before Katrina and then first, maybe, 2 years after; the bonfire on Orleans Ave was awesome
neighbors start hauling their trees et al out of the house around 11:45, stacked them up and lit them after the countdown
right after Katrina it leaned a bit into a bacchanal with people just needing to let loose
then karens started to karen
spent 99/00 NYE on a rooftop in NYC and it was interesting for not being interesting - being 13% sure planes were going to fall out of the sky as the city descending into blackness - just hard to know how to react to that - "yay, i guess"