Nearly 1 million partygoers – most of them wearing orange hats matching the color of the current terror alert – danced in a sea of confetti and fireworks early this morning as an army of security looked on to help 2004 arrive in Times Square without a hitch.
Mayor Bloomberg joined former POW Shoshana Johnson as she pressed the button to lower the 1,070-pound Waterford ball to mark the arrival of the new year as an estimated 750,000 to 1 million excited New Yorkers and tourists looked on.
“There’s nothing like this. It’s awesome,” said Carlos Hernandez, 14, who traveled all the way from Guatemala to be at the Crossroads of the World with his grandmother, who’s from the Bronx.
Ronald Colbert of Staten Island has been coming to Times Square for 25 years, but for him, the ball drop was “still as electrifying as the first one” he saw.
Actress Glenn Close said, “This just makes me hope that in the new year, there’s less people dying and more people coming together like this.”
The crowd was especially large this year because of the unseasonably warm weather.
The orange hats were courtesy of a credit-card company that provided them free to revelers who didn’t bring their own party wear.
The celebration was watched from above by helicopter crews and rooftop snipers deployed around Midtown.
Anyone entering Times Square had to go through checkpoints.
But people in the crowd said they appreciated the efforts of New York’s Finest, and many cheered when police officers walked by.
“The cops this year are the best. It seems like they’re extra nice this year,” said Val Jersevic of Saginaw, Mich., who’s been coming for 18 years.
Bloomberg said New Yorkers went to the party to defy terrorists.
“People turn out because, in America, we understand how precious freedom is,” he said.
That freedom and the celebration meant a lot to Iraq war hero Johnson.
“Freedom is precious, freedom is fragile,” she said.
“You constantly have to fight to protect those freedoms.”
Meanwhile, a few miles away, in lower Manhattan, one of her fellow soldiers had a special night as well.
Maj. Russell Rebmann, 42, who ships of to Iraq in a few days, married his sweetheart, Laura Schoenrock, 29, in a hotel room looking out at the Statue of Liberty.
“I have to stay alert and stay alive and then I’ve got to come home,” said Rebmann about the Hawaii couple’s delayed honeymoon.
Around the city, police this year focused more heavily than last year on hotels, landmarks and ferry terminals, as a result of their analysis of anti-American “chatter” culled from the Internet and other sources, Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
But, as of midnight, there were no terror related incidents in Times Square or anywhere else in the city, Kelly said.
Additional reporting by Zach Haberman, Alisha Berger, Aly Sujo and Ed Robinson