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NEW YORK – For all those reflecting glumly on the last 10 years of terror attacks, war and recession, Gail Guay has some advice: “Don’t look back.”
The 50-year-old Guay, from Raymond, N.H., was among the hundreds of thousands of revelers who rang in 2010 in a chilly Times Square as the famous Waterford crystal ball dropped at midnight Thursday, marking the end of a difficult decade that many wanted to leave behind.
But a sense of starting fresh remained elusive for many, who wondered what sort of legacy would begin on Jan. 1.
“Nothing seems to be going well,” said John O’Donnell, of Hazleton, Pa. “People are losing their lives overseas. People are unemployed. It doesn’t seem like it’s about to end soon.”
Las Vegas welcomed some 315,000 revelers with fireworks from casino rooftops, celebrity toasts at nightclubs and a traffic-free Las Vegas Strip.
David Fraley attended a separate gathering in Sin City’s downtown estimated at 35,000 people.
“This decade’s over. Let’s get a better one going,” said Fraley, 56, who lost his job as a supermarket liquor clerk in March.
Bob Batchelor, a professor of mass communications at Kent State University and author of “The 2000s,” published before the decade was even done, said the meaning of the new decade would be “diminished by the hangover of the last decade.”
“That,” he said, “makes it tough to be as optimistic as Americans usually are.”
But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was more tempered in his assessment.
“If you put it in the context of what people are suffering around the world, we’re in very good shape,” he said from Times Square.
Some were hopeful.
“I have many wishes for 2010!” exclaimed Ramona Vlada, 28, of Romania. “I wish to be healthy, love and to be loved at the same time, be with the family and make a family even bigger.”
Celebrations took many forms, with concerts, fireworks and the timed drops of favorite local symbols.
Denver revelers by the thousand gathered downtown and gave the traditional New Year’s countdown, ending with a rousing cheer as the clock struck midnight.
In the Tennessee cities of Memphis and Nashville, organizers dropped 10-foot red guitars. In Atlanta, an 800-pound fiberglass peach took a 138-foot plunge. In Times Square it was an 11,875-pound ball covered with more than 32,000 bulbs that was lowered at midnight.
In Boston, more than 1,000 artists and performers participated in the First Night celebrations. Artists planned to display six ice sculptures, including a replica of one of the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s 4,000-year-old Egyptian sculptures.
And in Chicago, the city’s Transit Authority was offering rides for a penny to help residents and visitors get in place for fireworks displays during the evening and at midnight.
