More Than a Million Revelers Descend on Times Square for New Year

Not even a broken foot could keep Ryan Visto from joining more than a million revelers in Times Square as the giant crystal ball made its 100th drop and ushered in the new year.The 18-year-old visitor from San Francisco had taken a tumble on his skateboard in Central Park and landed in the hospital. His family decided the mishap wasn’t going to stop them from missing the city’s biggest New Year’s Eve party.“They wanted to keep him for surgery,” his mother, Sheena Visto, said. “But I told them to throw a cast on and do surgery later. We had to come.”So the family — with Ryan sitting in a wheelchair borrowed from the hospital — merged with the masses who counted down the new year as a ton of confetti rained down on the urban canyon.A University of North Carolina junior, Reid Medlin, 21, attended the celebration with his friends Rachel Rand, 20, and Jeremy Crouthamel, 20. They were in the city for the first time and planned to stay up all night because they had no hotel.“I think the best part is being here with friends,” Mr. Medlin said as confetti floated down on him and people kissed around him. “This was beautiful. It makes you appreciate everything.”Ms. Rand said it didn’t even matter that they didn’t have a place to sleep.“I’m too happy to go to bed,” she exclaimed.By 12:25 a.m. today, crowds had largely dispersed from Times Square and a massive cleanup operation was under way as sanitation crews cleared up the confetti, plastic cups, gold streamers, water bottles, and other party errata left behind by the revelers.Brian Hawkes, visiting from Birmingham, England, said he was impressed by how fast everything was getting picked up.“It’s amazing how much garbage people leave,” he said. “I wouldn’t want this job to clean up after them.”Organizers said well over a million people attended the festivities.The Times Square ball drop tradition began a century ago with a 700-pound ball of wood and iron, lit with 100 25-watt incandescent bulbs. This year’s event featured an energy-efficient sphere clad in Waterford crystals, with 9,576 light-emitting diodes that generated a kaleidoscope of colors.The entertainment lineup included Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest handling the countdown to 2008 and musical performances by Carrie Underwood, Miley Cyrus, and other acts. Even a New York Yankees slugger, Alex Rodriguez, showed up, shaking hands and posing for photos as he waited for midnight.The Times Square Alliance, the business group running the event, handed out thousands of balloons and mittens to the crowd, which waited for hours in chilly winter weather for the main event. The confetti included pieces of paper with the new year’s wishes and resolutions of people who submitted them in advance.Diana and David Sutton, of Fort Myers, Fla., and their three young children had been waiting for the ball drop since 10 a.m. They bought plastic chairs at a nearby Toys “R” Us and bundled up with Spider-Man hats as they waited.“It’s such an experience,” David Sutton said. “The kids are behaving; they’re loving this. They’ve never seen snow before, and they got to see that, too, earlier this week.”The first celebration in the area, in 1904, was held by the New York Times owner, Adolph Ochs, who was building a new headquarters in the neighborhood.The city had just renamed the oddly shaped square in the newspaper’s honor, and at midnight Ochs had pyrotechnists illuminate his building at 1 Times Square with fireworks shot from street level.Three years later, when the city banned fireworks, Ochs brought in the iron and wooden ball, to be lowered from the building’s flagpole at midnight.As 2007 wound down, Mayor Bloomberg had touted a record low murder rate, improved high school graduation rates, and quality-of-life improvements made around the city.“I hope we can continue all the trends … 2007 has been a great year for New York City,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview with the NY1 cable news station. “Let’s just hope we can duplicate it in ’08.”

More Than a Million Revelers Descend on Times Square for New Year

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