Karen's Millennium Photos
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine." - REM
New Year's Day, 2000 - after the show...
There was an open party in the Domain until morning, but we had to catch a plane back to Brisbane later in the day, and so we went back to the motel to get some sleep. We watched TV for a while as they showed celebrations in Japan and China. All my friends in Vermont had teased that they wanted me to warn them if the millenium bug was real (since I'd be experiencing it before them), but I didn't have any of their phone numbers, so I called my parents instead. They were happy to know that the lights were still on in Sydney, and my mom said they were trying to decide whether to go into DC to see their midnight display. DC was bragging that it would be better than any Fourth of July display they've ever done, so I convinced my mom that it was worth standing in the cold to go.
On 1/1/00, Andrew and I had some time to spare, so we headed to the Circular Quay for breakfast. First we went to City Extra - a popular restaurant right near the ferries. But the place was filthy (they had been open all night long and had not cleaned up at all), and they only had a partial menu available, and lousey service to boot. So we left and went to another place (a pancake house) in the rocks - the atmosphere there was a million times better. Then we wandered around the park pictured below (which is on the west side of the bridge from where we'd been the night before), commenting that it would have been another good place to watch the fireworks (although you can't see the Opera House from here, you can see Darling Harbor, which was another one of the river fireworks launching locations).
The first picture of me in the 21st century:
If I remember correctly, our plane back to Brisbane left at around 3pm or 4pm, but I was eager to get to the airport early because I wanted to watch the USA millenium festivities on TV. I figured there'd be some TV sets around the waiting lounges with CNN playing. When we got to the airport, I realised I'd left my wallet at the hotel (the first and only time I've ever accidentally left my wallet anywhere), so I was sort of freaking out because I had to call the hotel and I was worried that I wouldn't get to see the east coast of the USA hit midnight. But when I called the hotel, they had already noticed my wallet and were holding it at reception - they said they would post it to me at Andrew's house. Then we whipped through check-in pretty quickly. I was happy when we got to the check-in area (full of TV's broadcasting New Year's stuff) a good 15 minutes or so before east coast USA hit midnight. They were showing a lot of footage of New York City, which is typical, but sort of annoyed me because I wanted to see DC (where my family was) and Montreal (which I had also considered as a New Year's destination).
There was some funny banter amongst the Aussie TV announcers. For example, the most noticable sign in Times Square was a large Discovery Card logo. So the announcers kept speculating about what a Discovery card might be. One announcer said, "I don't know what a discovery card is, but I really want one now!" So an American actor (no one I recognized) who was on the set with them gave the guy his discovery card. On CNN, they were running this strange collage-like thing of footage from all the major media events presumeably since the invention of the TV. One of the longest clips was of Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I thought it was pretty funny, but I guess you would have had to seen it.
They only showed the Times Square Countdown in real time, but after a while, they replayed DC also. When they started the DC footage, I grabbed Andrew's elbow and said, "Watch this, this is going to be really good." The first 30 seconds were great. The second 30 seconds were so-so. And that was it. Andrew and I looked at each other, and I said, "Is that it? I can't believe after all the hype, that's all they did!" I think we also saw Chicago's festivities before we got on the plane back to Brisbane (or maybe I saw Chicago at the Brisbane airport, I don't remember).
I later talked to my mom about the DC show - she said that, on my recommendation, she had gone down to DC with my sister and her boyfriend and some friends of theirs. I think they were somewhere near the reflecting pool, and she said that everyone was all excited and the crowd was well-behaved despite the large number of cops around to stop any rowdiness. Everyone cheered when the fireworks went off, and then waited for the rest. Everyone thought it was just the opening and there was more to come, and so they all waited even thought it was really all over with. Once the crowd caught on that that was it, they all started to complain. One of my sister's friends, Larry, complained very loudly (and drukenly) that with such a shitty millennium display in our nation's capital, we didn't deserve to be our own country and should go back to being a colony - after all, London knows how to put on a millennium show! I guess there were some rumors going around that there was supposed to be another fireworks display at 1am , or maybe 3am, but the majority of the crowd was too annoyed to stick around. Later it came out that most of the money DC had set aside for New Year's festivities had gone to pay Will Smith to MC at the Lincoln Memorial.
