BlackRock, run by very rich person Larry Fink, is the world’s largest asset manager. It has $10 trillion in things like stocks, which gives it a huge amount of power over the people who run the companies whose shares it owns. It also owns a fair chunk of all the real estate in the country — BlackRock was once an owner of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — so maybe it’s even your landlord.
But this is not why BlackRock is famous right now. BlackRock is going viral on TikTok today because it has something more valuable to the average New Yorker than all the stocks and apartment complexes in its massive portfolios: a free place to pee in New York City.
TikTok user Txsana — who appears to be having a good time exploring the city’s tourist traps, God bless her — apparently took to the financial behemoth and, undaunted, urinated on its property unmolested for her money or time. Good for her. The video, which helpfully provides the company’s 53rd Street address, pans across its atrium and Starbucks. Txsana notes that it’s also a nice place to sit and warm up when it’s cold. There’s an audio clip of a woman saying, “You guys can all judge me if you want, but I do not care. I have never, ever been happier!” Since it was posted last night, it has been viewed 376,500 times and received nearly 61,000 likes.
I can confirm this is a nice place to sit, and it’s usually not very crowded after the lunch hour, especially in winter. I reached out to the BlackRock PR team for comment on this, but by press time they’d decided to hold it in.
