City Desk: Countdown to Nothing

The four horsemen of urban apocalypse—Riot, Fire, Terrorism, and Computer Glitch—bypassed New York as the millennia pivoted. Without thinking much about it, we had planned to go diagonally across Manhattan, to have dinner with friends on the Upper West Side, though as the 31st approached the trip came to seem more and more problematic. We could have taken the subway, but we would have had to change at Times Square. No good. I called car services; they were renting by the hour, for a minimum of eight hours. It’s a four-mile walk, which I did in the last transit strike, but my wife had tendonitis. We would have to take a taxi, assuming we could find one.

Come New Year’s Eve, however, the streets were bright with beckoning taxi lights. There were hundreds of cops, no disorderly drunks, and flowing traffic. It was like being in an auto-show parade (1990s Yellow Cab division). I’ve had more trouble getting to Mostly Mozart concerts than to my rendezvous with Y2K. On our friends’ television we watched Times Square, where about a million crowded-but-happy visitors shouted, beneath the sconces and chandeliers of advertising, in the city’s ballroom.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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The four horsemen of urban apocalypse—Riot, Fire, Terrorism, and Computer Glitch—bypassed New York as the millennia pivoted. Without thinking much about it, we had planned to go diagonally across Manhattan, to have dinner with friends on the Upper West Side, though as the 31st approached the trip came to seem more and more problematic. We could have taken the subway, but we would have had to change at Times Square. No good. I called car services; they were renting by the hour, for a minimum of eight hours. It’s a four-mile walk, which I did in the last transit strike, but my wife had tendonitis. We would have to take a taxi, assuming we could find one.

Come New Year’s Eve, however, the streets were bright with beckoning taxi lights. There were hundreds of cops, no disorderly drunks, and flowing traffic. It was like being in an auto-show parade (1990s Yellow Cab division). I’ve had more trouble getting to Mostly Mozart concerts than to my rendezvous with Y2K. On our friends’ television we watched Times Square, where about a million crowded-but-happy visitors shouted, beneath the sconces and chandeliers of advertising, in the city’s ballroom.