Have you ever noticed that the mayor of New York City sometimes uses a podium wrapped in luxurious looking blue velvet? No? Well, who can blame you? Most of us don’t live there, so we’re not paying attention.
Now, I myself do not live in NYC. But little details that others miss tend to keep me up at night. So I have been aware of this podium situation for a while.
It started on September 11, 2001. I know. I probably should have been paying attention to something else. But I was so shell shocked that only bits and pieces of what I was hearing and seeing were coming through. One of the things I did notice, however, was Mayor Rudolf Giuliani’s podium.
It was wooden, as podiums often are, but it had a border of plush blue velvet around the top and sides. It looked like it would feel very nice to touch during stressful press conferences.
But life moves on and I didn’t give it a second thought. Until the other day. Current NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani attended the opening of a city-run grocery store and made some remarks. He stood at a podium that made Giuliani’s look underdressed.
Compare this to Giuliani:(This is only image I can find of him with the humbler podium.)
Both bear the seal of the greatest city in the world, but Mamdani’s has had a serious velvet upgrade.
It would be easy to stop here and draw inferences from these two pictures, but history, as I have learned, is a demanding mistress. She won’t allow cheap conclusions. I need to get more information.
First of all, I did some casual Googling. Image search paid off:
I haven’t found an image of Mamdani using the less extravagant podium Rudy used, but I did find evidence of other mayors using the big blue one, or as I call her, Big Bertha.
I knew I needed to go further back in mayoral history. Here’s what I found:
Mayors before the 1970s had wooden podiums, if they had them at all.
It seems to have been Ed Koch who introduced the podium I’m calling Lil B. I haven’t seen a photo where he presides behind Big Bertha except for one from 2011.
This photo was undated, so I went through the NYC Municipal Archives and found the oldest incidence of Lil B.
So when did Bertha enter the scene? This image is from 1992. It’s the earliest I can find. (Ed Koch never met a camera he didn’t like. If he had an enormous blue velvet podium we’d know about it.) The man looking adoringly at New York Knick Greg Anthony is Mayor David Dinkins. Did he requisition this plush monstrosity? Was Lil B not ostentatious enough? Which is not to say that he didn’t make use of both.
Since then, both podiums have made the rounds. You might think that Big Bertha is for City Hall and Lil B is for the road, but no, they seem to haul out B.B. to all manner of events and locations.
But wait! There’s a third podium! This is a small wooden podium, with a much smaller seal and, get this, it had a baby.
So, I still have some questions:
- Why blue velvet?
- Who decides which podium is used for which event?
- Who moves them?
- Just how soft are they?
- Are these the originals? Are they occasionally reupholstered?
- Can anyone pull me out of this rabbit hole? No? That’s fine, it’s soft as hell down here.
PS Yes, I am aware that what I am calling a podium others call a lectern and if we all want to be humorless pedants about it I’ll change it.
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