New Year's 2019
Started: 2019-01-23 22:06:23
Submitted: 2019-01-23 23:29:08
Visibility: World-readable
In which the intrepid narrator welcomes 2019 watching fireworks from Gasworks Park
To bid farewell to 2018, and welcome the new year 2019, I headed to Seattle's Gasworks Park -- an easy walk from my house in Wallingford -- to watch the fireworks set off from the Space Needle.
I arrived as Gasworks Park at 23:45. The parking lot was full, with cars circling trying to get a space, before heading into the residential streets in Wallingford to try to find somewhere to park. I joined the crowd walking past the reclaimed industrial equipment to the hill overlooking Lake Union, with a view of the Seattle skyline above Lake Union, and the Space Needle lit up for the show.
At ten seconds before midnight, someone shouted "Ten, nine," and the crowd took up the chant, counting down the end of 2018. The Space Needle itself joined in the count, setting off small fireworks from the side in time with the count. At the stroke of midnight, the main show began.
From my perch, on the southern end of Gasworks Park overlooking Lake Union and downtown, the fireworks from the Space Needle were visible, but they took up a relatively narrow slice of my view. (I couldn't help but compare the display to watching the New Year's fireworks above the Embarcadero from Google's seventh-floor deck.)
I only brought my phone, a Pixel 2 with the impressive Night Sight mode that tries to fix, in software, the problem of low light collection and wobbly hand-held exposure. It does a reasonable job, given its constraints -- and it was the camera I had, so it's much better than nothing.
After the show I walked back to my house in Wallingford, joining the crowd that gradually dispersed as we worked our way north through the neighborhood. From the balcony on the top floor of my house I could see the lights of the city, and hear the stragglers making their way from the park.
