New Yorkers shred their memories of 2020, the pandemic, masks and 'bad energy'

Zoom meetings, COVID, Zoom classes, this itchy mask, self-doubt, COVID again as well as COVID-related social distancing and bad energy: this is a selection of unpleasant memories written down and ceremonially shredded by New Yorkers and visitors Monday in Times Square.

It was the 14th annual Good Riddance Day, an event put on by the Times Square Alliance, a business group that also coordinates the annual New Year’s Eve celebration.

"Good Riddance Day is a time to let go of bad memories or hardships from 2020 and leave them in the past before we head into the New Year," Tim Tompkins, Alliance president, said in a news release.

In person, addressing several dozen people who showed up for the event as well as the Naked Cowboy, who was working the crowd, Tompkins said that the "ball is absolutely going to drop" on New Year’s Eve but that no crowds would be permitted in Times Square this year.

The shredder, parked on the edge of a Broadway sidewalk, was an Intimus 852 Cross Cut, the size of a small refrigerator and capable of shredding 71 feet of paper per minute. It never reached that pace because the event’s emcee introduced most of the participants and invited them to say a few words about what they were shredding.

Wellington Dominguez, 47, a Verizon worker from the Bronx, was among the first. "I want to get rid of COVID" and an end to people’s "loved ones dying alone in New York City Hospitals," he told the crowd.

He was followed shortly by Flower Pereria, 34, a marketing manager from Pembroke Pines, Florida, and her daughter Riley Lopez. Riley is 6 ¾ years old and tired of remote learning, which took up part of kindergarten and now first grade and is keeping her from seeing her best friend. Once shredded, she hoped, that activity is "going to go away."

Lynn Vega, 31, who runs a personal training business in Puerto Rico, wrote about her mask, and, since she could not shred the thing itself, was only too happy to elaborate on the reasons for her dislike in an interview: "Everything! You can’t breathe, you can’t work out with it, you can’t dance in it, you can’t do nothing with it."

On Twitter and Facebook, where people who could not make it to the event in person submitted memories electronically in real-time, a bit of snark worked its way in, as elected leaders and former romantic partners were subject to public invective.

The Times Square participants, though, were earnest and altruistic. Hospital registrar Juan Taveras, 44, of Manhattan, wanted to shred the "negativity" he recalled from last spring, when people were scared in his hospital and taking public transportation "truly was scary." Linda Antwi, 29, a home health care aide from the Bronx, had felt some of that "bad energy" herself, sitting at home for 4 months of lockdown earlier this year. The monotony and fear gave her panic attacks, she said. To shred "felt so therapeutic."

All those shredded memories will be recycled, an Alliance worker said. The Intimus 852 still stood in Times Square but the Naked Cowboy strutted past Riley and her mom and broke into song, marking the unofficial end of Good Riddance and resumption of the hurly-burly.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.