New year, new hope

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Times Square was awash in hopeful sentiments as it welcomed hordes of New Year’s Eve revelers looking to cast off a rough year and cheer their way to something better in 2012.

For all of the holiday’s bittersweet potential, New York City always treats it like a big party — albeit one that, for a decade now, has taken place under the watchful eye of a massive security force.

Pessimism has no place on Broadway. Not on New Year’s Eve, anyway. The masses of tourists streaming through the square for a glimpse of the crystal-paneled ball that drops at midnight were there to kiss, pose for silly snapshots and gawk at the stages being prepared for performers such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

Some revelers, wearing party hats and “2012” glasses, began camping out Saturday morning, even as workers readied bags stuffed with hundreds of balloons and technicians put colored filters on klieg lights.

“Everybody’s suffering. That’s why it’s so beautiful to be here celebrating something with everybody,” said Lisa Nicol, 47, of Melbourne, Australia, after securing a prime spot next to the main stage.

Houston tourist Megan Martin, 22, staked out her space with her boyfriend at 10:30 a.m. She said the party ahead would be worth sitting on cold asphalt all day in a spectator pen ringed by metal barricades.

“I told him the pain only lasts tonight, but the memories last forever,” she said.

Many Americans ushered in the new year thinking that 2011 is a year they would rather forget. But as the country prepared for the celebration, glum wasn’t on the agenda for many, even those that had a sour year.

“We’re hoping the next year will be better,” said Becky Martin, a former elementary-school teacher who drove from Rockford, Ill., with her family to attend the Times Square celebration after spending a fruitless year trying to find a job. “We’re starting off optimistic and hoping it lasts.”

Reminders of a trying 2011 around the globe could be seen in the multi-national faces of visitors to the so-called “Crossroads of the World” this week.

Asked how his 2011 went, a Japanese tourist who gave his name as Nari didn’t know enough English to put it into words as he visited the square Friday, so he whipped open his phone and displayed pictures he had taken of damage wrought by the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the island nation and his home city of Sendai.

“Not a good year,” he said. Then he smiled and added that things are now much better.

The annual dropping of the New Year’s Eve ball, from a flagpole 400 above the street, took place this year under relatively warm weather, with the temperature at midnight in the low 40s.

The sphere, now decorated with 3,000 Waterford crystal triangles, has been dropping to mark the new year since 1907, long before television made it a national tradition.

Security checkpoints at the city’s bridges and tunnels were beefed up in anticipation of the celebration. The New York Police Department’s plans for protecting the city from any terrorist attack included sending 1,500 rookie officers to Times Square, where hundreds of thousands of revelers pack into closely watched pens, ringed by barricades, stretched over 17 blocks. Officers blended into the crowd wearing street clothes. Others, some heavily armed, others wearing radiation detectors, watched from rooftops and helicopters.

An Associated Press-GfK poll conducted Dec. 8-12 found that 62 percent of Americans are optimistic that the nation’s fortunes will improve in 2012, and 78 percent are hopeful that their own family will have a better year. Most wrote off 2011 as a dud.