With the presidential election Tuesday, most New Yorkers know what they'll be doing on election night. (Drinking, obviously.)
For Clinton supporters who haven't made plans for the morning after Nov. 8, a Facebook event offers one guileless option: pointing and laughing at the Trump Tower at 725 Fifth Ave.
"I want to make sure this is a very calm, cathartic and casual thing for people to come out and exorcise 2016 in a few short belly laughs," said event creator Jon Bershad.
An improv performer at the UCB Theater in Chelsea and a writer for the comedy news site Seriously TV, Bershad posted the event in June as an impromptu joke for himself and a small circle of friends, he said.
The idea occurred to him on his walk to and from work at an ad agency, past foreign tourists snapping photos of the 68-story skyscraper fronted by Trump's name in flashy gold letters.
The facade of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue (credit:Flickr/Brad)
In Bershad's mind, they had made a conscious decision to direct their lens at what he called "a monument a narcissist made to himself" rather than a landmark like the Statue of Liberty, "a beautiful symbol of what I’d like to think America stands for."
His event inviting Americans to mock the building on Wednesday, Nov. 9, was initially shared by one invitee with a few hundred Facebook users, and "it’s been growing in fits and starts ever since then," he said.
Ten thousand users currently claim they will attend; 31,000 say they are "interested." Trump opponents have flooded the event's page with selfies capturing their middle fingers pointed at his buildings.
The event has even inspired a spinoff set to take place that Wednesday evening outside the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago.
But not everyone thinks it's a good idea. Critics posting on the event's discussion board called the event "petty," "babyish," and "mean-spirited."
"This is just stooping to Trump's level," one commenter wrote. "Nothing is gained by being immature."
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Bershad himself characterizes the gathering's advertisement as "an incredibly juvenile event that I created in about two minutes with a stock photo cover that I found in a quick Google search."
But those qualities explain exactly why it speaks to such a large following, he said.
"At the core of this very juvenile thing there are just a lot of people who want to be like, ... 'These things that this man has said are still in the realm of the laughable. This is not what our country is about,'" he said.
Trump's most controversial comments over the course of the election cycle have included his mockery of a reporter with disabilities, his declaration that women who have illegal abortions should be punished, and his noncommittal to the results of the Nov. 8 election.
Bershad told DNAinfo New York that while he has never been concerned about a Trump victory in November, he does worry that he will never respect his country in quite the same way he once did.
Still, he remains optimistic about the future beyond the election.
"I think we are at a place of huge social change, and social change always brings it with ugly pushback," he said.
He vows that he will actually ridicule the Trump Tower on Nov. 9, and he welcomes Facebook users living anywhere near a Trump building to create their own local events.
"Go have a cathartic laugh," he said, "so we can flush this whole thing out of our systems."
