In sending off a year so many would like to forget, New Yorkers spent a night that will most likely be remembered for its communal rejection of the usual fanfare. But some could not resist the lure of a big night out.
Sheriff’s deputies watchful for large indoor gatherings raided three buildings across the city, including a Queens karaoke club with 300 patrons. 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 attempts at revelry came amid new infection numbers: 176 deaths statewide from Covid-19 on Friday, according to a New York Times database. Nearly one in 10 people in the city tested over the past week were positive. Throughout the state, the positive test rate on average over the last seven days was 7.2 percent.
But there seemed to have been few enough large parties on New Year’s Eve 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 in a steady stream of people to sing at a karaoke club.
“Three floors of people with these small rooms,” Sheriff Joseph 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. And in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, they broke up a party at Stars Hall, where some 80 people were drinking and smoking hookah, the sheriff said.
It was the muted celebration in Times Square that largely set the mood for the city though.
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 “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.
— Michael Wilson The New York Times