THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512310052
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
So you're all set for tonight, huh? The champagne is chilling, and you've stress-tested the noisemakers. The baby sitter has blackmailed you into doubling her fee, but you don't mind. You want to be out there partying on The Biggest Night of the Year.
So have you left anything out? Just this: It is not too soon to start planning for New Year's Eve 1999. It will be the Biggest Night of the Century. Even bigger than that. It will be the Biggest Night in a Thousand Years.
Some of the best places to celebrate already are taken, and many others are closing out fast. From Disney World to Times Square to the Champs Elysees, revelers of the third millennium already have staked out hotel rooms and balcony perches from which they will observe the rollover of the great astral odometer to the year 2000.
Think of a millennium's rarity this way: The last time mankind marked the passing of a millennium, the English were spending New Year's Eve huddled in sod huts, in fear of another visit from Viking marauders.
Calendar pedants are aggressive - nearly sputtering in anger, in some cases - in pointing out that the third millennium actually does not begin until the year 2001. But they are missing the point. What mankind wants to celebrate is the movement of the calendar from the edgy indecisiveness of a number like 1999, to the clarity of a date with all those wondrous zeroes: Jan. 1, 2000.
And it is clear that the pedants have lost. The world will be celebrating the arrival of the third millennium on New Year's Eve 1999.
Disney World in Orlando is at ``limited availability'' for New Year's Eve 1999, The New York Times reported recently. Manhattan's legendary Rainbow Room is sold out, as are the Savoy in London, the Space Needle in Seattle and the Marriott Marquis at Times Square.
Even in southeastern Virginia, where cutting-edge trends arrive on a bit of a slack tide, people who plan for such things have begun their planning.
The lush Williamsburg Inn has booked more than half its 102 rooms for that night. Norfolk's Festevents staff started strategizing the city's millennium bash back in 1993. The subject has come up at planning meetings for the Spirit of Norfolk's dinner cruises.
``We've been working on that for the past two years now,'' said Karen Scherberger, executive director of Festevents. ``We've been having a lot of fun talking about it.
``We'll probably focus a lot of our attention on the number 2000. Two thousand performances, two thousand lights. . . . It will be tremendous in size and scale and scope.
``And it will be all over the city, not just downtown and Ghent, but all of Norfolk will be lit up with entertainment and activity.
``And we'd like to commission various artists and performing groups to create pieces of artwork so they can be presented as first forms of new art in the new century - I mean the new millennium. We'd like to get the symphony orchestra, the stage company, the ballet to do new performances.
``We're going to do everything in 1999 on the grandest of scales.''
The seeds of that concept already are at work in this year's First Night celebration in Norfolk, where the traditional waterfront fireworks-and-music party has been greatly fortified by arts-driven performances at venues throughout Ghent and the downtown area, from midafternoon to past midnight.
In Virginia Beach, where festival planning is handled by an outside contractor, the millennium still seems, well, a millennium away.
``We're just getting through '95, so I don't think we've made any plans made for '99,'' said Paulette Braithwaite, with the city's Convention and Visitor Development office.
There is ample evidence that many locals have yet to buy into millennium frenzy. The Omni Waterside Hotel in downtown Norfolk, for example, has yet to book a room for that evening. ``There've been none that I know of,'' said Sharon Blazer, director of sales and marketing for the Omni, which each New Year's Eve offers an elegant party and a lordly view of the midnight fireworks over the Elizabeth River.
And if someone were to call for a room this far out, would the Omni oblige? ``Are you kidding? Sure we would,'' Blazer said, though she admitted that they'd have to agree on the rate a couple of years down the line.
The third millennium seemed pretty far, as well, from the mind of restaurateur Joe Hoggard. ``Oh, jeez, I hadn't even thought of that,'' said Hoggard, who owns the Ship's Cabin in Ocean View. ``Isn't that amazing? I just hope I'm still alive then.''
Hoggard was willing, though, to play sommelier to anybody wishing to lay down a good bottle of wine in advance of that momentous evening. ``I'd probably say one of the great Burgundies would be wonderful, if they can get a current vintage.'' Specifically, he recommended a 1995 Robert Jayer pinot noir from the Echezeaux vineyard, at about $150 a bottle.
``I'd serve that with a spit-roasted bird of some sort,'' he said, laughing. ``We'll settle that later.'' ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot
\ Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Andrew Freeman, director of Manhattan's Rainbow Room, displays a
reservation book already filled for the New Year's Eve 1999
celebration planned at the popular New York restaurant.
by CNB