Millennial moments

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 10:18 a.m.

Twenty-seven Sun reporters contributed to this report.

These Sun writers, photographers and editors contributed to this section:

Thin, purple puffs punctuated by pink light stretched in all directions, paling the Strip's pulsating, lighted man-made artistry.

The light turned golden, washing distant mountains in pastel hues and decking the Strip in her everyday blue.

This was dawn on 1999's last day in a 24-hour town. A town where the lines between preparations and partying blurred much the same as night fades to morning.

A town where the last hours of 1999 were inexorably bonded to the first hours of 2000 by frivolity and fear, joy and death.

As New Year's Eve day started outside, hard-core slot players inside casinos such as the Barbary Coast sat expressionless in front of their machines. Some were early risers. Others hadn't gone to bed at all. This day began much like the one before. Nothing different. Nothing special.

Drop the coins. Punch the buttons.

Hope.

Out in front of Bally's hotel-casino two men pushed trash into dustpans with brooms.

Up the block a solitary worker rode a sidewalk washer under the Eiffel Tower. Across the street a half-dozen workers clad in waders stood hip-deep in the Bellagio's lake tweaking the dancing fountain's delicate under things.

A few joggers padded up and down the sidewalks. But everyone else, it seemed, was sweeping, polishing and tidying up before the big night.

The last night.

Waiters at Spago restaurant in the Caesar Palace Forum Shops unstacked chairs and set tables while chefs in the front kitchen readied for the lunch crowd.

Tension already was mounting in the establishment's rear kitchen where preparations for the decade's last supper already were under way.

The kitchen manager rode herd over 200 lobsters imported from Maine, 500 pounds of beef tenderloin and pan upon pan of duck confit sitting in the cooler. He worried about whether evening diners would be able to keep their reservations once the Strip was closed to traffic later that day.

A few blocks away Gary Steger unloaded his wares across from the Luxor's glossy pyramid. He figured a closed road would be good for hawking his hats and T-shirts.

Each one was emblazoned with a bleary-eyed donkey clutching a martini in one hoof. They read, "I made a Jack-Ass of myself -- Millenium 2000 Las Vegas."

Steger, who has worked as a doorman under the MGM lions for 20 years, knew welcoming 2000 in this town meant money. Steger had been planning to capitalize on it since New Year's 1999. He printed 1,000 each of the T-shirts and hats.

"Don't you love these shirts? How can anyone not like this," Steger grinned. "You gotta love this city."

Seems he wasn't the only one with the T-shirt idea. One Strip vendor, who kept moving to avoid police and pesky permit questions, had a hard time finding takers.

A visitor stopped briefly to examine the $10 shirts sporting a South Park-meets-the-millennium theme, but then moved on.

"I'll wait until tomorrow," he told the salesman. "If I'm alive, I'll buy one."

Hyped over the hype

The guy might have fared better selling water or propane gas. For even though Y2K already had arrived without catastrophe for about half of the globe, people in Las Vegas still feared computer glitches and technology snafus would leave them without power, water or gasoline.

Just before 1 p.m. Friday people stood in grocery store lines pushing carts brimming with gallon water jugs, batteries and canned goods.

The Texaco station at Sahara Avenue and Decatur Boulevard ran out of gas.

"We got none," the 60-something clerk behind the counter said, passing his hand over the days-old growth on his chin.

Across town about 30 worshippers had just finished preparations of a different variety at the Guardian Angel Cathedral. Among those emerging from the last mass of 1999 was 75-year-old George Bielinske and his wife.

Bielinske said they prayed for the safety of their home back in Appleton, Wis.

"The reason my wife and I came here is that I'm afraid that my computer is going to crash, and the lights are going to go out, and the gas and the heat would stop, and we would freeze to death there. So we're staying with my son here," Bielinske said.

Here, in a town that has always offered some hope in the face of adversity. The Bielinskes had $3,000 to play with in the casinos -- just in case everything turned out OK.

Those afraid the Y2K bug would bite with some teeth packed Master Shooters supply on West Sahara Avenue Friday afternoon, stocking up on extra ammunition. Floyd Coons, store manager, said he didn't think it strange people were still stocking up despite reports that all was well as 2000 reached other parts of the world.

"That's only if you can believe everything you see on TV," he said.

Big Ben and babies

Those charged with public safety duties figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Security guards far outnumbered revelers most of Friday afternoon at the Fremont Street Experience.

But by 3:15 p.m. bewildered gamblers were beginning to protest paying $75 just to leave the casinos and stroll under Fremont Street's neon canopy. And the security officers were plenty busy herding those who did not pay back behind the iron gates.

At 4 United Kingdom visitors stared at television screens in the main lobby at the MGM Grand cheered as Big Ben struck midnight and 2000 arrived in London.

At 4:55 Deidre Duffy's water broke, and she went into labor for what eventually would be delivery of one of four babies born in Las Vegas at 12:01 a.m. on New Year's Day.

Four families claimed the honor this year. But Duffy's son had a special Vegas touch. His dad is an Elvis impersonator.

Early evening didn't bring the throngs many expected. The Strip wasn't closed to traffic until almost 9 p.m. -- later than in previous years. And the Fremont Street Experience was more block-party than mayhem. Even Metro Police officers appeared content on Fremont Street, talking in pairs and puffing on cigars.

Fremont was a melting pot of classes and generations. Sequins rubbed shoulders with sweat shirts, and those who remembered The Guess Who the first time around danced among those who were seeing the band for the first time.

Barely half of the expected 30,000 revelers showed up at Fremont Street, perhaps averted by the party's $100 price tag. Still the hordes tippling beer from 55-ounce plastic footballs and eagerly awaiting the hour when they could don their 3-D glasses and peer at the overhead light show seemed to have a rollicking good time.

"It's the biggest party on the West Coast," said 21-year-old Jerod Pfeifer.

Hey, for a guy from Minnesota, this IS the West Coast.

Blast or bust?

Many lamented that this year's party wasn't the big blast they expected. Maybe the endless 2000 marketing hype that brought everything from commemorative champagne glasses and key chains to survival kits and apocalyptic predictions raised expectations too high.

For whatever reason, Las Vegas threw a party and fewer than half the expected people came.

Some visitors said the parties along two of America's most famous streets were dead in comparison to other New Year's Eves.

"The past two years were a lot better than this," said Vivian Worthy, who was visiting the Fremont Street Experience with her husband, Bill.

The Los Angeles residents said they were having fun, although past New Year's Eve parties on Fremont Street were "a lot more crowded, and the bands were better," Worthy said.

Not everyone was looking for the pig-push and street brawl. A handful of locals said they wouldn't have missed their standing Friday night date with Annie Lee's karaoke machine at the Mad Dogs and Englishmen's pub downtown.

For them the calendar turning to 2000 brought the same hope they have every week.

"We all want to be a star," Mad Dogs regular Dan Anders said. "I'm friends with everyone here. It's just like 'Cheers.' I like it because it's mellow."

But for those who wanted to embrace the maniacal, the Strip finally managed to whip itself into a suitable frenzy as Whoopee Hour neared with the help of 300,000 screaming, drinking, dancing Bacchus devotees.

Heidi Schroeder, bedecked in a black formal, stumbled along with two girlfriends in equally courtly apparel. The trio obviously had consumed a fair quantity of adult beverages and were passing out hugs to all unsuspecting -- yet always willing -- young men they passed.

The Wisconsin trio, who had planned this visit for more than a year, happily hugged their way along the Strip.

"This is great," Schroeder's friend Susie Jackisch said. "We love Las Vegas."

People scaled the Flamingo Hilton sign. They plunged half-naked into Bellagio's lake. A women hoisted atop the shoulders of a man outside O'Sheas lifted her shirt, showing a black bra to a crowd that roared and chanted at her feet.

Even God was there -- on the signs and tongues of those espousing the Gospel. Three Oregon men marched up and down the Strip bearing their slogans in front of Caesars Palace, the Mirage and Treasure Island.

"Bible, Bible, Bible! People read the Bible!" one of them shouted into a megaphone. "I'll even talk the language that you drunks talk, 'Ra ra ra ra ra! "

"Hey!" hollered a man sucking beer from plastic bottle. "Kick his ass!"

"Notice the word 'sin' in casino?" the street-preacher replied.

"That's why we came to Sin City, butt-muncher," the beer-slinger bellowed.

No New Year's party is complete without the proper hat. One family of seven wore flourescent yellow hats. People colored their hair pink, yellow, blue, purple -- or combinations thereof.

They sported crowns, foil top hats, feathers. One man wore a spacesuit. Pat Cross, a 38-year-old Henderson man, wore fur and a loincloth. "Cave Man," he said, is his nickname.

"I got the name not for my looks but for my mentality," Cross said.

Metro Police's party hats took the form of riot helmets. The 900 officers also wore bulletproof vests, proving their New Year's gear wasn't just for grins.

After a massive briefing, they piled into nine Citizens Area Transit buses and headed for all corners of the town.

"This is the only way I would be going down to the Strip tonight," bus driver Dennis Barker said.

Another Strip-bound police bus driver said he never got so much respect as he did that night.

"On the way to Flamingo a guy cut my bus off and was yelling out his window and flipping me the bird," the driver said. "I just flipped on my interior light, and he saw 80 cops staring down at him. He didn't have much to say after that."

People who were willing to argue with those wearing badges were invited to "party" elsewhere.

A man who climbed atop a light pole in front of O'Sheas casino and urged the throng below to pump up the volume was plucked from his perch by a Metro officer in riot gear.

Officers lectured a young woman for showing too much of what was under her shirt. And many revelers had their beverages confiscated by police because they were in glass or cans -- a definite New Year's no-no on the Strip.

Not all of the violators strolled the streets. A New York couple attending the Stardust's $250-a-head Wayne Newton show was reprimanded for trying to make a videotape.

This was not a Grateful Dead concert. Thou shalt not bootleg Wayne.

The couple stalked off in a huff after theater security confiscated their camera. They apparently were offended by the rules that accompanied their complimentary tickets -- seats that placed them directly in front of Newton's wife.

As 2000 unfurled across the nation and neared the Pacific Time Zone, predictions of widespread, Armageddon-like computer screwups simply didn't happen.

Two Y2K rumor-control hotlines at Clark County's command center were virtually silent.

"So far, so good," an emergency operations worker said. "New York hasn't fallen into the ocean, and 747s haven't crashed into the Grand Canyon."

A Summerlin resident who casually looked up his mutual fund account on the Internet Friday evening was pleasantly surprised by a glitch in his account.

It said his stocks were worth more than $18 million.

"If that were really the case, I wouldn't have a job," the 55-year-old computer systems analyst laughed. "I tried to cash it out, but it wouldn't let me until Monday."

It seems the program had dropped the decimal points, so a share that cost $32.74 was listed as costing $3,274. The mistake was corrected a few minutes later.

At 11:30 p.m. Deidre Duffy was so far along in her labor that her doctors at Sunrise Hospital figured her baby would be among the last of 1999, not one of the first of 2000.

Brendan Paul, her husband, kept track of the event by phone. While Duffy was doing the birthing thing, he was doing his Elvis gig with K.C. and the Sunshine Band at Sylvester Stallone's Beverly Hills bash.

The minutes to midnight ticked away. With five minutes to the main event, Caesar's marquee went dark. The Mirage's sign continued the countdown.

For Todd Surmon, 26, of Menlo Park, Calif., the last two minutes of 1999 proved fatal. Just before midnight the Stanford University assistant wrestling coach shimmied to the top of a light pole near the Paris Las Vegas hotel-casino balloon.

He grabbed a live electrical wire to steady himself and plummeted 30 feet to his death in front of thousands of horrified onlookers. Police say he died from a combination of electrocution and trauma from the fall.

As the Mirage's sign started the final countdown, Sunrise Hospital workers crowded around Duffy's monitors, tracking her unborn child's heartbeats and waiting for that first cry.

"Hold on, hold on," they murmured, pulling for a New Year's tot.

"10, 9, 8 ..."

The infant's head emerged. The crowd on the Strip and along Fremont Street swarmed in a frenzy.

"... 7, 6, 5, 4 ..."

Duffy pushed. Revelers poured out of the MGM Grand and the other resorts to join the mayhem on the street.

"... 3, 2, 1."

A cloud of glitter and confetti exploded from the top of Paris Las Vegas' Eiffel Tower. The crowd surged into a screeching, kissing, hugging, Happy-New-Yearing mass.

And Cole Davis Duffy, 19 1/4 inches long, took his first delicate breaths. Weighing in at 6 pounds, 14 ounces, he was pink, healthy and perfect. His first cries were drowned in the ensuing applause.

"This is just so exciting," one nurse giggled as celebratory cups of juice were passed all around.

A new year begins

For the first few fleeting minutes of 2000 the very activity that put Las Vegas on the map died as gamblers stepped away from their machines and tables long enough to hug, kiss and raise a toast to the new year.

Then, like nothing had happened, the familiar "ka-ching" of slots resumed and people crowded around betting tables in tight knots.

Denise Dupree of New Orleans bolted from the Barbra Streisand show at the MGM Grand hotel-casino and caught a 12:10 a.m. taxicab for McCarran International Airport. She was one of six people who boarded a 2 a.m. flight bound for that city.

"Barbra was fabulous, but I was a little worried about getting to the airport," Dupree said.

But Nick Foskaris knew the party was long from over for the dancers who work for him at Olympic Garden, a strip club on Las Vegas Boulevard. At Olympic Garden, midnight on New Year's means the evening is about to start.

"It's always slow before midnight, but by 3 this place will be jam-packed," Foskaris said. "After they celebrate, they go out to play. And this is where they come to play."

Celeste, a dancer who goes only by her first name when she's working, said the crowd is a positive one and she was happy to be working during the first hours of 2000.

"I want to be here," she said, adding that she planned to meet up with friends later. "I'll see them when the sun comes up."

By 3 a.m. Metro Police had arrested 302 people -- mostly adults charged with disorderly conduct or fighting.

On Flamingo Road, near the Bourbon Street Hotel, those heading home had to step around a man who rested his head on a railing and sobbed into his hands.

He reeked of whiskey and misery, sobbing quietly at first then raising his head to let out a mournful cry.

"My wife is divorcing me," he said to anyone who would listen. "She told me tonight."

The final sweep

The number of revelers on the street dwindled until most were heading home or had moved their parties indoors.

By the time dawn's thin light crept into the eastern sky, only the hardiest of partiers still strolled along the sidewalk in their silly hats and night-life clothes. Joggers with clear eyes and fresh faces padded around the night people and the metal barrier fences with the same serene indifference.

In front of Bally's a small army of maintenance men armed with brooms and shovels cleared away plastic cups, paper and glitter.

"Nasty job, but somebody's got to do it, right?" one of the evening's leftovers giggled to her date as they rode the escalator to a walkway overhead.

"We've been out here all night just trying to keep up," one of the street cleaners said weakly. "I sure like fireworks better than confetti. It blew up and came right over here towards us."

Just then, a young man dressed in black jumped aboard the crew's golf cart and sped a few feet up the sidewalk tossing out bags of trash as he went. He jumped off and headed down the street just as one of the workers reached him.

At least the Bally's guys had each other. Out in front of the South Strip Travelodge a single worker swept his way through an ankle-deep sea of beer cups and trash left from the Budweiser beer trucks parked in the front parking lot.

"We've only got the one maintenance worker. Ramone has to clean it all," said Anissa Yabarra, the front desk clerk. "He's been here since 5 a.m. He's already been through three garbage bags."

Fred Montoya, 28, of New Mexico held a video camera in one hand and an open can of Coors in the other. He was recording the aftermath for posterity, as he had recorded the revelry the night before.

"I had a great time, and I've got some good footage. And this is my fifth millennium tape," Montoya said. "I'm going to save them and show them to my kids."

He moved the camera slowly, recording the quiet that had returned with the day's first light.

"Actually, this one will be for the kids. Last night there were too many boobs flying," Montoya said.

First light

Another knot of stragglers wearing rumpled foil hats and leaning on each other giggled as they staggered past. A young man with hair bleached white, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses with yellow lenses said he'd been talking religion with one of the street cleaners at the south end of the Strip.

"See, he was a Christian. I'm a philosophy major. I'm a very spiritual person. But I'm not into religion," the man said. "We were arguing about it."

Like the revelers who tried to keep the party going just a little longer, morning's pale light left the Strip looking faded and worn out.

Inside casinos like the Barbary Coast the hard-core slot players once again sat expressionless in front of their machines. Some were early risers. Others hadn't gone to bed at all.

This first day of 2000 began much like the day before it. Nothing different. Nothing special.

Drop the coins. Punch the buttons.

Hope.

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