Times Square's Captain Confetti

Every year, the Times Square Business Improvement District commandeers the roofs of 13 buildings with a contingent of about 50 volunteers who, by just a few minutes after 12, have dumped about 3500 pounds of confetti on the streets below.

One of those men is Michael Zorek.

The name might not strike an immediate chord?until, perhaps, I say, "Bubba from Private School."

Throughout the 80s and early 90s, Zorek became a familiar face in teen comedies like High School USA, Hot Moves, Camp Nowhere and Teen Wolf Too. He appeared in The Woman in Red, and on tv shows like The Facts of Life and Family Ties.

To me, though, he'll always be "Bubba from Private School."

These days, Zorek works for a p.r. firm, and for the past four years he's been up there on the roof of a skyscraper, tossing confetti on New Year's Eve.

"I'd been in Times Square once during New Year's Eve when I was a kid," he told me. "And I thought to myself, this is okay, but it's a little bit crowded, a little bit hectic. If I want to be in Times Square, I want to be somewhere I can be hanging out." He did a little research and put in a few calls to the BID. "And the next thing I knew, I was on a rooftop, throwing confetti."

"All you did was call and ask?"

"Yeah... It's not that easy anymore."

The following year, and every year after that, Zorek was a team captain, which means that he manned the walkie-talkie and set the boxes up beforehand.

On a regular year, he said, each rooftop is equipped with five huge confetti boxes, each box to be emptied by a two-man team.

"Mostly we were lucky?the BMG building [atop which he's spent three of his four years] happened to be a great building, because they had a little lunchroom where we could hang out beforehand. A regular year, you have to get there by about 7-8 p.m. Then you sit, you play board games, read, do whatever. You can go up to the roof and look around. It really is an amazing sight. Last year was particularly cool, being in Times Square and not being down in the huge crowd."

All the rules changed for the millennium celebration. Not only did Zorek have to be there at 7 a.m., but there were more men to deal with, more boxes, more confetti?and much more security.

"We had two different IDs," he said. "We had to be checked into the building. And basically, once you were in the building, you pretty much couldn't leave?so it was important to bring reading material or games, things like that."

After all those hours of sitting around, the new year actually arrives about 10 seconds earlier for the confetti crew than it does for the rest of us. "In order for the confetti to be flying at midnight, we had to be throwing it at 11:59:50. So consequently, we're doing our job before the new year, and into the new year."

There are certain rules to be followed in the tossing of confetti.

"You can't pick confetti up that's fallen on the rooftop and rethrow it, because God forbid there should be a rock or a piece of glass or a nail?anything that goes over that's not part of the confetti. You can't lift the box when it's three-quarters empty and hold it over the side and dump it, because God forbid the box should fall. Granted, it's cardboard, but who wants to be responsible for someone getting hit with a huge piece of cardboard?"

In fact, the crews are trained before they go up to the roof.

"You have to spread it with your fingers when you throw it. If you take a clump in your hands, you have to push it away from you and put your fingers out in order for it to spread, otherwise you'll have a huge clump of confetti that just falls straight down."

Zorek wasn't tossing any confetti this past Sunday night, though. At least not from a Times Square rooftop. Things have changed for him?he's recovering from heart surgery, and he was recently married.

"I had four absolutely marvelous years. I met terrific people. It was a fun thing to do when I was single and didn't have a place to go on New Year's Eve."

From now on, though, he says he'd rather spend the holiday with his wife and friends.

"If you think about it, how many people watch Times Square New Year's Eve? And how many hundred thousand are in Times Square? And I'm one of the handful of people who are on the rooftop, doing this. And what does everyone remember about Times Square? They remember the ball and the confetti. I was in the center of it all last year. Everyone was saying they weren't going there because there were going to be bombs, etc. I planned for this years ago. I knew I was going to be in Times Square News Year's Eve 2000. And it was well worth it."