Some NYC Mundane & Pointless New Years Eve In Times Square ‘Fun’ Facts I Must Share.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Not that I would categorize the facts below as fun, but anyway…

At a NYC DopeDinner this past weekend, the subject of New Year’s Eve plans came up. One of the locals in attendance commented they were going to welcome in 2005 from the heart of Times Square. Being the judgmental, provincial & obnoxious schmuck that only the most patient of people have grown accustomed to, I started trashing the idea. ‘Who the hell wants to stand in the cold January air corralled in a steel pen like sheep being led to the slaughter amongst a million strangers with snot pouring out of their noses?’, I wondered. My New Years credo hasn’t changed much over the year; “Sobriety, tourists and Eurotrash be damned – You’ll never catch me within 20 miles of Times Square the same night that Dick Clark (or Regis Philbin) are talking about illuminated apples.

According to the New York Post, there are
100 THINGS YOU (and I) DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS (and in my opinion inexplicably popular) PARTY.

Some of my favorite ‘facts’ from the above link:

  1. Before Times Square, New Yorkers rang in the new year at Trinity Church by shaking tin cans with bricks inside them.
    A tradition that Scorsese obviously edited out of The Gangs of NY

  2. The tradition of dropping the ball began in 1906.
    If alive today, a man born in that same year would have seen his balls fall some 40 years ago

  3. Until 1995, the ball was lowered manually, by six men and a guy with a stopwatch.
    Which is affectionately known as the New Match Game 77 Contestant method

  4. One year in the mid-’50s, the ball got stuck halfway down and took a while to untangle. The new year came anyway.
    IMHO, the words stuck and tangled should never, under any circumstances, be used in the same sentence as ball.

[snip]

  1. After the millennium celebration, workers found two kilts, still unclaimed.
    Some time later, they were purchased from a Salvation Army Thrift Shop and proudly worn at January NYC Dopefest.

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Anyway, before the big count down tomorrow night, I was wondering if you’d like to share some of your favorite New Years Eve fun facts.

(Any source you use is fine by me…You can even use your post as your cite.)

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  1. New Year’s Eve of 1971 This Year’s Model hitch-hiked from Maryland to New York and got drunk for the first time in Times Square. (He was 14.)
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Ironically, also from the NY Post list

85. The most raucous revelers were in the early '70s.

Coincidence? I think not.

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Then can we please not use the word “snip” either?

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:smiley: Maybe not, but you can only blame one year on me.

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But obviously you set the standard :stuck_out_tongue: .

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  1. Back then [in 1904, when New Years’ was first celebrated in Times Square], the subway cost a nickel.
    Which in those days had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Gimme five bees for a quarter, you’d say.
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**17 Straus spends all year planning the celebration. **

Straus gets my vote for the “top of the list of people with absolutely no life whatsoever” award.