76-Foot Rockefeller Tree Arrives as Met Gala Sets 2027 Everyday Theme

From the arrival of Rockefeller Center’s holiday centerpiece and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2027 Costume Institute exhibition to archival music releases and regional industrial and hospitality expansions, eight cultural and commercial stories marked November 7, 2026.

76-Foot, 11-Ton Norway Spruce Arrives at Rockefeller Center Ahead of Dec. 2 Lighting

New York City’s holiday season officially began Saturday morning around 7:30 a.m. as a 76-foot-tall, 11-ton Norway Spruce arrived at Rockefeller Center after completing a 200-mile journey from West Edmeston, New York on a 100-foot flatbed trailer. Cut down on Thursday, November 5, the tree was donated by property owner Rebecca Decker, a mother of 3, after Rockefeller Center head gardener Erik Pauze—who has selected the plaza’s holiday tree for more than 30 years—first spotted its shape 6 years ago.

Continuing a tradition dating to 1931, crews will wrap the spruce in 50,000 multicolor LED lights and crown it with a 900-pound Swarovski crystal star ahead of the live "Christmas in Rockefeller Center" lighting broadcast on Wednesday, December 2. The plaza is concurrently celebrating the 90th season of The Rink at Rockefeller Center and the November 14 opening of "The Elf Experience" at HERO, before the tree concludes its display on January 9, 2027 to be milled into lumber for Habitat for Humanity.

Met Gala Unveils May 3, 2027 "extraORDINARY" Theme; Britney Reissue & TODAY Appearance

Across Manhattan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute head curator Andrew Bolton announced that the 2027 Met Gala on May 3 will launch "extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday", an exhibition examining how designers transform familiar garments and materials—such as jeans, puffer jackets, T-shirts, paper, and plastic—through craft and conceptual wit. Developed from an idea sparked during last year’s "Costume Art" show, the exhibition replaces a previously canceled retrospective after consultations involving Vogue global editorial director Anna Wintour and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

In music and television, Legacy Recordings released Britney (25th Anniversary Edition), an expanded reissue of Britney Spears’s transformative 2001 third studio album—originally released just before her 20th birthday when she was 19 following 1999’s … Baby One More Time and 2000’s Oops! … I Did It Again—which went quadruple platinum in less than 2 months and saw Spears co-write 5 original tracks. Following the end of her nearly 14-year conservatorship in 2021, her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, a 2024 Instagram post, and the February sale of her catalog rights to Primary Wave, the anniversary collection adds 2 remixes and 5 previously unreleased archival songs: "She’ll Never Be Me" (co-written with Justin Timberlake), "Am I A Sinner," "Right Now (Taste the Victory)," "When I Say So," and "My Big Secret." Meanwhile, on NBC’s TODAY show on November 6, 85-year-old lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart sat down with co-host Craig Melvin to apologize for a deleted Halloween Instagram post and Nov. 1 statements, clarifying that a joke about Melvin spilling chocolate on her white sweater during their October 30 segment was not to blame and previewing her return next week for the annual All-Star Thanksgiving segment (alongside TODAY notes on Steve Kornacki’s 10-hour Election Day livestream and 13-year-old Prince George).

ABB Invests $50M in Tennessee, Casa Grande Warehouse Hits 100%, and Cafes Expand

In industrial manufacturing and commercial real estate, Zurich-based electrification leader ABB and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced a $50 million expansion in Selmer, Tennessee that will add 227 jobs and construct a 120,000-square-foot Industrial Connections & Solutions plant on Industrial Park Drive beside a 325,000-square-foot facility ABB recently completed after its March 2025 expansion (variously cited at $100 million, $80 million for 320,000 square feet, or $76 million for 50 jobs). ABB will move 90% of its 4th Street equipment and staff into the 325,000-square-foot plant in the first half of 2027 and the remaining 10% into the new building in the second half of 2027, bringing ABB’s workforce across 5 Tennessee cities to more than 1,500 employees (alongside a $40 million, 200-job Senatobia, Mississippi expansion for $120 million combined, in a McNairy County manufacturing sector that employed 2,680 people in 2024 as county jobs grew 3.48% from 10,300 in 2023 to 10,600 in 2024 after $898,000 in 2022 and $500,000 in 2024 state grants).

In Arizona, JLL announced that Kentwood Ventures’ 314,453-square-foot (listed at 314,000 square feet on Kentwood’s site) KV Casa Grande speculative warehouse reached 100% occupancy with 4 tenants after completing construction in June 2024 on 18 acres with a 32-foot clear height, 185-foot truck court, 6,000 amps of power, 33 dock-high doors, and 12 grade-level doors (backed by $15 million in equity and $23 million in financing arranged in June 2023 when local vacancy was 1.3%). Located near Interstates 10 and 8 in Pinal County—the nation’s 7th-fastest-growing county with a 2025 population of 539,000 and home values 22% below Phoenix—the lease-up comes as Phoenix-area industrial asking rents rose from $0.94 to $1.01 per square foot per month in Q3 2026 alongside DPR Construction’s 322,000-square-foot lease, Discount Tire’s $64 million purchase of a 290,000-square-foot warehouse, Honeywell Aerospace’s 300,000-square-foot Tempe facility, Kentwood’s 249,600-square-foot KV Buckeye, 100,000-square-foot Flagstaff Innovation Park, 272,000-square-foot Kentwood 303, $51 million KV Buckeye 10 sale at 60% leased, and planned 17-acre KV Casa Grande II on 19 remaining acres (with 70 years of principal experience, $8 billion in transactions, and JLL’s 600 Phoenix experts and $26.1 billion revenue across 80 countries and 112,000 employees as of September 30, 2026).

Rounding out hospitality news, Beverly Hills specialty coffee and matcha bar Series A (located at 8328 Wilshire Boulevard) announced plans with co-founder Derek Rhie to open its second cafe in Q1 2027 on Level 1 of Westfield Century City at 10250 Santa Monica Boulevard, while in downtown Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row—where the First Friday art walk began in 1994 and downtown venues drew nearly 6 million attendees in 2022—owner Jorge Ignacio Torres’s daytime coffee shop Futuro at 909 N. First St. now transforms on Friday and Saturday nights into Bar Lento, a candlelit vinyl bar tested for 2 years before launching in August with agave spirits, sake, natural wines, and desserts from Augustina Fekete’s bakery Ghita.