heart-shaped balloon.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI love it. I think we all need a lot of love right now,\u201d said the woman, who only gave the name Bhumika.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eve Shafer, a 16-year-old tourist from Westport, Connecticut, noted that the balloons \u201cchange the aesthetic but don\u2019t ruin it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really pretty and I feel like it\u2019s kind of like accidental art in Grand Central,\u201d Shafer told The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heart has been up there since about a week before Valentine\u2019s Day and, of course, we can\u2019t take them down,\u201d a Grand Central engineer told The Post.\u00a0 Jordan Donegan\/NY Post<\/p>\n
Additionally, \u201cI think it\u2019s really cool that it\u2019s been here for so long,\u201d she continued, referring to the heart-shaped balloon, which has been a mainstay inside the terminal for months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jessica Van Der Hoorn, a Netherlands native, said she\u2019d seen the heart-shaped balloon featured in social media videos before coming to the station \u2013 and guessed that it ended up on the picturesque ceiling as an accident.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s more of a little child with a balloon, it slipped out of her hands and it\u2019s now stuck on the ceiling. That\u2019s what I pictured,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A star emblazoned with \u201cUSA\u201d has also been among the unexpected inflatables seen suspended beneath the historic ceiling. Jordan Donegan\/NY Post<\/p>\n
Van Der Hoorn was correct: all of the balloons seen in the terminal so far this year, including the popular heart-shaped one, have been the result of \u201caccidents,\u201d according to a Grand Central Station engineer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heart has been up there since about a week before Valentine\u2019s Day and, of course, we can\u2019t take them down,\u201d the worker told The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The engineer, who declined to give his name, said workers were actively trying to figure out a way to get high enough to reach the balloons \u2013 and get rid of them without jeopardizing the architecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way of getting up there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe usually just wait for the helium to lose its effect\u2026the big one\u2019s going to take a while. The little one, maybe another week or so,\u201d the station employee said.\u00a0 Jordan Donegan\/NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the process of trying to get a drone, put a little pin on the front so we can fly it up there and kind of pop them\u2026but you can\u2019t damage the ceiling,\u201d the worker explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a national landmark, so we have to preserve it. We have to follow a big, big book of rules,\u201d he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For now, they\u2019re letting chemistry do the work for them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe usually just wait for the helium to lose its effect\u2026the big one\u2019s going to take a while. The little one, maybe another week or so,\u201d the employee said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Accidents or not, many station visitors expressed equal concern for the landmark\u2019s integrity \u2013 and slammed the balloon-releasers as uncivilized.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little disrespectful, maybe, to let [the balloons] go on the ceiling, because it\u2019s such a nice piece of architecture,\u201d said 15-year-old Emily Heit, who traveled into the city with a group of friends from the Floral Park neighborhood of Long Island.\u00a0 Jordan Donegan\/NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and my friends were just talking about it, that it\u2019s a little disrespectful, maybe, to let them go on the ceiling, because it\u2019s such a nice piece of architecture,\u201d said 15-year-old Emily Heit, who lives in the Floral Park neighborhood of Long Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people are coming to New York to see this station, because it\u2019s really pretty, it\u2019s just kind of rude and in the way of the art form, I\u2019d say,\u201d agreed Victoria Ambrose, also 15, who traveled into the city with Heit and their ground of friends. <\/p>\n
Juan Esteban Gil, a World Cup attendee<\/a> from Colombia, worried that the balloons \u201cmust somehow damage the aesthetic of this emblematic place.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s whatever New Yorkers like,\u201d he concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the station, said in a statement that main floor staff \u201cremind customers bringing balloons into the terminal to handle them carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grand Central is poppin\u2019.\u00a0 A series of mysterious giant balloons have been floating above the daily frenzy of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5462,14737,1965,141,9,24,55,54,56,13942,58],"class_list":["post-280697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-architecture","tag-commuters","tag-grand-central-station","tag-mta","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-tourists","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}