I drove her to Berkeley straight from the onramp to where MLK meets University. She paid by credit card and as soon as she got out I flipped a bitch from the curb across all the lanes until I was flying back towards the bridge.
As I blew through the toll plaza and started climbing the bridge back towards the city, I saw a car with its hazards blinking pulled over on the shoulder.
Then another car.
Then a third.
I looked down at the clock.
11:52.
Eight minutes left in the year.
As I drove further away from Oakland, I saw more cars pulled over to the side of the bridge until the light finally went on in my head.
Fireworks at midnight.
I quickly pulled to the side of the road and threw my blinkers on and watched as more and more people did the same, both behind me and in front until there was a massive line of cars hugging the bridge.
All it took was a handful of cars pulled over to the side for everyone else driving by to realize that they should stop and pause for a moment.
I sat there in my cab and looked at the sky, waiting.
At 11:58, I pulled out into the right lane and slowly took off for the city, as did most of the people who had stopped. As we approached Yerba Buena, a thundering explosion went off in the distance and I looked at the clock.
Midnight.
As I came through the bright tunnel and onto the old part of the Bay Bridge, I could see bright explosions in the sky off to my right and a line of cars all slowing down to take it all in.
Eventually, they all stopped and so did I.
I threw my hazards on and pulled in behind a van.
And stepped out onto the Oakland Bay Bridge.
The line of cars stretched as far as I could see, their passengers all standing on the road over by the railing, watching the night sky light up with reds and blues and yellows. People took photos and hugged and popped champagne, a spontaneous celebration high above the bay on a bridge that has no walkway for pedestrians.
I’m sure a handful of people on the bridge planned the moment, but most of the people I saw seemed as if they had been drawn by the crowd itself.
Sometimes there is safety in numbers.
The night was exceptionally clear and I stood on a girder hundreds of feet above the water and watched the show. Fireworks boomed and blew apart in the air midway between where we were all standing and the Ferry Building, the small flotilla of boats underneath illuminated by the flashes above.
For a few moments, the world seemed to stop. We were all in a place inhospitable to humans, standing on a freeway high above the bay, watching time stand still as bright colors lit the sky for no reason other than the arbitrary moment set by our species as the start of a new year.
I looked back onto the road a couple of minutes into the show and saw a cab driver I knew. He had done the same thing I had when he realized what time it was and we hugged each other, glad to be able to share the moment with someone familiar.
“And people say San Francisco isn’t fun anymore,” he said with a laugh. “Fools.”
We stood there and turned back towards the pretty lights. I thought of all of the people I loved who I wished could be standing there alongside of me, the people whose presence would have added to the moment and I almost cried when I realized there were more people on that list than I could count.
How blessed to have the friends that I have and how amazing it was to run into someone I knew on the top of a bridge at New Year’s, overlooking the city I’ve called home for a long time.
The problem with New Year’s is that it isn’t spontaneous. People get so wrapped up in making one moment so perfect that they lose sight of its significance altogether because they’re too busy focusing on the things surrounding the moment that they forget to be present.
But for ten minutes last night, I was present and accounted for. Under the stars and the exploding fireworks and the steel of a bridge built a generation before I was born, I was in the moment.
I thought back to the year that had passed and my plans for the year I was now standing squarely in, but my brain wouldn’t let me linger. I felt grounded as I hovered over the bay and the fireworks crashed into the air.
The finale came in torrential fire of every conceivable color and cheers and yelps peppered the night along with the thunder of explosions, and as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
And just like that, everyone stood there for a second before they realized that the moment had passed.
I said goodbye to my friend and watched him walk back towards his taxi before I got back in my cab and pulled out into traffic along with everyone else.
When I hit Howard Street five minutes later and saw the couples bickering in the street and men fighting on the sidewalk, the reality of the night snapped back onto me.
But for the first time, I’d had the kind of New Year’s Eve everyone tries to force, simply because I had pulled off to the side of the road.
