New Year’s Eve was mellow for most New Yorkers, and Times Square was practically empty. But some could not resist the lure of a big night out.
New York City, a place synonymous with the glitter and noise of New Year’s Eve, marked the close of a most unpredictable and upside-down of years in quiet deference to its dangers. In sending off a year so many would like to forget, New Yorkers spent a night that will instead be remembered, for its communal rejection of the usual fanfare.
Not everyone stayed home. Sheriff’s deputies watchful for large indoor gatherings raided three buildings across the city, including a Queens karaoke club with 300 patrons. The deputies were suspicious after conducting a stakeout on an emergency exit door. It was as if all eyes were very much not on Times Square, the center of the party for more than a century but practically deserted on Thursday evening.
The low-key rollout of one of the city’s busiest nights came amid new infection numbers that underscored the threats of in-person gatherings. There were 176 deaths statewide from Covid-19 on Friday. The city’s seven-day positivity rate was 9.4 percent; throughout the state, the daily positivity rate was 7.5 percent.
The sobering numbers did not keep everyone socially distant. But there seem to have been few enough large parties that the secret ones were easier to find.
Deputies with the New York City Sheriff’s Office, watching an emergency exit to a building in Maspeth, Queens, early Friday morning, saw a worker let a steady stream of people come inside. The deputies raided the building and found close to 300 people in a karaoke club, drinking and singing, largely unmasked, said Sheriff Joseph Fucito.
“Three floors of people with these small rooms,” Sheriff Fucito said Friday. “And each one of these rooms was packed with people.”
On Prince Street in SoHo, deputies found an illegal club on the sixth floor serving liquor and Champagne to about 145 dancing guests, a setting Sheriff Fucito described as “overcrowded.” And in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, responding to noise complaints, they broke up a party at Stars Hall, where some 80 people were drinking and smoking hookah, the sheriff said.
In each incident, multiple people were charged with some combination of violating orders against indoor gatherings, operating illegal bars and other offenses.
But the muted celebration in Times Square largely set the mood for the city.
Jennifer Lopez performed for an intimate crowd; only a few dozen frontline health care workers were allowed as invited guests. Mayor Bill de Blasio stood nearby. His shuffling dance to “Theme From ‘New York, New York,’” with his wife, Chirlane McCray, was recorded and uploaded to social media, where it was met with the outrage that greets most of his daily interactions.
Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the mayor, including Meghan McCain, a host on “The View,” who blasted Mr. de Blasio on Twitter for “having your own private party in Times Square,” calling it “the most tone deaf thing I may have ever seen a mayor do.”
Yet others who were in attendance found the evening deeply moving. Dr. Zaki Azam, a second-year internal medicine resident at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, was among the guests, with his sister, a pharmacist, and his father, a civil engineer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Dr. Azam, who lives in Jericho, N.Y., had never visited Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Honestly, if 2020 brought us anything, it was the togetherness of family, so it was really nice to end 2020 with family and to begin 2021 with family,” said Dr. Azam, whose grandfather died after contracting Covid-19 last year.
“I don’t think any of us are going to miss 2020,” he said.
In New Jersey, where 5,541 new coronavirus cases and 119 additional Covid-19 deaths were recorded on Friday, it was the year of alternative celebrations, including large-scale drive-through light shows and private fireworks displays.
In Newark, where the police have been aggressively enforcing strict curfew rules designed to curb a second wave of the virus, the police did not issue a single violation Thursday night for celebrations that exceeded crowd limits, according to Anthony Ambrose, the public safety director.
One industry did report brisk sales: fireworks. Anthony LoBianco, the owner of Intergalactic Fireworks stores in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said sales are up about 20 to 25 percent since before the pandemic.
“A lot of families,” he said. “A ‘We want to surprise the kids,’ kind of thing.”
Tracey Tully, Brian M. Rosenthal and Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
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