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Thanks to Corona: New Year's Eve 2020/21 in the deserted Times Square
Photo: Noam Galai / Getty Images
Once and never again.
That would describe my first - and, it turned out, last - New Year's Eve in New York's Times Square.
It was 1993, I was a "freshman" at Columbia University, and a couple of freshmen who had just arrived decided to usher in this memorable New Year.
It was indeed memorable, just different.
The shabby charm that wild Times Square still exuded at the time, the feeling of walking through a real version of "asphalt cowboy", was lost long before midnight.
It was freezing cold.
It was windy.
It was full.
With 300,000 other madmen, many of them dead drunk, we stood there for hours.
Anyone who had to lose their standing room.
Finally the obligatory countdown.
10-9-8-7-6.
On a skyscraper roof, a flare slid over a mast.
5-4-3-2-1.
Four digits shone: "1994".
A ton of confetti exploded into the night.
It took us hours to get home.
So began the year that paved the way for my life in the USA today.
"New Year's Eve" in Times Square, I learned first, is only for tourists. Nothing against tourists, but those who live here avoid today's pedestrian zone between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and not just on December 31st. Brian Stack, a comedian on the iconic "Late Show" played in a nearby theater, calls New Year's Eve in Times Square one of the most terrifying things to do to yourself. It would be a shame, he adds ironically, if the break this time was canceled due to Corona - like last year when the confetti trickled onto the deserted square.
It's not that bad yet, but almost: Because of the Omikron wave, Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose term of office ends at midnight on New Year's Eve, has limited the number of spectators in Times Square to 15,000.
Everyone must be double-vaccinated, wear medical masks, and keep their distance.
That should spoil the fun even for tourists.
But who is in the mood to celebrate - except that one can be happy to have made it through this year, which started so optimistically and now ends so
shitty
?
I ask myself that while an ambulance is whining through our street again outside.
Corona had dropped my plans for the holidays anyway.
Our host for Christmas Eve fell ill with Covid-19, at least three other friends also received a positive test result, although they are all vaccinated and boosted.
The traditional Christmas Day brunch at my cousin's in-law, a well-known congressman, also didn't work out.
I last saw the cousin at my father-in-law's funeral in November (as I said, this year ends
shitty
).
"Flew in from Afghanistan yesterday," he whispered to me.
Behind us, another mourner coughed discreetly into his mask, four days later Omikron was identified for the first time in the USA.
Travel more and eat less
New York's second corona winter is like heavy slush over the little enthusiasm I can still muster for New Year's Eve anyway. This arbitrary winter date, determined by the ancient Romans and postponed several times in the meantime (March 25, December 25), has completely lost its purpose for me. Retrospectives, resolutions: pastime for a night that never ends the way you want it to be.
The other day I found a dusty list of old New Year's resolutions. On that New Year's Eve, a long time ago, I decided, among other things, to finally dare to love and meditate more, to ride bikes and play the piano more, to travel more and to let myself be less stressed by situations (and people) who I can't control Most of the things on this list I could go back to every year to this day. I still fall asleep while meditating.
At an early stage I refused the pressure to fill New Year's Eve with meaning, with short-lived vows and the expectation that in the last hours of the year one would have to celebrate more "exuberantly" than in the others.
I noticed how wrong that can go when, once at a New Year's Eve party, a stray firecracker hissed straight through the hostess's maxi skirt (it was the eighties) and ate two holes with charred edges, one in front, one in the back.
Nothing frightened me more than the unknown
New Year's Eve always harbored a kind of existential horror for me, full of sentimental memories and ominous premonitions.
Nothing frightened me more than the unknown.
Of course, this is what awaits you at every sunrise.
But at the turn of the year we celebrated this horror with rockets and rituals that were supposed to drive away our fear.
Pouring lead, lucky pig, chimney sweep: New Year's traditions like this should give us stability in times of unsteadiness.
"Dinner for One," the compulsory New Year's Eve sketch on TV, is as old as I am, and we're both still running.
"Dinner for One" is largely unknown in the USA.
Here the TV networks broadcast live shows from Times Square, with Mariah Carey and LL Cool J singing backing tracks, and at the finale everyone shouts "Auld Lang Syne", a Scottish ode to the deceased and everything else that remains in the old year.
At least that fits better than Miss Sophie's 90th birthday, but it doesn't help either.
The Scottish melody is so melancholy that tears always come quickly to me, at least for me.
No wonder people drink.
The hangover lasted five months
One takes stock and praises improvement. The "dead of the year" are named. The cosmic chaos is classified into winners and losers, ascenders and relegators, before and after, in order to perhaps better understand one's own fate. You look for meaning where there is none and hope for the best, although you know that things often turn out differently.
And always the next, clammy morning is followed by a hangover, both physically and mentally. Which is why I stopped drinking completely one day, and not just on New Year's Eve. My last "New Year's Eve" in a frenzy was the turn of the millennium, which I spent in Miami Beach, on the run from reality. The rest of humanity feared that the Y2K computer bug would cripple the world. I was scared of myself. The hangover lasted five months, then I started a new life, but that's a longer story for another time.
Today the most important thing on New Year's Eve is that my niece's birthday is at midnight.
Otherwise, I try to treat it as a night like any other - and every night as a New Year's Eve followed by 365 days of uncertainty.
It's not always easy, especially after that year when heroes became villains, compassion went out of style, and a virus variant thwarted all plans.
But don't worry, everything will be better next year.
Happy New Year!