L.A. Celebrated Millennium With a Full Menu of Choices

Heidi Siegmund Cuda missed the boat with “Party Town Misses Its Millennial Moment” (Jan. 3).

She claims Los Angeles “got caught with its pants down” because we had no massive New Year’s Eve festival, and blames the empty streets on Y2K fears. Nonsense. (And did it occur to her that perhaps Pink’s closed early due to those empty streets, not out of millennium panic?)

Our sprawling metropolis has no central gathering place, and thus had no central celebration. Instead, we had a most American--and Californian--alternative: a wide array of choices. From a cornucopia of concerts and club events to quiet home gatherings, Angelenos did what we do best: celebrate in our own ways. We tend to set trends, not follow them; holding a megabash just because other cities did would have been most un-L.A.

Cuda implies that Johnny Depp moved to Paris because that city had a better millennium party. In fact, a recent Premiere magazine article indicates that Depp, a new father, moved in search of privacy and quiet--in short, so he could do his own thing. How very L.A. of him, even if Cuda doesn’t understand.

DAVID DANIEL

Encino

*

Cuda expressed her dismay that Hollywood’s club-goers stayed home. Well, some of us did stay home, and an awful lot of us didn’t. Many chose to party privately, drinking good wine, enjoying great food, listening to dynamite music and sharing the century’s end with people we love.

Still, Cuda did point out some really cool things we missed, like the accountant from Covina who wore a codpiece and bustier (hotcha hotcha) and Angelyne signing autographs if you gave her five bucks.

I’m just incredibly sorry that I missed this excitement, and I thank The Times for making certain that we in the provinces are kept abreast of the cutting-edge events Cuda so often shares with us.

PATRICK A. LONG

Santa Ana

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Cuda claims that the Sunset Strip was a failure on New Year’s Eve because she did not see trash, confetti or noisemakers littering the street the next day.

In fact, the city of West Hollywood’s Y2K preparations included scheduling street cleaning. During the early hours of Jan. 1, crews were deployed to perform hand litter pick up and sweep Sunset Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard. The hard work of these crews provided the community with clean streets and sidewalks for the remainder of the long holiday weekend.

SHARON PERLSTEIN

City Engineer,

City of West Hollywood

*

As Robert Hilburn notes in his review of the Eagles’ New Year’s Eve show at Staples Center, opening act Linda Ronstadt took the stage 15 minutes prior to the advertised starting time of 8 p.m. (“Partying Like It’s 1979 with the Eagles and Friends,” Jan. 3).

Not only did the show start early, but while Ronstadt was singing for “a few hundred of the later estimated 17,500 fans,” there were thousands of fans outside waiting to get past a bottle-necked security checkpoint. Although my date and I arrived at 7:55, we were not admitted into the venue until 8:40, just in time to catch the second act, Jackson Browne.

As a longtime Ronstadt fan, I had looked forward to this rare concert appearance for months. The concert promoter (Bill Silva Presents) and the artists were more than happy to charge obscenely inflated prices for what was supposed to be a special and memorable evening. Instead, their lack of consideration in starting the show early, as well as the lack of organization on the part of Staples Center, prevented thousands of fans from seeing the beginning of a show for which they paid up to $1,000 per person to attend.

I, for one, came away from the experience furious and extremely disappointed. In light of the ticket prices, I would go so far as to say that the fans were swindled. In this litigious society, lawsuits have been based on less.

CARYN GILBERT

South Pasadena

*

In a city that typically arrives late and leaves early to avoid the traffic delays, I was quite disappointed that I missed Linda Ronstadt’s entire performance because of a 75-minute wait to enter the building!

While I appreciate the safety concern, and assume it was added due to heightened terrorism fears, couldn’t concert officials have notified radio stations so they could advise their listeners to allow extra time? Airlines tell you to arrive in plenty of time in advance for your flight; maybe concert-goers will need to do the same in the future in order to see a complete show!

DAVID SIMONS

Marina del Rey

*

Only someone suffering from depression could put such a negative spin on such a great night. That was the greatest rock concert I have ever seen in my entire life. And like many of my fellow baby boomers, I’ve seen a few.

I want to thank the Eagles, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt for giving us lucky Angelenos such a treat on New Year’s Eve. We are so lucky to live here. Anyone who went to that concert and thinks otherwise needs some counseling.

MARK BEDOR

Studio City

*

I felt like the luckiest woman in the world to the see the Eagles live in concert! The Eagles had us on our feet, crying, cheering, singing aloud in unison. Their performance was the closest thing I have had to a religious experience, especially when they finished us off with the classic “Desperado.”

STACEY MICHAELS

Highland Park

*

Like Howard Rosenberg, I was glued to my TV set from morning to late evening catching the networks’ (mostly PBS and ABC) world tour into 2000 (“For Once, TV Goes Global,” Jan. 1). For spectacle and diversity, few matched New Zealand, China, Great Britain and Paris. And I concur wholeheartedly that those in the U.S. who watched surely discovered something about the rest of the world. If nothing else, it was a geography lesson that Americans sorely need.

I do have a quibble: the scant coverage given to the African continent (Egypt, Nelson Mandela, Somalia). It was another example of the West’s obsessive ethnocentrism.

F. DANIEL GRAY

Los Angeles