NEW YORK – About 12 stories above the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, an only-in-New York kind of love has been playing out for more than a month.
A large, heart-shaped, red balloon has lodged up against the station’s vaulted mural ceiling, enrapturing even the most jaded and harried commuters as they have passed beneath the zodiac constellations on the way to trains or work. Double-takes have been elicited.
The shiny inflatable first appeared around Valentine’s Day, quickly becoming a social media darling while inspiring inevitable puns. Love is in the air.
But was the balloon’s flight more than just physics? An accidental release? Or an intentional act by someone scorned?
No one from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns Grand Central, could really say.
“You can make up your own story why it’s there,” Ms Grace Staeheli, 37, who was visiting Grand Central for the first time, said on March 23. “Maybe it could be a scandalous reason.”
Ms Staeheli, who just moved to New York from Dallas, gazed up at the balloon with a friend.
“I just like little, quirky things like this,” she said. “I think it’s cute.”
One does not have to be versed in astrology or horoscopes to find the zodiac constellation where the balloon wound up. Look for the fish, Pisces.
Ms Nina Godridge, 32, a librarian from Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, was returning from the dentist and heading to the subway on March 23 when she stopped to take a picture of the balloon.
“It popped out to me,” Ms Godridge said, removing her headphones.
She said she was listening to the Celine Dion song The Power Of Love as she crossed through the terminal.
“We need some love,” she said. “It’s harder to love and easier to hate.”
Some social media sleuthing appears to clear up the mystery around how the balloon came to be untethered.
On the night of Feb 12, Mr Kenny Blumstein, his wife Meris Blumstein and their daughter Sydney Blumstein were passing through Grand Central with members of their real estate team and a 1.5m-wide, heart-shaped balloon, Mr Kenny Blumstein said in an interview on March 24.
They were on their way to a party at Cipriani when, as Mr Blumstein recalled, they stopped to let people take photos with the balloon on the main concourse, including a bride and groom.
Videos showed the balloon making its way from the subway to Grand Central, where someone let go of it in what Mr Blumstein described as an accident.
“We were bringing the balloon to the party, and the string got loose,” Mr Blumstein, 80, said. “That’s the long and short of it. Now people are probably taking bets on how long it will stay up.”
Mr Blumstein said he regularly gives out heart-shaped pins to people to spread joy.
“I do not anticipate any MTA people or Grand Central using a BB gun to get it down,” he said. “It’s about love. Come on.”
It was not the first time that a wayward balloon had become trapped against the ceiling of Grand Central, which is about 38m high.
In December, a No. 3-shaped balloon, like those used to celebrate birthdays, found a temporary home in the Taurus constellation.
Another digit-shaped balloon reached the ceiling about two years ago.
“Is it a 5 or a 2?” someone asked at the time on Reddit.
The MTA declined to say if balloons had ever been removed from the station’s ceiling, which was extensively restored in the 1990s and is known for its blue-green colour.
The constellations and nearby stars are depicted in gold, but the zodiac, like the original version, is backward.
Employees “on the main floor remind customers bringing balloons into the terminal to handle them carefully,” Mr Aaron Donovan, an MTA spokesperson, said in an email on March 24.
Ms LiMing Khan, 61, a teacher from Janesville, Wisconsin, who was visiting New York for spring break, peered at the balloon on March 23 during the evening rush hour.
“Why take it down?” she said. “There’s no ladder that tall.”
Grand Central, with its Beaux-Arts splendour, has frequently beckoned Hollywood location managers looking for romantic backdrops.
It was the setting of the finale of Friends With Benefits, the 2011 movie starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, as a flash mob took over the main concourse.
In The Fisher King with Robin Williams, which was released in 1991, filmmakers turned the concourse into a giant dance floor.
And in the 2011 remake of Arthur, a table for two was set at 3am and surrounded by rose petals when Grand Central was closed.
Not everyone was enamoured with the heart-shaped balloon on the ceiling.
Fresh from his wedding, Mr Edward Fang, 29, who lives in Long Island City, was taking marriage photos Monday with his bride Mingjun Jiang, 25, on the steps near the Apple store.
He said he was more of a purist: “It’s not part of the building,” he said, dressed in a tuxedo.
Ms Alexis Rojo, 22, who took the train to the city from Hartford, Connecticut, with a friend, said that the balloon resembled an art installation.
“Oh my God, keep it,” she said. NYTIMES