Sunday, December 31st, 9:10 p.m. For the third year in a row, I set out from my room at the Frontier Hotel and merge into the slipstream of bodies surging ever southward toward whatever spot they've chosen in which to ring in the New Year. (Pray to your gods and Donald Trump that the Frontier is still in existence next year, as it has annually prevented me and plenty of other partiers from getting behind the wheel in the wee hours of New Year's Day.)
I am a live wire, ready for whatever 2007 has to sling at me. But, since I started in on the champagne a little early (like, Friday), I am a rosy-cheeked, giggly live wire. Climbing into my floor-length black evening dress back at the hotel, I could see my targets for the evening from the window. I plotted a triangular attack for the night: Frontier to Tao to Pure and back to the Frontier. Mission: not impossible.
At Tao New York earlier in the week, I overheard a cocktail waitress boast, "I've got a huge table at Tao in Vegas for New Year's!" As I turn over my ticket and sail through the doors, I wonder if she's here. Hosts Bob Shindelar, Jimmy Greenup, Cory Nigrelli and Larson Legris are all dudded-up in finery, as is operating partner Jason Strauss, who stands on the stairs, watching the proceedings.
Inside, the Tao Bistro has been whipped up into another nightclub room; VIP tables have been set up everywhere possible, and two huge screens display the exact time down to the second, which ticks away in digital indifference to the party going off all around. The crowd is the perfect size, all happily munching on sushi and draining the bar. DJ Reach beams in his cheesy 2007 glasses. Photographers Richard Crean and Hew Burney circulate, capturing the scene for us in case we forget what transpired after that last cocktail. I sample a complimentary mai tai just to confirm for the New Year that I still hate them; ditto for a Long Island iced tea. I still have no New Year's resolution, so for now, finding a new It Drink for myself will have to do.
From the Venetian at 10:30 p.m., I make it to the doors of Pure at Caesars in record time, considering the obstacle course of toddlers, strollers, revelers and grandmas, not to mention the thousands of tourists shouting out their hometowns in between sips from 1-gallon milk jugs of beer. On the street, peddlers offer hats, horns and beads. One guy barks into his cell phone, "It's just so damn dry! My lips, my nose ...!" That's right buddy, it's a dry cold, too!
I would like to report Pure looked especially busy or the crowd was especially dolled up, but the fact of the matter is that every night those doors open is like New Year's Eve; the clubgoers are just as beautifully adorned as ever, as plentiful as ever. The only difference? Britney Spears is in the building. I arrive just after her, gratefully overtip for the last hanger in the coat room and spirit myself up to the patio, where at 11:55 p.m. Spears will cut her Swarovski crystal-adorned cake and pop a massive $100,000 bottle of Dom Perignon to usher us into the eighth year of the millennium.
At 11:58 p.m. on December 31, 2006, I am arm-in-arm with a young Persian gent, Ali. A Southern gentleman from Atlanta, he keeps me from tumbling over in the intense wave that follows Britney from the elevator, flanked in body guards, PR and Pure upper management. Just then, at 11:59, a warning shot fires off from the roof of the Flamingo. I can't tell the seconds on my cell phone! I panic. How will I know when it happens? The fireworks go full bore, the cheers lifting up not just from the patio but also from below and all around the Valley. Someone, anyone, what time is it??? "Six, five, four, three, two, one!" Here we go ...
Xania Woodman thinks globally and parties locally. And frequently. E-mail her at
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