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I’ve celebrated New Year’s Eve in Times Square on many occasions.

Whether I took the F Train from Brooklyn or the Amtrak from Union Station in DC, hanging out in the square was a fairly customary thing to do. In retrospect, it was somewhat pointless, but pretty much everything the human animal does would fall under the “pointless” header.

When I moved to Los Angeles, it was a bit disappointing. Los Angeles is not really a city. It’s a collection of 50 smaller cities sewn together by 30 mile long avenues. LA’s sprawl means that central celebrations are impractical and/or impossible. Except when the Lakers win.

When I first began visiting the Vegas Strip on New Year’s Eve, I tried to pick up were Times Square left off. There was once again a central, dense, crowd of hundreds of thousands of people … and the culmination of the fireworks were always an interesting touch.

The problem is, Vegas never quite felt the same. Scratch that, Vegas never felt even remotely similar. It’s definitely missing something. Even though The Strip’s crowd was smaller than that in Times Square, it always felt far more cold and impersonal. While I’m not a terribly social creature myself, I still missed looking around and seeing other people having a good time. It put me in a slightly less miserable mood. I suppose this is why I went to these events to begin with.

Celebrating New Year’s Eve on The Strip typically entailed standing around for hours to watch 1/3rd of a fireworks show. Given the length of the Boulevard and the bend in the road, you simply can’t see all of the displays at one time. You more or less have to pick a spot and hope that your perspective is decent. There is a bit of luck involved in this endeavor.

The other problem with the Strip feel, in my opinion, was that the people seemed far more hostile. People in Times Square certainly got their buzz on with a happy glow, but people on the Vegas Strip trend toward being mean drunks. Trying to think logically for a moment, I think there’s a certain inclination toward insecurity and emotional immaturity among people who attend red carpets and find it entertaining to hobnob with 50 Cent and Kim Kardashian. Anyone over the age of 25 that finds this appealing are probably trying to compensate for their own obscurity by going the “fame by association” route. Typically, the only people who care about celebrities are wannabe celebrities who live vicariously through others, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, The Boulevard does feel like a bit of a poser’s bazaar at times. It can seem more about marketing and public relations than just having a genuinely good time.

I think this also might explain the lack of friendliness and camaraderie in Las Vegas during larger events. I would imagine that it’s hard to relax and be genuine while simultaneously trying to be hip.

Times Square, on the other hand, was more or less a great equalizer. Whether you were a bum, fashion model, or brain surgeon … you were herded like cattle behind barriers, and for a couple of hours, everyone was in the same socioeconomic class.

Sudden epiphany … I think this is what attracted me to The Square more than anything.

Last New Year in Vegas, I decided to try something completely different. Fremont Street.

This was a bit of an eye-opener for me. For the first time since leaving the East Coast, I actually felt as if I had finally recaptured that Times Square spirit. In a way, it was even better. With a wide variety of live music, adjacent restaurants, casinos, and the ability to move around without being herded into pens — there is just far more for the public to see and do on Fremont than in most other places.

Fremont Street has the soul The Strip sorely lacks. People dress like idiots, and they just don’t give a f**k. It doesn’t feel contrived. It has the camaraderie, and the glow of pleasantly buzzed people who don’t all look as if they are 10 seconds away from puking because they can’t hold their alcohol. There is more free-flowing marijuana throughout the crowd, and I don’t care what anyone says … pot users are far more pleasant to be around in groups of 1,000 or more than a bunch of sloppy drunks.

If people had been drinking gallons of booze instead of ingesting more intellectually stimulating pharmaceuticals, Woodstock would have been an unmitigated disaster.

This year was the second year of “TributePalooza”, and I have to say that I am a huge fan of this concept. While some people may turn their nose up at tribute bands as being far too low-brow and hokey for their liking, they are missing the key ingredient with these groups.

They’re just goddamn fun.

Something just clicks when you look around and see a wave of familiarity wash over the faces of 30,000 people when they hear the opening chords to their favorite songs from 20 years ago. I’ll expound on the bands a bit later, but a crowd favorite this year was “Appetite For Destruction” … a GNR tribute group.

As is often the case, Oscar Goodman helped during the countdown last night, and I didn’t even harbor any hostility toward him. Even when he said some bullshit line regarding optimism and partying or something. It’s easy to be upbeat when you are the Mayor pulling a nice public salary, and they’re just empty words, but the crowd seemed to like it.

Of course, this is still Las Vegas. There was a blue moon, we’re in the core of a large-ish city, and there were simply too many people to have everything go smoothly. There were a few altercations in the crowd, and there was a small-but-visible “surly asshole” presence (in addition to myself) and some drunken punk kids, but it’s the nature of larger towns. I was annoyed with one fuckbucket who literally picked a line and bulldozed out of the crowd without regards to anyone in his way. He was a short, fat, bald little bastard … so most of us were content with the knowledge that life had already sufficiently shat upon him.

Another guy kept throwing his jacket straight up in the air, ensuring that it randomly hit everyone around him at least seventeen times in the head. I’ve no idea why he did this.

Aside from a few minor incidents, everything was great. I lost count of the number of high-fives and “Happy New Years” I received from completely random people, and I didn’t even get angry when a complete stranger jumped on my back and pulled herself up to get a better look over the crowd. I’m probably going to feel pain from that pretty soon, though. I’m getting a bit too old to be used as an observation deck.

The Fremont party was free last year, but it cost $10 for locals and $20 for visitors this year. It’s nice to see someplace in town actually favoring locals, and I think this also adds to the cohesive feel. Either price is a steal, however.

Anyway, New Year’s Eve 2010 was a great crowd, and another great event.

I thought last year may have been a fluke, so I tried it again, and I’m convinced.

At this point, I feel confident in stating unequivocally that New Year’s Eve on Fremont Street is better than The Boulevard in every way. Not marginally better, but better by orders of magnitude. They’re not even comparable.

I’ve found my new Times Square, and I’m not even going to agonize over it any more.

When it comes to New Year’s Eve, Fremont Street rules Las Vegas.

In my opinion, it may even rule the nation.

Happy New Year.

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