I’m seriously considering the idea of trying to do the New Years Eve thing at Times Square. I hadn’t been but it struck me this morning that it’s got to be a far better option than camping out and watching it pass by as a blip on the lower right hand corner of my monitor.
But I am not entirely sure what I’d be in for. I expect huge, horrible, massive crowds of drunken, rowdy people in the middle of sub-zero temperatures, a sore neck and an anti-climactic wink of light that means the year is new and it’s time for me to turn around and go home. Sound about right?
Which is still a better option than sitting in front of the computer all night, I suppose, but I am not sure I’m brave enough.
Our weather is turning sharply as I type. The prediction for Friday night is 40 degrees with possible showers. So that won’t be a real problem.
Yes, it will be crowded, but the crowd is always well behaved. It’s exciting counting down, and everybody hangs out in downtown NYC for quite a while fter that. Remember, Times Square does not sleep! I did it in 2000, and got back to NJ at 4:00 in the morning.
The only sad part is the absense of Dick Clark this year.
Yup. There’s not actually a lot to do there except stand in the cold and wait. It can still be a good time, and the crowd is very enthusiastic, but you sort of need to bring your own entertainment, which in most cases would probably be a large group of people to hang around with and enjoy the night. If your outgoing, you can probably find folks there to have a good time with, as I said the crowd is pretty enthusistic (read, drunk). But if it were me, and I went alone, I think I’d end up being kind of bored.
I did it back in 1999 and the crowd control they use is very ingenious.
They set up barricades in almost a grid-like fashion in the square. As people arrive (first come first serve) they fill into these fenced in barricaded areas. When the area is full to the predetermined safe amount of people the police close off the cell. Nobody enters from that point forward. If you leave you lose your place in that cell.
So the crowds are there but you never have people crushing into eachother. There is lots and lots of elbow room in these cells. The cells up front are just as full as the ones in the back. No way some late-comer could push his way to the front. Those that get there the earliest and hang out for 8 hours get the best place to stand.
We got there about 3 1/2 hours before midnight and our cell was almost down a side street.
So if you have the patience to stand outside in one place for hours go for it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing you should do before you die.
(I kept a square of confetti as a souvenier and wrote "times square NY-NY Jan. 1 1999 on it.)
Could you see anything? We are considering it this New Year but two of us are pansy girly-girl types who need potty access, etc. We were thinking about going early and camping out at a restaurant/bar until close to midnight - but we were afraid of being too far away to see anything…
Yes, some of these “cells” are against restaurants on the square. Get into one of these and you can go in and out of your cell into the restaurant for potty breaks and food (if the owner doesn’t mind).
We got a pretty good view of the ball dropping.
I suppose it is a rite of passage to want to go someplace like that at New Year…but I bet you will be hard pressed to find people who ever did it twice.
Thanks for the input, guys. After much back-and-forth, I’ve decided to skip it this year… I think it’s true that I really need to bring my own entertainment, and playing Bejeweled on my phone will only last me so long.