A couple of days before New Year's Eve 1994, I made my way to a college friend's house near the Finger Lakes. Elmira, NY - it was one of those little towns where everyone worked at the same place, in this case - the Corning plant next door. While there, my friend introduced me to some amazing pizza. Yes, amazing. And I mean it. Then we ventured to a neighborhood bar called The Branch Office, where we met two of his high school friends.
Who knew that the following evening his two friends and I would be back at the bar watching the crowd gather for the Times Square ball drop and decide to go?
To this day, I have no idea why the college friend wasn't at the bar with us or how I wound up there alone with his friends. But we had a beer or two... smoked some cigarettes, played the jukebox, mingled with some of their friends and, out of nowhere sometime around 8:30, decided to drive to Times Square.
Several things. They hadn't been to "the City" in years. I had no idea where I was going and all we had was my Walmart Rand-McNally big map book thing. It was snowing heavily and the three of us were crammed into a small sports car which I drove at approximately 90 mph to make up time. Hell, it was a 3-hour 45-minute drive, it was after 8:30 and the ball drops at midnight.
It was a nice ride, the boys sipped on beers and we listened to various radio stations and told bullshit stories about other places we'd been, things we'd done.
Having never been to New York before, at all, I was becoming confused about whether we were currently in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or New York. What's a turnpike? Why did this highway just change numbers three times? Is this a toll road? We're going the wrong direction. We're in a long tunnel. Next think you know, we're at a stoplight on Avenue of the Americas and I've got to beat four cabs off the start line to cross over and try to find Times Square.
We found street parking for free about five blocks away. Mind you, this was 1994.
We ran to Times Square just as the loudspeaker announced "FIVE!... FOUR!..." holy shit, we did it.
It was mayhem, cops on horses, women kissing anyone, beer and champagne being poured over heads. "Auld Lang Syne" blasting from all directions. Celebrity sightings, one of the guys swore he saw Eric Something-or-other from MTV's the Real World. Then people just kind of went on their way. By 12:20 a.m., January 1, 1995, Times Square was all but empty.
We struggled to find the car for a bit, climbed in and went back to Elmira much more slowly than we'd left it.
To this day, I have no idea who those guys were but we had one hell of a time. That night, New Year's Day, I sat in my friend's living room, reliving the events of the previous evening and woke his family up as Nebraska beat Miami in the Orange Bowl. Then headed for a celebratory nightcap at the Branch Office.
Who knew that the following evening his two friends and I would be back at the bar watching the crowd gather for the Times Square ball drop and decide to go?
To this day, I have no idea why the college friend wasn't at the bar with us or how I wound up there alone with his friends. But we had a beer or two... smoked some cigarettes, played the jukebox, mingled with some of their friends and, out of nowhere sometime around 8:30, decided to drive to Times Square.
Several things. They hadn't been to "the City" in years. I had no idea where I was going and all we had was my Walmart Rand-McNally big map book thing. It was snowing heavily and the three of us were crammed into a small sports car which I drove at approximately 90 mph to make up time. Hell, it was a 3-hour 45-minute drive, it was after 8:30 and the ball drops at midnight.
It was a nice ride, the boys sipped on beers and we listened to various radio stations and told bullshit stories about other places we'd been, things we'd done.
Having never been to New York before, at all, I was becoming confused about whether we were currently in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or New York. What's a turnpike? Why did this highway just change numbers three times? Is this a toll road? We're going the wrong direction. We're in a long tunnel. Next think you know, we're at a stoplight on Avenue of the Americas and I've got to beat four cabs off the start line to cross over and try to find Times Square.
We found street parking for free about five blocks away. Mind you, this was 1994.
We ran to Times Square just as the loudspeaker announced "FIVE!... FOUR!..." holy shit, we did it.
It was mayhem, cops on horses, women kissing anyone, beer and champagne being poured over heads. "Auld Lang Syne" blasting from all directions. Celebrity sightings, one of the guys swore he saw Eric Something-or-other from MTV's the Real World. Then people just kind of went on their way. By 12:20 a.m., January 1, 1995, Times Square was all but empty.
We struggled to find the car for a bit, climbed in and went back to Elmira much more slowly than we'd left it.
To this day, I have no idea who those guys were but we had one hell of a time. That night, New Year's Day, I sat in my friend's living room, reliving the events of the previous evening and woke his family up as Nebraska beat Miami in the Orange Bowl. Then headed for a celebratory nightcap at the Branch Office.
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