Tens of thousands of partygoers from around the world braved freezing temperatures and driving rain overnight Tuesday to ring in the new year in New York’s famed Times Square.
“I really wanted to live this experience in New York. It’s once in a lifetime,” said Jennifer Lopez, who hails from the Dominican Republic but now calls Long Island home.
The passage to the new year in the “Big Apple” has taken place since 1907 in Manhattan, at the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street — a crossroad illuminated day and night by the signs of theatres, music halls, and giant digital advertising screens.
Every December 31 the colourful event attracts New Yorkers, Americans, and foreigners in the tens of thousands.
Elizabeth Anderson, a 32-year-old Mexican now living in Australia, was making her third trip to New York, where she met her husband 11 years ago.
New Year’s Eve in Times Square is “on the bucket list”, she told AFP.
The highlight of the evening was the descent of the Times Square ball, a 60-second countdown as a geodesic sphere — illuminated and covered in crystal — descended a 20-metre pylon.
The ball’s lights went out briefly for a fireworks display as the crowd cheered and strangers hugged and kissed.
More than a ton of confetti fluttered from the roofs of buildings surrounding the intersection.
– ‘Experience it in person’ –
“A lot of people told me ‘don’t go, it’s crowded’,” said Ruchit Patel, who came from India.
“I grew up watching it on TV. I wanted to experience it in person.”
Recent New Year celebrations in Times Square have been muted and sometimes marred by tragedy.
In 2020-2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic that killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers and brought the city to its knees, it was observed in a virtually empty Times Square.
The following year, the crowd was limited to 15,000 people, all masked and vaccinated.
In 2022-2023, a 19-year-old American attacked police officers with a machete. He was sentenced last May to 27 years in prison for “attempted assassination of American agents in the name of jihad”, according to the courts.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) Chief Jessica Tisch said up to a million partygoers would be supervised by a “huge number of police officers.”
The big crowd was not enough to scare away Norquan Tirick Goldson, a New Yorker living in California.
“What’s better than starting the new year with strangers from all over the world?” he said.
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