Times Square

The night skies over America exploded in fireworks today as revelers from Times Square to Honolulu celebrated the year 2000 with rollicking street parties, gospel singing, millennial toasts and New Year's wishes. In cities and towns across the country, Americans counted down the new year as it rolled across the globe, from the South Pacific island of Tonga to the Pyramids to Paris. And when midnight came to their time zones, bells rang in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Kazoos blared in Milford, Mich.

You may hear drums beating above the noise of the crowds at the millennial New Year's Eve celebration in New York's Times Square. You may hear bells from Bali, electric violins, trumpets, a "space flute" and an aboriginal didgeridoo.But you won't see them.The instruments are part of a computer-generated "virtual orchestra" led by Baltimore conductor Forrest Tobey and developed at Peabody Institute that will perform on New Year's Eve in Times Square at what is being dubbed the "world's biggest party."

When the ESPN Zone opened in the Power Plant last summer, people sometimes waited in line for three hours to get in.More than a year later, lines -- though shorter -- still snake out the door of Baltimore's Inner Harbor attraction.The sports entertainment complex has done twice the business expected, according to its creators, Walt Disney Co. -- more than 1 million visitors."It's really surprised us at every level," said Art Levitt, president of Disney Regional Entertainment Inc. "From the tourist to the local level, it's been well received.

Mark Goldstrom's annual New Year's Eve party started with a ladder. A 28-foot extension ladder that, when he got it home, he realized was taller than he needed to clean the gutters on his Owings Mills house.Some people might have returned the ladder to Hechinger's or swapped it for a 20-foot. But this 41-year-old marketing manager for a cement company is nothing if not creative. What could he do about this ladder overcapacity problem, he asked himself.Ummm. ... He is in a business that uses many thousands of buckets each year, and they were sitting all around him. Ummm.

NEW YORK -- Drug dealers used to ply their trade openly there. And homeless people took up residence. But thanks to a police crackdown, those problems have abated.Still, Madison Square Park, 6.2 acres between 23rd and 26th streets, stretching from Madison Avenue to Broadway in Manhattan, is a far cry from the verdant gem it was in the 19th century.Its asphalt is cracked. Its irrigation is poor. There are missing benches, broken fences and poor landscaping.There's more dirt than green even in the warmer seasons.

Three months after Walt Disney Co. launched its first ESPN Zone at the Inner Harbor, the company said yesterday that it will take the concept to Times Square next summer."

WITH THE REMOVAL of the millennium clock from the plaza known as Lawyers Mall beside the State House in Annapolis, the question of where to put it remains. The Maryland Commission for Celebration 2000 is looking for another conspicuous spot, not necessarily in the state capital.These digital "countdown" signs bring to mind a bustling commercial space such as Times Square in New York, rather than a quaint historic district like downtown Annapolis'. The flashing numbers belong near their brethren: other blinking signs, jumbo television screens and bright billboards.

The president did the unpardonable: He asked the Supreme Court to work in August.Don't look now but the House of Reps passed an honest campaign finance reform. Wiser heads in the Senate will stop this madness.If New York can clean up Times Square, you'd think Bawlimer might get serious about The Block.Better a slimmer GM than none at all.Pub Date: 8/05/98

NEW YORK -- City planners and students of urban economics didn't write the script this way: A dank building once obscured by the grime and honky-tonk of New York's 42nd Street has emerged as a spring bouquet within the revival of Times Square.Consider the case of the New Amsterdam, a 1903 playhouse rescued from the moldy depths of neglect and ignorance by preservationists, a redevelopment authority, substantial public outlays and the Walt Disney Co. Today, splendidly restored, it is the home of the musical stage version of "The Lion King."

NEW YORK -- It is the most Manhattan of shows, and here comes the cast, walking down marble staircases and onto the lobby's terrazzo floor, their faces lighted by the gilt ceiling and original chandeliers: the flight attendant looking for a taxi to Kennedy, the recovering homeless crack head headed for a counseling job, the struggling actress late for the rehearsal of her own one-woman play about Emma Goldman, the New York City anarchist.But will it play in Charm City? This is the Times Square Hotel, the model Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has in mind for a downtown housing complex for homeless people, the elderly and students.