Where were you on New Year's Eve, 1996? I was on Las Vegas Boulevard, crammed in among seventy-seven trillion people who gathered to watch the Hacienda Hotel get blown up and brought down. With me was a lady friend of mine who'd danced in the Lance Burton show when it was in the Hacienda's showroom. She hated the place and wanted to be present for its demise.
It took us a long time to make our way through the crowds to get to our vantage point for the implosion. It took even longer to make our way back down The Strip…and in between, we experienced the awesome pleasure of inhaling about four tons of dust from the demolition. Still, it was almost worth it for the fireworks display that preceded the nuking of the Hacienda. (Very typical of Las Vegas. On New Year's Eve, that street is naturally packed with folks partying and celebrating and even — you may be shocked to hear of this going on that night in that city — drinking. No "added attractions" were needed to draw a mob…but someone decided too much was not enough so they wanted to also blow up a hotel…plus, they set off something like a half million bucks worth of fireworks. If you like excess, Vegas is your place.)
I wrote about that evening in this article which you can read elsewhere on this site. And then you can come back here and play today's clip, which is six minutes of someone's home movies from that night. You won't experience the thrill of the fireworks display, which had to be seen live to be believed and appreciated. But you also won't have to breathe powdered hotel or have drunks melt your windbreaker with their breath.
