Austin fired up to greet 2009

City welcomes year with fire, festivities and belly dancers.

By Miguel Liscano
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, January 01, 2009

The 34-foot wooden pendulum clock that stood silently at Auditorium Shores for days was set ablaze just after 8:15 p.m. Wednesday by its makers as a symbol of a bygone year.

The clock, which took six weeks and a crew of 30 to build, lit up with a flurry of fiery bursts inside its intricately designed body, climbing to the top of the structure until it burned to the ground.

Before it burst into flames, hundreds in the crowd started chanting "burn it" after the scheduled lighting time of 8 p.m. came and went.

But when it was eventually lit, the crowd gasped in awe.

"That's what we came here to see," someone in the crowd yelled.

The blaze was set as a finale to the fourth annual First Night Austin parade through downtown and as one of about 80 installations and performances this year presented by more than 800 artists.

Thousands of people said goodbye to 2008 and hello to the new year at the downtown party, which included aerial dancers in the City Hall lobby and the World's Fastest Hamlet: 15-minute, 2-minute and 10-second comedic versions of the play under the First Street bridge. The event was to end with a midnight fireworks show over Lady Bird Lake.

As the clock tower was consumed by flames, Wilson Day , 46, commented several times to a friend about how cool it looked while embers floated over the crowd.

"I'm in awe of whoever designs things like that," he said.

Dozens of New Year's resolutions and other messages ("Let there be Rock" and "Everyone to be as happy as me!") written on papers attached to the clock and directly on the wood went up in smoke.

"I think it represents a good, old-fashioned bonfire with a purpose," said Gene Richards, 58, who added happiness wishes. "You write what you want things to be and let it go to the skies."

Earlier Wednesday, at a waterside gazebo on Auditorium Shores, people rang 21 wind chimes from 2 feet to 14 feet tall. And children and adults played with hula hoops at the southern base of the First Street bridge.

The parade, which included a giant spider web and a giant shopping cart, snaked from Seventh Street along Congress Avenue and ended at the clock tower on the shores of Lady Bird Lake.

Along the way, a bicycle-powered snake skeleton and a group of unicyclists — one dressed in an Elvis Presley jumpsuit — wound their way down the street.

The horn section of a band dressed like bees filled the air with music, and a New Orleans-style band marching down the street also entertained the crowds. As a bicycle-powered giant monarch butterfly passed, 8-year-old Madelynn Meads turned to her mother in joy and pointed it out.

"I love it," Madelynn, a fan of butterflies, said a few minutes later. "It's cool seeing something you collect out on the streets."

In the crowd, Austin's most famous eccentric, Leslie Cochran, stood on a trash can to watch part of the parade.

As women dressed as hummingbirds on roller skates, belly dancers and several people juggling flames passed, Cochran, dressed in silver leggings, a denim skirt, a furry leopard skin coat and an equally furry pink hat, said he was impressed.

"The costumes are fantastic," Cochran said. "It's going to be a good year."

mliscano@statesman.com; 445-3629