Sin City parties during a pandemic — sort of
The “CEO of Fun” is ready to set 2020 ablaze.
Jodi Harris is collecting everything she can find bearing any reference to the current double-flusher of a year.
Calendars, daily planners, even those novelty New Year’s Eve eye glasses revelers wear against better fashion judgment.
The owner of Las Vegas event and entertainment production company Sight & Sound Events, Harris has been scouring her’s company warehouse for them all.
At 11:55 p.m. on Dec. 31, she plans to strike a match.
“We’re going to take everything that has ‘2020’ on it and we are starting a bonfire,’ says Harris. “We’re burning it all.”
She’s still deciding on what Van Halen song to blare during the festivities: “Fire in the Hole” or “On Fire.”
“Good riddance to 2020,” she says.
Yeah, it’s been that kind of year. Twelve months of question marks culminating in one last head scratcher: In a city renowned for holding some of the world’s biggest, most lavish New Year’s Eve bashes, how exactly will Las Vegas celebrate the end of a year not worth celebrating?
For some, the night will be as quiet as the preceding months, cloistered at home, social distancing 2020 away.
“This year has been so horrifying on so many levels, I just want it to end,” says P Moss, crime fiction author and owner of seminal Vegas dive bar the Double Down Saloon. “I’m going to watch my favorite movie — “The Killing” (1956) — and go to bed early. Then hope for a new dawn when I get up.”
For others, it will be about finding some solace amid the major turbulence of 2020.
“I’m just going to go with the flow,” says Las Vegas Aces forward and 2020 WNBA Most Valuable Player A’Ja Wilson, who hasn’t finalized her New Year’s Eve plans yet. “Of course, I would love to stay protected from COVID. At the same time, it’s just something about it being New Year’s Eve, even if it’s just walking down on The Strip with a mask on.”
Adds Don Miller, communications manager for nonprofit HopeLink of Southern Nevada: “Like most, I’ll be happiest when this pandemic threat is over, but I know the tick of a clock isn’t the answer. I’ll be home with my dog. We’ll both be glad fireworks will be unlikely this year.”
Either way, there’s no denying the significance of this party night for this party city.
“New Year’s Eve is a very important night for us here in Las Vegas, having our rooms and our hotels filled to capacity,” says Peter Guzman, president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas. “It saddens me that that won’t be this year — probably — but we have to do what we’ve got to do now so that we don’t have to be talking about this New Year’s Eve night come next December.”
Guzman plans to bid adieu to this car wreck of a year with a gesture. “I’m going to be saying goodbye with my finger,” he chuckles.
A rare night off
It’s been all Kid Rock concerts and moving furniture with hip-hop kingpins for the past two decades.
Alissa Kelly, head of Las Vegas firm PR Plus, mostly has spent the past 20 New Year’s Eves working shows at the Hard Rock Hotel and the Palms.
One year she opened Jay-Z’s since-shuttered 40/4o Club, with the hands-on rapper helping her haul in the decor.
“There’s not many times you can count down the new year on the patio at the Palazzo with Beyonce, Jay-Z and LeBron James,” Kelly recalls. “It was a very interesting night.”
Now, she’ll have the night off for only the fourth or fifth time this century, she estimates.
Kelly’s hardly alone.
With New Year’s Eve being such a major event here, a significant number of Las Vegans are used to working that night — until now.
“For the first time in my professional career, I won’t be performing,” veteran singer Sonny Charles says. “My wife, Sarah, and I will be at home with a bottle of champagne.”
For many in the local nightlife and entertainment industry, New Year’s Eve is as lucrative as it is hectic.
“It’s a busy night for any freelance performer, and you always take it, because you get paid two- sometimes three-times your normal rate,” explains singer, dancer and showgirl Kady Heard.
Jason Whaley, president of Las Vegas photo booth rental business Smash Booth, says his company has worked every New Year’s Eve since its 2013 inception.
“New Year’s is typically a larger production day that also costs more,” he says, “which we look forward to and count on.”
Smash Booth will compensate for a slow New Year’s Eve this year by offering a complimentary, virtual New Years’ Eve photo booth that you can access through your portable device.
“It, at least, gives somebody something fun to do to commemorate the turning of the new year as people are stuck at home,” Whaley notes.
For those who atypically have the New Year’s Eve to themselves, it’s a be-careful-what-you-wish-for kind of thing, Kelly explains. “Each year you have to work on New Year’s Eve, and you say, ‘Wow, I wish one year I could have New Year’s off.’ Those of us who have it off this year because of COVID were hoping that we could have a New Year’s when things were still happening and we could go out and have fun with friends or family,” Kelly says. “But there’s nothing wrong with trying to make a special night at home and just celebrating the end of this year — even though we know that when we wake up the next day, not that much will be different. It’s just that ceremony of ushering in some fresh energy.”
New year, new goals
Elvis has left the building.
He’s eager to return.
The first year that entertainer Steve Connolly relocated to Las Vegas from his native Massachusetts in 1996, he logged more than 700 performances.
“I was at the MGM doing four shows a day, six days a week,” recalls the longtime Elvis Presley impersonator, who now has a residency at Four Queens. “I’ve been headlining in Las Vegas for 24 years. This would be my 25th year — and I’m spending it at home.”
Connolly plans to hit the recording studio over New Year’s Eve with his 19-year-old singer-songwriter daughter, Carrie, and guitarist son, Brandon, to complete an album from the former, due out in the coming year.
“We’re like The Partridge Family,” Connolly chuckles. “I’m Shirley Jones.”
Dr. Vicki D. Coleman, a Las Vegas-based behavioral health specialist and mental health counselor, sees Connolly’s approach as an important one because she stresses the value of making plans and setting goals in the new year as a means of combating the uncertainty rife in the current one.
“Many of us have neglected our goals throughout the year in an attempt to cope with the pandemic,” Coleman says. “So this is an opportunity to get back to some of the things that we had maybe even planned for 2020, but weren’t able to complete because of the virus.”
For music producer Kane Churko, who’s worked with big names such as Ozzy Osbourne, Five Finger Death Punch and Papa Roach in Henderson-based studio The Hideaway, which he owns with father Kevin Churko, this means spending more time outdoors at his Mount Charleston cabin, where he’ll be on New Year’s Eve, with his family.
“With all the plot twists and turns of 2020, it has been nice to have a place so close to the city to be able to retreat to and embrace some calm,” he says. “Vegas can be a city so overflowing with distractions at times, that it can be easy to overlook some of the amazing nature and hiking that we have all around us here. I’ve definitely made 2020 about taking time to explore a side of Vegas that I wish I had long ago, and I look forward to keeping that curiosity going into 2021.”
The end of any year carries with it a degree of reflection. That will be amplified for those who continue to weather the fallout from the ongoing pandemic.
“This has been a very terrible year, very sad experiences, because of the many losses that families have suffered,” says Dr. Fermin Leguen, acting chief health officer and chief medical officer at the Southern Nevada Health District. “Those who we lost from the pandemic, we have to celebrate their lives and their contributions to all of us. Looking at this New Year’s Eve is going to be a mixture of a sad experience, but also being optimistic about the future.”
For Peter Guzman, it’s simple: Embrace a low-key New Year’s Eve 2020 for high times 12 months from now.
“I think the more we do in a responsible manner this New Year’s Eve will help us achieve our ultimate goal, which is to have the frickin’ biggest party we’ve ever had on New Year’s Eve next December,” Guzman says.
“We’ll be coming back like The Roaring Twenties,” he predicts, “but we have to get through this one.”
The Review-Journal is owned by the family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. Las Vegas Sands operates Palazzo.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow@JasonBracelin on Twitter and @jbraceli 76 on Instagram.
