I used to hate New Year’s Eve in the city.  So do most people who actually live in the city, because it’s like the worst night of the year to go out.  The big cliche, of course, is that it’s “Amateur Night,” precisely because everyone who doesn’t normally go out decides that it’s their night to hit the city’s bars, clubs, and restaurants. (Of course, to the true urban sophisticates, a group that never included me, every weekend night is sort of an “Amateur Night,” because professional partying urbanites go out on weeknights to do things like see a particular DJ, a taste I never actually acquired).

I don’t hate New Year’s Eve because it’s Amateur Night, I hate it because it’s an artificial experience:

• Restaurants Suck.  None of the good restaurants put out their normal menu, instead offering a “Special New Year’s Eve Prefixe!” that has like three dishes, is twice the normal price, and requires you to either eat early and skeedaddle for the late service or eat late and be sitting in a stupid restaurant when the ball drops, so you can’t see Dick Clark, bless his heart, mumble through the countdown.
• Clubs Suck.  All the clubs ratchet up their cover charge, require you to buy multiple bottles if you actually want to sit down, and justify the increased costs because they give you a noisemaker they got for 10 cents at Ricky’s.
• Cabs Suck.  Forget trying to get a cab on New Year’s Eve anytime after 8PM and before 4AM. Not only is the demand too high, but it seems like a whole lot of them go “off duty” all night in an attempt to get desperate women in torturous heels to pay a blackmail off-meter price.
• Traffic Sucks.  Even if you do get a cab, or have your own car, good luck getting around the city with the bottleneck created by the monstrous Times Square celebration, where people inexplicably line up for hours so they can stand in the cold and not drink so that they can witness a big ball drop for about 60 seconds.

The whole thing is a disaster.  That’s why virtually every New Year’s Eve for the past five years or so, we had our own party, usually a nice dinner party for close friends where we’d opt out of the whole city experience, have a great meal, talk to each other in ways that you can’t if you go to any ear-blistering club, watch Dick Clark at midnight, and go to bed by 2AM or so.  Always a great night, made better for me at least by the fact that I could spend the whole night without venturing outside my front door.

That said, of course, now that we’re suburanites, we had every intention of going into the city for New Year’s Eve, because, well, we’re now EXACTLY THE SORT OF PEOPLE WHO RUIN NEW YEAR’S EVE FOR THE CITY PEOPLE!  We were looking forward to being outer-borough amateurs running around the city and making asses of ourselves.  We were going to meet up with our city friends at some swank club, overpay for drinks all night, and collapse in a ridiculously expensive hotel room for the night. Essentially, we were eager to ruin it for the rest of you.

Sadly, the Gods punished us for our heresy.  New Year’s Eve day (is that the right way to say it?), my wife comes down with some sort of allergic reaction, gets these weird hives that she never had before, and can’t go out.  We tell our friends to take our hotel room, which may be the nicest thing we’ve ever done for anyone ever, and hang out on the couch all night.

So that was our first New Year’s Eve in the suburbs: home, alone, watching TV and in bed by 12:30.  Yeeeesh.  We’re becoming suburbanites faster than I thought…….