New Year, New York

-Solving equations beneath the silver ball

The timer on Channel 1 had dipped below three minutes, both bartenders were occupied fixing drinks for other patrons, and my small party and I were entirely, frighteningly champagne-less. Save the solemn resolutions for another day (or year), all this particular reveler wanted for New Year’s Eve was to bring in the new millennium’s seventh anniversary by downing a glass of cheap bubbly.

My fears, naturally, were unfounded. Well before the midnight buzzer and our shoddy verbal countdown, I was sipping on champagne, so much so that by the time the ball dropped, I was already practically through my glass. But how sweet that beverage was, consumed as it was in East Village, lower Manhattan, New York City, surely the most magnificent example of modern man’s accomplishments, on this, my 21st New Year’s.

Like many others, my conception of NYE in NYC has been heavily derived from the screen more so than any other medium. In particular, by a famous scene involving two hookers, a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, and a mentally challenged moral compass named Forrest. That seedy bar, that glittering hat, the antiquated celebratory scenes on the little television in the corner…rarely has a scene so inherently unappealing become so utterly intoxicating. Oh, what I would have done to bring in childhood New Year’s Eves in the company of two rowdy, drugged-out prostitutes and an embittered cripple!

My second most memorable, slightly less virtualized televised New Year’s memory was the millennial festive-leviathan that took place for the onset of 2000. I remember jumping about in my living room around 10:00 am on the 1st, swept up and far more excited at the scenes of smooching tourists in NYC and its descending silver ball than I was for Australia’s own celebration. Not even the gorgeous concert of golden fireworks exploding off of the Harbour Bridge could dislodge the big Apple as the true apple of my eye as far as end of year parties go. And, six years on, after finally experiencing my own NYNYs, I am beginning to see much further into the city’s universal appeal.

New York City is many things to millions of people. “Pleasant,” however, is rarely one of them. NYC might be glamorous, haughty, bewildering, obnoxious, unruly, cultured, and in my case, more fascinating in its minutia than its traditional showpieces, but simply “pleasant” it cannot be. Annapolis, Maryland, with its quaint bay and British lolly stores; Auckland, New Zealand, quietly tucked away, her residents striding across uber-cleanly designed streets; even Krakow, Poland, with her Gothic cathedrals and femme fatale blondes. Such places I might possibly refer to as “pleasant.” But never New York.

And Samuel Johnson may have been correct when he lamented several centuries ago that: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

But surely he was only keeping the mantle warm for this town.

I see it as a matter of proportions. We humans spend the majority of our lives engaged in the mundane: eating cereal, reading headlines, paying rent, and so forth. And when we’re not doing that, we’re more often than not complaining to somebody else about the relative displeasure of such things:

"Blimey, my rice bubbles taste salty today…oh, so that’s not the sugar…Oh God, would ya look at the earthquake that hit Balochistan yesterday...what? Jemima didn’t pay for June!” and likewise.

With all this pent up boredom and ill will, and what with war, famine and penile enlargement spam mail appearing as impertinent to eradication as ever, it’s only natural that offered such a universal holiday, so many people wish to charge about the streets engaged in the most ridiculous of drunken shenanigans as possible.

Olympic games opening ceremonies? Eh…some don’t care for sports.

End to World War II? Bah…the few remaining SS generals were likely less than ecstatic.

New Year’s Eve? Surely even Osama and Eeyore and Morrissey uncorked a bottle at some point during the night.*

What makes New York City so perfect for the evening is its unrivalled existence as an entangled mass of multi-everything, combined with huge dollops of everything else. The holiday to be celebrated by everybody, set in the city which famously holds something from everybody, multiplied by the fact that every kind of person from every nation/culinary tradition/sweatshop manufacturer can be found there, and we encounter a socio-mathematical equation of such grand scope and intricacy that its solution must clearly only be attempted after at least a couple of shots, likely assisted by several wine bottle abacuses.

Included within this fantastical equation must be the following operators: the grit of the New York subway train seat; the way that the chisel-faced Indian man who runs the CVS off of Jamaica Boulevard has a Jamaica, Queens Jamaican accent, not just a regular Jamaican or Indian or…American, one.

The seismic variations and tribal demarcation of Manhattan girls versus Queens girls versus Brooklyn girls. And in particular, that delightful integer known as the vintage shirt wearing, pretentious art space-populating, hip hop-shaking indie-girls of Williamsburg. (It happens to be my favourite.)

Also factored in should be the singing of early 90s rock ballad classic, “Summer of 69”, at the top of my lungs in an empty Karaoke bar on the same street where the pioneers of punk once spat their holy saliva and legions of hangers-on faithfully followed, then encoring it as I walked to the subway with off-key versions of Whitney Houston and Snow numbers (remember that “Informer” joint? Oh yeah, I did go there) with only the hint of eyebrow reactions from street-wise urbanites.

Not to forget the way New Yorkers speak Mandarin in Chinatown, Italian in Little Italy and on this particular night, British English everywhere one goes.

Then divide this by the constant struggle to maintain mindfulness and peace under the steady over-stimulated bombardment of pedestrian traffic.

This, factored to the power of the individual wanderers’ unlimited freedom, the toleration of mass consumerism, and subtract one’s envy and abhorrence in equal amounts of the super id pretensions of the glitterati and business elite, derived one thousand times by the social impetus of New Year’s celebrations.

And you don’t really get anything now do you? Because, naturally, mathematicians of varying levels of metaphor could never hope to ‘solve’ the New York New Year’s phenomenon. Rather, one has to throw herself into the beastly bathing waters of the city’s over-crowded tub, and whilst slowly steaming in the conflicting flavors of this stew of humanity, must overlook her putrid, teeming ugliness only to find it outmatched by the hidden subtlety of humanity’s divine beauty.

Here’s to a brighter, more peaceful, more unified year than the last one.

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*Ok ok, so non-drinkers and small children I exempt from this claim. Folks on the lunar calendar don’t count. I’m Chinese…I have veto power.