By OWEN BOSS
Staff Writer
NORTHAMPTON - The streets were flooded with revelers Friday night looking to close out the millennium's first decade by taking part in the 26th annual First Night Northampton celebration.
Donning tiaras, party hats and their First Night buttons, thousands of Valley residents spent the last night of 2010 taking in performances from community artists at venues across the city and marveling at the Northampton's annual fireworks display.
The New Year's Eve celebration, organized by the Northampton Center for the Arts, has become a signature event in a city that prides itself on its diversity and artistic offerings.
Early in the afternoon, more than 100 partygoers, many of them too little to be staying up until midnight, marched their way from the Northampton Center for the Arts to Pulaski Park down Masonic, Center and Main streets. Leading them were a legion of red-coated drummers and blue-hatted hula hoopers.
Tracy Green, who recently moved to Northampton from Lexington, stayed to watch the drummers perform in Pulaski Park with her son, Jack Cleary, 4. Green said 2011 was looking bright.
"We just moved back to western Mass., so we're looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and starting a new life in the Happy Valley."
Nearby, 6-year-old Makenzie Whitley was waiting with her grandparents Terry and Ed Kenfield, of Chicopee, for Ed the Balloon Man's act to begin at the Unitarian Society. Asked what she was looking forward to in the new year, Makenzie replied, "Fun. That's all I can say."
This is the third year Henry and Carla Lafleur, of Montgomery, have brought their grandchildren, Andrew, 12, and Amanda, 10, to First Night in Northampton. The kids and their grandmother were in the spirit, wearing white plastic fedoras.
Henry Lafleur said he doesn't know what 2011 would bring, but the past year was an eventful one. "I think we've done everything in 2010," he said.
Wearing a colorful cardboard crown, Patrick McCullough said he's looking forward to "doing my own creative work" in film. For six months in 2011, he'll be doing that in an exciting new setting, Budapest, Hungary, with his family - wife Viktoria, son Conor, 4, and daughter Nora, 18 months.
Although she didn't venture a guess at how many buttons had been sold for admission to the celebration, Penny Burke, the center's executive director, said this was the first year she could remember where the button supply ran out.
"It's always a good sign when buttons become scarce and our volunteers have to start making new ones the night of the celebration," Burke said with a smile as she greeted patrons on their way into a performance by the MarKamusic Latin Family Fiesta at the Center for the Arts.
"From what I can tell from here, it looks like a lot of people came out this year," Burke said. "The crowds for our early events were simply huge. It was much more than just standing room only, there were so many people that some people couldn't get in at all."
Money generated from First Night, Burke said, accounts for about 30 percent of the center's annual operating costs.
"We have in excess of 100 volunteers who really knock themselves out putting this thing on each year," Burke said. "Without their help, this event wouldn't be possible."
Across the city's downtown business district, store fronts and restaurants were decorated with balloons and streamers and crowded to capacity. Many, like Faces on Main Street, extended store hours to accommodate the influx of shoppers.
Terri Pajaak, an employee at Faces, was happy to report that this year's crowd was among the largest she had ever seen.
"It's been really crazy tonight," Pajaak said. "This is much busier than it was last year for New Year's, which is what we love to see."
Around 6 p.m., performances citywide came to a halt as area residents funneled into the street to find a spot for the annual fireworks display, sponsored by the city's Business Improvement District.
From the parking lot outside of The Northampton Brewery, a crowd of more than 100 sounded noise makers and cheered as the display was launched from atop the municipal parking garage.
From atop his father Sean's shoulders, 3-year-old Liam Brennan stared upwards in amazement, letting out an "ooo" or an "ahh" after each firework lit up the night sky.
"We've been coming down from Sunderland for First Night for the last couple of years because there's so much to do you can kind of pick and choose what you want to check out," Sean Brennan said.
Staff writer James F. Lowe contributed to this story.
Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.
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