Scenes from a cold, clear New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas — PHOTOS
With all the flair and fascination Las Vegas can offer, the nation's largest fireworks display blasted off at midnight over the Strip as 80,000 bursts of sound and color danced across the frigid nighttime sky in sync to music.
The final volleys were a musical tribute to the late show biz icon Frank Sinatra.
At midnight, Sherry Casias, 50, of Simi Valley, California, kissed her husband, Ray, while fireworks erupted and confetti fell downtown.
Her first thought of 2016?
"I just wish for a better world."
Less than one hour before midnight, a young man stood warming his hands by a heater in the light of the Stratosphere. He smiled with his friends, also here for the first time, with a look of excitement in his eyes.
Yousef Mokhtar, 24, is originally from Dubai but has lived in San Diego for a year. Currently studying English, he is the only one of his friends to speak the language, though all three smiled and nodded agreement to his translation.
"I have always wanted to see a New Year's in Las Vegas," Mokhtar said. "We have always seen it as one of the best cities in the world, and it's true."
The lightly dressed Mokhtar said the 35-degree cold didn't bother him.
"It really is not very bad," he said.
Although excited to be in Las Vegas for the festivities and celebrations, Mokhtar said he and his friends did not have a plan for the night.
"We're here to have fun," he said. "We will see what happens next."
About two hours before the clock struck 12 to usher in 2016, a party atmosphere began to build among the crowd of 300,000 that stretched from New York-New York to the Fremont Street Experience.
Down by the Container Park near Fremont Experience at about 10:30 p.m., a fire-spewing praying mantis guarded the entrance and inspired an affectionate moment for Los Angelenos Christian Cage and Erika Torres, who stopped to kiss.
Music from a cartoon band, Gorillaz, played "Feel Good Inc." for the pair, who were dressed as Muppets — he the blue-furred Cookie Monster, she a red-furred Elmo.
Torres, 31, said she had just graduated from Cal State Dominguez with a psychology degree. She works as a behavior therapist, helping autistic children. Cage, 37, stressed he's unrelated to Nicolas Cage, though both work in Hollywood. Christian Cage is a stuntman. When asked if he was in any famous films he said no.
"I'll be Policeman No. 3, kicking in a door," he said.
For the new year, Cage said although it sounded cliche, he hopes for peace and harmony.
"In the words of Rodney King, I hope everyone can just get along,," he said. "And that we have no more Kardashians."
He said he'd work to achieve his goal by treating others kindly.
"All you can do is just be yourself and hope for the best," he said.
Torres said her New Year's hopes were simple.
"Just happiness," she said.
How would she achieve that?
"Money," she said with a laugh.
A money shot was happening down under the Fremont Street canopy as Lesley Vervaet of Vancouver, British Columbia, stopped to kiss a pink-robed, pink-mohawked, silver-earringed character who calls himself Shannon Freakmaster.
The beast had a cocktail in his hand and world domination on his mind. "It's new year, a new beginning and a new end," he said. "In the words of Pinky from 'Pinky and the Brain,' what are we going to do tomorrow? Conquer the world. I just want to rock this (expletive)."
For others, 2016 is more about health than wealth.
Jim and Judy Frank were at the D Las Vegas, dancing in a mini-spotlight for a picture. They're from Peoria, Illinois, and were in Las Vegas to celebrate better health. Judy, who is 73, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She had been to the Mayo clinic in Rochseter, Minnesota, on Dec. 1 and learned the disease is in remission.
"I hope for the new year that it stays that way," she said.
Jim Frank, 69, a retired hydro-engineering plant manager, hoped for the same.
"Health and wealth for her," he said.
Most years have their share of ups and downs.
Bill and Mary Gwaltney decided to get a start on theirs at the roller coaster at New York-New York.
"We decided since we got down here early we'd do this," said Bill Gwaltney, an active-duty Marine at Camp Pendleton in California.
It helped that the Gwaltneys have family in Southern Nevada, enabling them to celebrate New Year's Eve without their kids tagging along.
The cold New Year's Eve weather was cooperating enough to allow the roller coaster to operate. Early in the evening, there was practically no line.
Asked if it was their first time on the ride, Mary Gwaltney had one qualifier.
"It's our first time sober."
It was cold, calm and clear for the fireworks show.
And there was cold cash to be made with the New Year's Eve crowd in town.
Conditions on the Strip were expected to dip near freezing after the clock struck midnight, but there was no wind to derail the world-renowned $600,000, 8-minute, 18-second show featuring 80,000 pyrotechnic flashes, salutes and rapid-fire aerial shells synchronized to music.
Police hoped the crowd would be as calm as the weather. But at 11:30 p.m., a stabbing near the Caesars Palace food court left one person with nonlife-threatening injuries.
Vendors hoped to sell their wares despite tight security in the wake of 2015's terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, and threats against New Year's Eve celebrations in Munich and Brussels.
The Nevada National Guard had an increased presence. About 1,000 uniformed police officers were on duty on the Strip, with another 300 at the Fremont Street Experience. Undercover cops also were in the crowds.
Heightened security put vendors out of the way of their usual lucrative, people-heavy haunts. Those wanting to welcome 2016 with a top hat, light-up bunny ears or a noisemaker — had to venture to the shadowy, less heavily trafficked, sidewalk of the Strip.
Florentina Mora, 42, has been selling New Year's celebratory accessories to revelers on the Strip for years. But raking in cash by helping people ring in 2016 was tougher this New Year's Eve.
Mora said police already had asked her to move three times by 7:30 p.m. It's an untenable situation for a vendor like Mora, who after shouting in the shadows and seeing few customers, hoisted her folding table over the railing to set up shop on the Strip's street in hopes that she wouldn't be spotted by police and asked to move yet again.
"We have to because otherwise we are going to lose money," Mora said.
Others on the New Year's Eve labor force were literally hustling between jobs.
Wolfgang Stanley Jr. is one example.
He found a parking space early at the MGM Grand and was on a beeline from the fifth floor of the garage to the McDonald's in the resort.
"I'm working from 8 until 4 in the morning here," he said. "When I'm done here, I'll go over for my regular shift at the store at Lake Mead and Hollywood from 5 to 12."
Stanley said he's doing the marathon shifts because he can use the money. He gets paid $14-an-hour to work New Year's Eve.
"I've worked the last three holidays," he said. "They said they needed some extra workers because it should get pretty busy tonight."
Was he worried about the traffic getting out?
"Naw, it shouldn't be like coming in. I guess it might be, but I think by then it should be a lot better."
Stanley said he likes the work, especially on the Strip because he gets to meet interesting people.
Even though he's right on the Strip, he wouldn't get to see the fireworks show.
"It's all right," he said. "I've lived here most of my life, so maybe I'll see them sometime. I missed them last year, too."
Phil Grucci, president and creative director of Fireworks by Grucci, said the spectacle launched from the rooftops of seven Strip resort properties — the Stratosphere, The Venetian, Treasure Island, Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood, Aria and MGM Grand — is the largest fireworks show in the United States and among the 10 biggest displays in the world.
With the theme "On Top of the World," the fireworks show featured a special tribute in the grand finale to entertainment icon Sinatra, who would have been 100 on Dec. 12. He died in 1998.
Reporters Richard N. Velotta, Bethany Barnes, Matthew Crowley, Kimberly De La Cruz and Christian Bertolaccini contributed to this report. Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2
