2024 Election Observation Scenes from New York City: Photos

While a significant number of New Yorkers may be home alone tonight, watching reruns of prestige TV shows and trying to enter a state of fugue, many of us are planning on indulging in misery (or joy). to follow the election results in large numbers. Screaming and crying – better together! To capture the spirit, we sent our reporters around the city asking readers for snapshots of their evenings, from the scene outside Trump Tower to an elevated version of a potluck in a Chelsea gallery. Here’s what we’re seeing so far.

At the DSA watch party at Heaven Can Wait.
Photo: Camilia Fateh

00:44: It’s the end of the night for the Democratic Socialist Party’s official watch party at Heaven Can Wait in the East Village. The mood is resigned; People hug each other and one person wipes away a tear. Someone is still handing out leaflets; She says: “No matter what happens, we have work to do.” — Camilia Fateh

Sid Gold’s Request Room, where a filmmaker hosted a small informal gathering for people working in film.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

There were cigarettes on the bar, empty glasses on the back tables, and only a dozen customers left in Sid Gold’s Request Room. Amy Hobby, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, co-owns the bar with her husband, a member of the Psychedelic Furs, and they had hosted a private party marked on the bar’s calendar as “Go Kamala.” It was actually an informal gathering of women working in film, with free pizza provided by the owner of Two Boots. There was a small grand piano in the back for piano karaoke, and Christine Barker, a developer, opened with “What’s Up.” Next, someone sang “California Dreaming” as that state was called out on MSBNC. People started leaving. Someone offered Amy a Xanax. She already had her own. “Everyone in this room has Xanax,” she said. She had recently asked her doctor for a prescription and his doctor had asked why. “The choice,” she said. She got the pills. The choice could go against her, but Hobby was glad she found a way to be surrounded by friends. “It was really the best party to end the evening with,” she said. — Adriane Quinlan

In NYIC offices.
Photo: David Dee Delgado/AFP/Getty Images

Members and supporters of the New York Immigration Coalition at an election night party at their offices in New York City.

10:25 p.m.: On threads, Wired Reporter Makena Kelly shared:

I’m at the Peter Thiel-backed dating app The Right Stuff’s election party in Manhattan. There is a large crowd sipping a selection of cocktails at the open bar and watching the results arrive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are significantly more men than women at this party, so not everyone will find their soulmate tonight (being queer). Relationships were banned from the platform, even though Thiel was gay.

At the Young Republican Club watch party.
Photo: Charlotte Klein

10 p.m.: The mood is exuberant at the New York Young Republican Club’s watch party in the East Village. MAGA hats lay on the street for a smoke break.

Photo: Zach Schiffman

9:45 p.m.: Comedians Ella Yurman, Rebecca Weiser, Emily Wirth, Sydney Duncan and Sheria Mattis take the stage at the Late Stage Live event at Brooklyn Art Haus.

Photo: Adriane Quinlan

9:30 p.m.: On the top floor of a gutted Crosby Street townhouse converted into an event space, Reiki healer Adrienne White offered condensed 15-minute sessions in a cushioned lounge she called the “Cloud Room.” Two floors away, author Douglas Rushkoff preached to a crowd at an event billed as a “Quaker meeting” to “metabolize what we are going through.” The venue where he spoke was CX, a membership club that has posters everywhere declaring that it wants to help attendees “embrace humanity in the age of algorithms.” Still, it was impossible to avoid screens. MSNBC was projected on a wall and a laptop showed New York Just The home page has been rigged to balance on a railing. Around 9:15 a.m., someone turned up the volume and Rachel Maddow’s voice rose above the chatter, warning that the results would be coming in throughout the night. White will lead a group Reiki session shortly before the party ends at midnight. —Adriane Quinlan

At Singers, a bar in Bed-Stuy.
Photo: Zach Schiffman

9:30 p.m.: At Singers in Bed-Stuy, RuPaul is on the screen, then CNN, then CNN with the sound off.

Guests at Balthazar follow the election results on laptops.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

Keith McNally welcomes guests to Balthazar on election night.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

9:15 p.m.: There are no televisions in Balthazar. Keith McNally sits at a table in the background with his laptop and receives visitors.

Photo: Kim Velsey

8 p.m.: At a party hosted by The Free Press in a Soho loft, a professional, politically diverse crowd chatted over McDonald’s Big Macs, cheeseburgers and Brat cocktails. You could still hear yourself talking.

At Earth, a venue on the Lower East Side, Dean Kissick hosted an election watch party.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

7:34 p.m.: Writer Dean Kissick thought a campaign party should have cake—that most American of foods—and he stopped at Petee’s on the way to Earth, an Orchard Street venue he co-founded. There was apple. Kissick, a Brit who recently returned to London, has an outsider’s view of both American snack options and the spectacle of the US election, a perspective he shares with Earth’s co-founders, artists Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Annika Kuhlmann. For their campaign party, they covered the White Cube’s windows with oversized posters by artist Richard Turley, hung an American flag they bought for a marathon reading of Gertrude Stein and set up chairs in front of a grid of four network television screens under one A swirling, pixelated U.S. flag is projected onto the wall – a video art piece designed by Arthur Sillers, who was inspired by NBC’s Olympic coverage and wanted it to look like a “cacophony.” Outside, a maverick in a MAGA hat leaned against the glass, and the crowd, a mix of writers and artists, milled around smoking. They included sculptor Genevieve Goffman, writer Christian Lorentzen and artist Glosso, who arrived wearing a T-shirt depicting Jesus above an eagle and an American flag. It was partly a joke, as was the event itself, which was advertised as running from 6pm “until it’s over”. “But we won’t be here for a week,” Sillers said. – Adriane Quinlan

Photo: Adriane Quinlan

5:17 p.m In the cylindrical theater built for a Carrie Mae Weems exhibition at the Gladstone Gallery, poet Terrance Hayes sat in front of a drum kit and read from his book American sonnets for my past and future assassin. The gallery hosted an Election Day reading organized by Precious Okoyomon, a poet who also works with food — which explained the free dinner she prepared outside, a blue-chip version of a block party barbecue. Towards sunset, artist Rirkrit Tiravanija presented a paella with Nigerian and Thai flavors, a dish that fellow artist and chef Quori Theodor described as “a kind of dish of choice – the practice of our lives.” An artsy crowd ate and sipped Modelos as the theater filled, with poet Anne Waldman watching from stage left, Lynne Tillman sitting on a low sofa, and Padma Lakshmi in oversized aviators in a seat near the door . The party goes until midnight. – Adriane Quinlan

A crowd sprays a Tesla Cybertruck in front of Trump Tower on Election Day.
Photo: Camilia Fateh

3:30 p.m.: A Tesla Cybertruck parked in front of Trump Tower has become a canvas for Trump graffiti. The truck was there all day and the spray cans were taken by its owner, Dr. Boris Vitvitskiy, a physical therapist from Muncie, Indiana. Vitvitskiy invites viewers to spray-paint his truck with messages of support for Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Vitvitskiy says he drove the truck around the United States to “show people what a Cybertruck is.” He bought it from a friend in Ohio and then made stops in Texas, California, Nevada and Colorado. New York is his last stop on election day.

He asked passersby to sign the truck, saying, “If I leave and this truck isn’t destroyed by paint, I’ll be disappointed. It’s New York, you know.” A woman got into the truck and changed the music to play Nickelodeon’s theme song Victorious. A man who said he was from Italy brought a bottle of champagne, which Vitvitskiy then chugged. “Honestly, I think he’s the president of the world. It will bring the world together,” he said. —Camilia Fateh

Discovered in FiDi.
Photo: Brooke LaMantia

A truck owner was driving a private car through the financial district.