(Town of Berlin Facebook page)
Due to rising COVID-19 CASES in the area and multiple vendor cancellations, the Mayor and Council of the town of Berlin have decided to cancel the laser shows and ball drops on Main Street.
All town-scheduled events for Friday, December 31st, are cancelled.
Although the town's New Year's eve events are cancelled, please consider supporting our local business community.
(Numerous venues serving food and beverages are scheduled to be open New Year's eve.)
A crowd of approximately 1,000 people watched as a large disco ball descended from above Town Center Antiques in Berlin late last Friday. As the glittery silver ball reached its destination near a clock on North Main Street, the giant crowd roared, welcoming the New Year with palpable excitement. “It was incredible,” said Barb Stack, a Berlin business owner who instituted the town’s inaugural New Year’s Eve celebration. “It was much better than we ever anticipated. Everybody just had a ton of fun. We were just overwhelmed by the response.”
Organized by the town and the Berlin Chamber of Commerce, the Dec. 31 party was expected to draw a small crowd — only about 100 or 200, according to Michael Day, the town’s director of Community and Economic Development. Undoubtedly, organizers were surprised when hundreds of revelers gathered along Main Street and its side streets, sidewalks and on the porch and front yard of the Atlantic Hotel.
“It was unpredictable as to how many people would show up,” Day said. “There were some things we didn’t think about.”
For instance, Day said, the town should have arranged for portable toilets and for street vendors to sell food and coffee. He added that perhaps the deejay should have been asked to remind people to use the trashcans, or perhaps those trashcans should have been placed in the streets instead of up against buildings.
Day and others had also not anticipated that people would take confetti to the event. Two members of the Public Works Department cleaned it up hours later, but soon after the crowd headed home it was Day, Town Administrator Tony Carson and Stack, owner of Design Resources, assisted by several town residents who picked up the larger trash items such as beverage cups and cans on the street.
Carriage rides were scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m., but approximately 30 people were in line 30 minutes earlier, so they began at 8 p.m.
The giant crowd was a pleasant surprise for Berlin businesses open that evening.
The Atlantic Hotel had its own New Year’s Eve event in its ballroom, but people attending the outside ball-drop could buy a drink at a bar set up on the porch. The hotel also had free hot chocolate and cider for the revelers.Every room at the hotel was booked, either as part of the special two-night package to go with the New Year’s Eve soiree or otherwise booked in advance.
“It was the best weekend the hotel has had since Mr. Fager took over,” said hotel employee Jude Robinson.
The Globe was so packed with people that owner Jen David instituted a “one in and one out” policy for the night. As one person left, another could enter. She did it, she said, “to make sure everybody was comfortable and that we could serve everybody.”
David was not only pleased with the business at The Globe, but the response to the town’s new event.
“For us, it was wonderful. And we were really, really happy to see locals as guests and attending the event,” she said.
Prior to the New Year’s Eve event, Tim Lawrence, director of the town’s Electric Utility, and lineman Fred Litchfield practiced a trial run for the ball drop on Thursday. Other advance preparations included building a device to swing the ball away from the building’s exterior, clearing snow from the streets and setting up the outdoor stage in front of Rayne’s Reef Luncheonette.
A meeting of town department heads will be held this week to discuss what would be needed to make next year’s event even better.
Just in time for New Year's Eve, Milwaukee is named the "Drunkest City in America." That's according to a list compiled by a website called The Daily Beast. A recent national student shows Milwaukee adults take down more drinks than any other city in the country. On average, they drank nearly 13 alcoholic drinks a month. And according to "The Daily Beast," 21.8% of those adults are considered binge drinkers.
"The Daily Beast" says it compared three factors when compiling the list. They include average alcohol consumption per month, binge drinking levels, and the rate of death related to alcoholic liver disease.
Rounding out the top five drunkest cities are Fargo, San Francisco, Austin and Reno.
Cities known for their booze like New Orleans and Las Vegas ranked in the 20s and 30s. Some barely make the top 40 list.
