Why the Central Park ice rink is playing down its Trump associations

Holly Baxter finds that a city once plastered with a familiar name has begun going incognito, no doubt a marketing move in the face of impeachment

For decades the rink has been sponsored by a very stable genius (Getty)

There are some New York City landmarks that are on everyone’s itinerary. The Statue of Liberty, of course, is one. The Empire State Building is another.

The hellish fever dream that is Times Square is definitely the one I’m dragged to most by wheedling friends and relatives, most of whom want me to snap pictures of them standing on a platform with their arm around a knock-off Disney character with worn-down fur. What’s more New York than standing in front of H&M with Minky the Non-Disney-Affiliated Rodent, right?

There is one tourist attraction I genuinely do enjoy visiting with out-of-towners, though, and that’s Central Park. Not even seasoned New Yorkers can be cynical about that idyllic stretch of green in the middle of Manhattan (even if they are, rightly, cynical about the horse-drawn carriages which traverse the perimeter). And if they visit in winter, there’s only one place they want to go after the obligatory visit to the Rockefeller Christmas tree: the ice rink.