A sea of horn-tooting, funny hat-wearing revelers cheered (and some even smooched) as the famed crystal ball dropped in freezing New York City’s Times Square to ring in 2014, part of a world-wide wave of celebrations that included a dazzling 30-minute fireworks show in Dubai and a deluge of confetti in London that tasted as good as it looked.
Bronx-born U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the 60-second countdown and pushed the button that unleashed the shimmering orb with 2,688 crystals, a role usually filled by the New York City mayor. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on his last day in office, was sitting the celebration out after 12 years on the job, while newMayor Bill de Blasio took the oath of office just after midnight at his Brooklyn home.
Kerrie McConaghy, 20, a university student visiting Times Square from Armagh, Ireland, danced in a big blue top hat.
“It’s unbelievable here,” she said. “The lights, seeing the ball, hearing the music, all the people. It’s amazing.”
“TV doesn’t do this justice,” she said. “You have to be here to believe it.”
The annual New York celebration, with performances from pop musicians, has become part endurance sport because post-9/11 security measures force spectators into pens at least 12 hours in advance, with no food, warmth or bathrooms.
“We’ve got adult diapers. We’re wearing them right now,” said 14-year-old Amber Woods, who came with friends from New York suburbs to experience the event for the first time. They entered their corral at 10 a.m. Tuesday. For nourishment, they brought lollipops and popcorn. For the cold, they did a lot of jumping in place.
“Every time I say, ‘It’s the last.’ But then I come back,” said Yasmina Merrir, 42, a Washington, D.C., resident attending her fourth Times Square ball drop. In 2009, she got hypothermia, her legs swelled up like balloons.
Merrir was fasting and not drinking anything to deal with the lack of restrooms. As for the cold, she recommended vigorous dancing for as long as you can stand on your feet.
“At a point,” she said, “your brain is not working anymore.”
Across the Atlantic, London welcomed 2014 with a mixture of futuristic fireworks and torch-lit tradition. The city’s mayor said this year’s explosive display came packed with peach-flavored snow, edible banana confetti and orange-scented bubbles. The evening also included scratch-and-sniff programs, LED wristbands and fruit-flavored sweets.
In Dubai, a Persian Gulf city known for glitz, glamour and such over-the-top achievements as the world’s tallest skyscraper, officials sought to break another record by creating the largest fireworks show.
The Dubai skyline was a canvas for a dazzling 30-minute show, capped off with six minutes of fireworks that engulfed the city’s man-made, palm-shaped island, with its fronds and trunk shimmering in thousands of lights. Organizers had promised that the fireworks would form a flying falcon, a sunrise and the United Arab Emirates flag.
Concern for safety
In Russia, where two suicide bombings in two days killed 34 people, eerily empty buses lumbered through the streets of Volgograd, where authorities canceled mass celebrations and asked residents not to set off fireworks.
President Vladimir Putin, in his New Year’s Eve address to the nation, vowed that the fight against terrorists will continue “until their destruction is complete,” Russian news agencies reported.
More than 260 people were injured by firecracker blasts and celebratory gunfire in the Philippines, a nation marking the end of a year of tragic disasters, including a Nov. 8 typhoon that left more than 6,100 dead and nearly 1,800 missing.
“Many here are welcoming the new year after losing their mothers, fathers, siblings and children, so you can imagine how it feels,” said village chief Maria Rosario Bactol of the Anibong community in Tacloban, the city worst hit by Typhoon Haiyan. “I tell them to face the reality, to move on and stand up, but I know it will never be easy.”
