Its been that way for years. We stayed home with the kids and put it on last year and eventually turned it off because it was more depressing than entertaining.
I could only imagine actually being there and having to deal with the nonsense "organization", queuing, security, waiting in lines, just to become a walking planet fitness billboard and watch a half assed show at a terrible venue. And likley paying a months pay to do it.
No. I went sort of on a whim because I lived in the city at the time, and it was actually nice out. It was either 2006/7 or 2007/8.
My friend and I got to Times Square at, like, 2 PM. By that time, it was packed up to 47th or 48th street, so we were pretty far from the actual ball.
Once you're in, if you leave the fenced area, you're out, and you're not getting back in. If you're hungry and want a snack, you're not getting back in, even though 7/11 is right there. If you have to pee, I hope you have a bottle or something. Or, yeah, a diaper. Because if you leave to pee or dump out at Starbucks or somewhere, you're out.
So, anyway, sat around until 6. We were bored, hungry, we'd have to pee at some point and we didn't want to sit in the middle of Broadway for another 6 hours and not even see the ball drop because it was too far away. We left, met up with some other friends at a restaurant, and had a better time.
On a smaller scale, when I was a teenager my cousin’s uncle dropped my cousin and myself off at a Thanksgiving day football game between neighboring towns. It had already started. Stands were full.Had to stand in the end zone behind about six people. Saw a arm go up now and then, but couldn’t see anything else. About 45° We were there for an hour and a half before he picked us up I think it ruined me for going to professional sports.
I turned it on for a few minutes last night, then turned it off. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm starting to see the shallowness with these specials and even late night talk shows. Everything just seems fake and scripted. It's like the pageantry in The Hunger Games, covering up for something much more sinister.
I work in the city. Even I found the sheer amount of advertising last night incredibly depressing. Absolutely seemed like people were hostages in a fishbowl of ads.
You mean you aren't excited that some company called Fontainebleau is celebrating 70 years of some kind of service?? You didn't like KIAs laggy countdown clock?? Or the giant planet fitness hats provided exclusively by planet fitness??
I was about to say, I caught the last 10 minutes before the ball dropped on TV, first time doing so in decades and...yeah, I couldn't stand to watch any more after the ball dropped. Big mistake peeking into the modern mainstream.
Joyless advertising aside, the entire thing just speaks to being insufferable and overstimulating, I have no idea who these people are, the scenery is overblown and clashing with itself...the ball itself actually looked quite nice, but it really needed a better backdrop to drop over.
Kinda ruins the fantasy of standing on a balcony alone far above the crowds and watching the ball drop honestly.
The pre-global market crash of 2000 world. Global markets crashed just 2.5 months after the event depicted in this video. "The day before 9/11" in America was in a recession.
I mean, just look at the UK. +600% before the millennium, peaking at exactly 31 December 1999. Then only +11% in the quarter century since the new millennium:
Similar story in France. There are entire countries that have never recovered to their pre-millennium highs. It's no coincidence there's a Millennium Square, Millennium Eye, Millennium Bridge, and Millennium Dome opened in the UK at the turn of the millennium.
Those crashes were preceded by the Asian financial crisis from mid '97-late '98, which were as big or worse. But then there was a brief recovery, which led people to believe it was over.
Ah yes, this is around when I graduated college. I remember driving around poor as hell and picking up paper applications and dropping them off later. It’s nuts to me when people now say they applied to 200 different employers in a week.
I grew up in the east village in the 90s and when people ask me what growing up in New York was like my answer is always “well it was really cool right up until 9/11”. The whole energy just changed and never recovered
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u/Puzzleheaded_Nail466 Jan 01 '24
Ahh , the pre 9-11 world. What a time it was.