NEW YORK – Estimated 700,000 revelers had welcomed the new year in the heart of Times Square where die-hard purists used 35 tons of confetti, close to what was left a year ago by the Y2K crowd estimated at two million, said a worker from The Sanitation Department of New York.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani handed out chocolate chip cookies to sanitation workers and cops on morning-after duty in Times Square, declaring New York’s welcome party for 2001 to be “not the biggest, but maybe the most beautiful.”
“It was a grand celebration. I can’t say the biggest because the millennium obviously was the biggest that we had, but I have to say it was maybe the most beautiful — aesthetically quite a beautiful sight to see,” Giuliani said.
He said that the event was made more memorable for him by the participation of special guest Muhammad Ali, who joined Guiliani in pressing the button that brought Times Square’s famous lighted ball down a pole at the stroke of midnight. After that, he said, “Muhammad Ali gave me a kiss.”
Giuliani praised the Sanitation Department for clearing a day-old 12-inch snowfall, the city’s biggest in five years, in time for the Times Square festivities, and then mopping up after the party. “When we started off two days ago it was thought that we wouldn’t even be able to have this celebration,” he said.
Guliani also took the occasion to announce that while crime remained about level around the country, overall crime in New York City dropped by 5.7 percent in 2000, the seventh straight year of decline.
Despite that the fact that homicides rose for the second year in a row, by 1/2 of 1 percent, the mayor credited police with doing “an absolutely great job by focusing on problem areas after overall crime rose slightly at the start of 2000.
After the Times Square news conference, Giuliani headed off to visit two hospitals with rival claims to the years first-born.
Peter Robinson, 6 pounds, 13 ounces, was delivered at the stroke of midnight in the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush. Renee Fatima Dixon, 6 pounds, 9 ounces, was born at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx at 12:03 a.m., said hospital spokeswoman Nancy McPartlin.
