the hum / By Andrew Goff

NYE: Don’t Break Anything

How to have harmless Plaza fun, Arcata/Eureka New Year’s events, and who’s gonna drive you home

(Dec. 29, 2011)  No, seriously. Stop destroying stuff. It ain’t cool, k?

While there is a slew of venues with actual sanctioned New Year’s Eve events occurring this Saturday, anyone who’s spent any drinking holiday in Humboldt knows where the largest concentration of happy, hyphy 2011 calendar burners will gather: The Arcata Plaza.

Bar row’ll call: Sidelines, Toby and Jacks, The Alibi and Everett’s will be wall-to-wall peeps on Saturday night, as is always the new year’s case. Sweaty, gyrating, inebriated bodies will be in ample supply to usher in 2012. Breathing room? Not so much. Sure, it’s the closest thing Humboldt has to Times Square, but then again, you could have gone there and you chose to be here, right? Whatev. It’s your call, Humboldt. Follow your heart.

But as the “hour” of the hour draws nearer, the odds of Plaza destruction — similar to Halloween‘s — increase. Round ‘bouts 10 p.m. ‘til — rain or no rain — the indoor crowds will thin, the Plaza’s numbers swell and, for better or worse, the real revelry begins. Picture the end of the USO show in Apocalypse Now, but with different uniforms.

Sure, big fun. But if we may be real for a moment; I know bottles are really fun to chuck (see The Blues Brothers. So fun!), I know it seems silly to restrict fireworks to one holiday a year (right? Also, so fun!), and I know it’s really fun to climb and straddle the face of the 25th President of the United States while people go “Woo!” (totally was all over it when I was younger), but this whole tradition has really run its course, folks. ‘Tis played.

Elsewhere in this week’s Journal you can read about the city’s efforts to curtail the mayhem — more than 30,000 totally useful dollars in damage caused by Halloween hooliganishness this year! Spoiler alert: a buzzkill fence and McKinley greasing are being considered to reduce the bedlam. But, really? No one likes a slippery president. Let’s try to police ourselves, eh? If you see someone about to chuck an empty bottle of Coors Light at the statue scalers, kindly tap them on the shoulder and politely motion toward one of the Plaza’s conveniently located mosaic garbage receptacles. (Yes, they should be recycling. Baby steps.)

From a guy who’s been there, here’s a fun New Year’s Eve Plaza trick that requires no flower bed trampling. Borrow a megaphone — that is, if you have difficulty being loud, I don’t — and at, oh, 11:56 fire that thing up and start counting down from twenty. Like clockwork, people will hear you, assume you know what you’re doing and join you,  “three … two … one … Happy New Year!” There. You’ll walk away from the evening with a sense of accomplishment knowing that all those fools were celebrating a few minutes early per your deviousness. See, simple joys. And the City of Arcata will thank you.

But if you’d like to steer clear of the watchful eye of Plaza Cam, Humboldt venues offer plenty of New Year’s Eve soirees for every taste. Mere blocks from the Plaza anarchy, in fact, are several shows for cool kids. We recommend going to one of these and then, if you really get that itch to see Rome burn, you can step outside round midnight. At least try to resist that urge though.

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