The Atomic Ball

For me, New Year’s Eve is all about lowered expectations. Try too hard to make plans in advance and you’re bound to end up fighting with your friends — each with a different opinion on the best $100 open bar in town. Of course, plan too little and you end up toasting sparkling cider with people from high school. I gave up on New Year’s Eve parties a few years ago after just such an incident: getting high and watching Dick Clark at the University of Delaware does not bode a good year. I started going to concerts instead. Last year it was the Flaming Lips at Madison Square Garden — how fucking cool was that? We got all the way up to the front and my friend like totally touched Wayne Coyne. This year I was set to play it safe once again, going to see the Spinto Band play at a bar on South Street. Of course, an invitation to dinner at my friend Derek’s new pad in South Philly changed everything. On top of a free meal, my old buddy offered me one hell of a New Year’s present: an extra ticket to the first annual Atomic Ball at the Franklin Institute. Remember, the place where you can walk around inside the human heart? The thought of running around with 1,500 people through exhibits like this, drink in hand, was too appealing to pass up. And so it was that I ended up at a New Year’s Eve party – thankfully, without friends from high school. The dress code was “stylish, fun, fashionable and eclectic.” This means that you should wear a tux if you want to pretend you are going to the prom, but otherwise a suit and tie will do. My friends opted for the latter. Of course, I was still in rocker gear — I had planned on rocking, after all — so I just dusted off my jeans-with-sneakers look as best I could. Aside from being noticeably under-dressed, I fit right in when we arrived — I’m classy even if my Levi’s don’t announce it. This gig had all the amenities: a premium open bar decorated with Smirnoff ice statues, several tables loaded down with veggies, sandwiches and other good stuff, water and Red Bull bars, access to museum exhibits, a shitty cover band, party favors, and of course, 1,500 21 to 35-year-olds in designer threads schmoozing and trying to impress each other. All this played out while the imposing statue of Ben Franklin sat motionless in his great domed hall, watching as everything unfolded. I immersed myself in the excess; although I politely declined one of the proffered pink wristbands being handed out to singles. They must have been working, because far too many banded couples were camped out in the human heart, of all places (“maybe a good spot for your Midnight Make Out?!” according to one website advertising the event). Fleeting encounters seem to be pretty standard under these types of circumstances; you meet a complete stranger and strike up a conversation. You’re best friends for five minutes and then you move on… or you start hooking up inside of a gigantic model of a human heart. The countdown to midnight came and went with little incident. Balloons and confetti fell, as did wireless networks when everyone in the place whipped out their cell phones to call a friend (or nine) to wish them a Happy New Year. Then everybody just kept on drinking until the vodka ran out — around 1 A.M. Luckily, I was drinking Dewar’s.