be turned by the wind from a single household electric fan.

Mr. Potesky said the turbines would most likely generate enough power to keep the sign lighted even after four days without wind or sun. But the company is prepared for the sign to go dark. Mr. Potesky said the only other such sign in the world is one Ricoh put up in 2003 in Osaka, Japan, “using somewhat less advanced technology,” he said, referring to its 26 small propellers and 39 solar panels.

“On dark and rainy days, that sign went dark during the night,” he said.

Passers-by will be able to see the 26 blades spinning in each of the sign’s 16 turbine drums, piled in four 45-foot-high vertical stacks. When operating at their average speed of 10 miles an hour, they put out 22 kilowatts.

Stalklike propeller turbines require unidirectional, or “clean,” wind to function. But the revolving drums on the Ricoh sign can use turbulent, multidirectional winds common to Midtown, said Mary S. Watkins, chief executive of PacWind Inc. in Torrance, Calif., which makes the custom turbine arrays.

PacWind studied meteorological records and did a wind analysis, she said, determining that Times Square has 10-mile-an-hour winds, on average, ranging from no wind to gusts of 85 m.p.h. The turbines provide usable power from winds as weak as 5 m.p.h. and rotate safely in winds up to 100 m.p.h., she said, because the aluminum blades are aerodynamically designed to regulate themselves, slowing automatically in high winds.

The company has designed wind turbines for applications ranging from the sublime to the seemingly ridiculous — including a turbine created for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to capture 400-mile-an-hour winds for a lander on Mars, and a turbine that powers the 20,000-square-foot garage of Jay Leno in Los Angeles.

Ms. Watkins said the Times Square turbines were designed to keep ice from forming on the blades in winter. Birds have not proved to be a problem as the company has installed 50 of its drum turbines across the country, she said, “because they see the turbines not as spinning blades, but as a solid object.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 15, 2008, on page A18 of the New York edition. More Articles in New York Region »