Good Riddance Day celebrated in Times Square by wiping the slate clean of 2024 regrets

Regrets, they have a few.

Past Good Riddance Day ceremonies in Times Square have burned, shredded, buried or otherwise destroyed written-down regrets, frustrations, unhappy memories — all-around bad circumstances, some whimsical, some personal.

On Saturday, dozens of tourists and locals waited in the chilly and on-and-off drizzle for this year’s gimmick: scrawling on a handheld chalkboard and wiping their slate clean.

“Letting others have a say in who I am!!!” was written on the slate of Long Island college student Gabriel Cortes, 18, which he chalked in blue.

Cortes, who is studying musical theater at Molloy University in Rockville Centre, waited to stand with the ceremony’s host, actor Jonathan Bennett of “Mean Girls” fame.

The two went about erasing the chalkboard, which Cortes had decorated with three pink hearts.

Good Riddance Day is inspired by a Latin American custom, dating to the 1890s, in which New Year’s celebrants stuff dolls with lamentable memories of the dwindling year before setting the objects aflame.

This being almost 2025, Cortes’ good riddance was also typed up by ceremony staff and beamed onto the side of a 60-foot-by-170-foot LED screen on the Broadway side of One Times Square, where the New Year’s ball has dropped since 1907 and will drop again on Tuesday. Contributions sent in digitally by those in Times Square and around the world were also posted for all to see.

Upper East Side au pair Georgina Calvillo, 25, who’s from Merida, Mexico, is hoping to shake her feelings for her ex.

"He’s back in Mexico. He wanted to have a family, but I wanted to travel to see the world, and I asked him to come to New York with me, but he told me to go back to Mexico with him. Well, I stayed here in New York, because New York is amazing,” she said, holding the Good Riddance chalkboard. She cares for a 10-month-old and will be in New York for a year.

Brodie Riddle, 11, of Hartselle, Alabama, was on vacation in New York with his mom, Jessica, 38, a school custodian; aunt, Misty, 35; and brother, Mason, 13.

Mason aspires to stop arguing with his mom. Brodie hopes to put bad grades behind him. He’s got gentleman C’s now and wants “A-pluses.”

“I’m really good at math, and reading — I am bad at,” Brodie said soon after appearing with Bennett.

Coney Island’s Anna Daratany, 57, a retired retail employee who once worked at Macy’s, aims to get rid of belly fat and to address menopause and hormonal issues.

“I will be about 7 pounds lighter,” she said, adding: “The ladies understand.”

Nearby was Brenda Pallessi, 63, of Parsippany, New Jersey, a school nurse. What she hopes is better in 2025: “Disrespectful people,” “Politics,” “Pain,” “Uncaring friends family & coworkers.”

“I want people to be nicer,” she said. “The world seems so ungrateful lately, and it’s sad.” (She declined to name names.)

Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, which represents about 2,600 businesses in the district and put on the ceremony, had a similar aspiration: “What I’d like to say good riddance to is political strife. We've had enough political strife over the last couple of years. It's time to move forward and truly be the United States of America.”

Jean Rios, 42, was in town from Lima, Peru, wiped his slate clean of “debts,” a “few issues” and “wars.”

He’s hopeful 2025 will be a better year. “You have to be positive,” he said.

Times Square’s Good Riddance Day is in its 18th year. It has a mixed record of success.

At the 2019 ceremony, wishes included a better year than 2019.

Within months of that ceremony, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.