ith the benefit of hindsight, it is finally safe to declare that the world did not come to an end in the year 2000. The apocalyptic prophecies, the threats of terrorism, the warnings of catastrophic computer bugs all came to naught. But perhaps all the millennial hype was just a year early after all.
Perhaps this is to be the year of dramatic change, uncertainty and anxiety that failed to take root last year. Maybe those sticklers who reminded people that 2001, and not 2000, marked the real beginning of the new millennium (with about as much success as the purists who tell New Yorkers that there is no such thing as Sixth Avenue) were right all along.
Anxiety is in the air. The stock market has been gyrating wildly, and fears abound that the go-go economy may be gone. The political landscape is being transformed. Oil prices are way up. Violence has broken out anew in the Middle East. And if the disputed presidential election did not produce a constitutional crisis, it certainly produced a crisis of confidence in the nation's voting process and, for some, its judiciary.
"It all feels much more turbulent, much more millennial," said Marshall Blonsky, a semiotician and a professor of interactive telecommunications at New York University. "One of the things a millennium is supposed to be about is millennial anxiety. Last year that anxiety was mostly nonexistent, except imaginarily — a Y2K crisis that didn't materialize, Hollywood movies about meteors about to hit the earth. This year there's real tumult."
There are fears that the failures of Silicon Alley and the jitters of Wall Street could reverberate throughout the region.
And the political world is in flux. A new presidential administration and a new party are taking power in Washington, and, closer to home, New York and New Jersey have just elected new United States senators. New Jersey is also getting ready to seat an acting governor to replace Christie Whitman, who is preparing to head the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington.
In New York City, the municipal government is about to be shaken from top to bottom. Voters will not only choose Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's successor this year, but, because of term limits that are taking effect, they will also elect a new public advocate, a new comptroller and new borough presidents in four boroughs. They will replace 36 of the 51 members of the City Council, and that body, whatever it may look like, will choose its new, powerful speaker.
"In January of 2000, we kind of knew what the end of 2000 would look like in local politics, but right now I think people haven't even an inkling of what the end of 2001 will be like," said Norman Adler, a political consultant. "It could be the kind of millennium that some of those guys with long beards and signs warn about when they walk around Times Square: `The End Is Near.' Maybe now you would want that sign, with a question mark at the end."
And the effects will be felt keenly on the macro level, with questions about what a post-Giuliani era will be like, and on a micro level, as local political organizations are altered, said Mitchell L. Moss, the director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University.
"2001 marks the end of the Molinari dynasty, which has been driving Staten Island politics for more than a quarter of a century," he said, referring to the coming retirement of Guy V. Molinari, the powerful borough president.
In New Jersey, Governor Whitman's coming departure has changed all political equations and given a boost to the ambitions of Donald T. DiFrancesco, the Senate president, who will replace her as acting governor.
On top of that, the political map is about to be redrawn. Because the new census shows that the region's population did not grow as rapidly as those of the South and the West, New York will lose 2 of its 31 seats in the House of Representatives, and Connecticut will lose 1 of its 6. The remaining districts will be redrawn in abstract squiggles worthy of a Miro.
And it is far from clear what kind of economy the new leaders taking office will inherit. Leaders from President-elect George W. Bush to Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, have expressed their concerns. The stock market no longer seems to be the sure thing it was promoted as not so long ago. And the idea of the new economy seems very old indeed right about now.
Gone is the faith that investors had in high-tech stocks just a year ago, the notion that Manhattan real estate and luxury beach houses will continue to climb in price exponentially, the idea that money is limitless.
One symbol of the dashed dreams is Pets.com, the Internet pet supplies retailer whose sock puppet mascot became something of a cult figure, making very expensive appearances as a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and in a Super Bowl commercial. When the company decided to close in November after going through millions upon millions of dollars of start-up money, company officials decided that one of their most valuable assets was the sock puppet and considered offers to buy the rights to it.
"People have been talking about change coming for some time now, but I think change is here now," said Paul A. Bernard, an executive coach and organizational design consultant who advises many businesses based in New York. "There is a high level of anxiety that is almost contagious."
He painted a picture of flailing dot- com businesses running through money too fast, heavy with young, untested vice presidents who have never weathered crises; of more senior executives who are regretting their decisions to jump from old, established companies to Internet start-ups; of a ripple effect that the closed businesses and the layoffs are beginning to have across the economy.
"I don't think there's going to be a Great Depression, but it's going to feel like 1931 to people because we've lived as if there are no risks in the future," Mr. Bernard said. "Now people are realizing that the risk is real. Law firms that staffed up dramatically and signed on for lots of real estate now find that their dot- com clients have gone belly up and they haven't collected fees that were due six months ago."
He warned that many people, like companies, have been pressured into living beyond their means. "This will have huge social ramifications," he said. "It will be interesting when these people cannot pay their bills."
And there are strange and possibly ominous things afoot culturally. Consider that when Rolling Stone magazine and MTV ranked the 100 greatest pop songs, they placed a song called "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys in the top 10, ahead of songs by the Supremes, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and the Who.
Or the $252 million contract awarded to Alex Rodriguez, a baseball player, which makes him more valuable than several entire teams.
Or, in the bread-and-circus, decline-and-fall department, the World Wrestling Federation is starting its own football league on the premise that professional football as it now exists is not violent enough.
Strange days, indeed.
Of course, there have been economic downturns, transfers of power and bizarre pop culture explosions in the past without dire consequences. Professor Blonsky, the semiotician, said it was simply the confluence of all the unsettled events with the changing of the calendar that lead people to ascribe millennial properties to otherwise common events.
But some people see the change in the last year as a sad commentary on what might have been. "It is as if something was nipped in the bud, as if this desire to be part of a generation that will transform the world was nipped in the bud," lamented Richard Landes, the director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. "The wind has changed, and it's cold."
Professor Landes has his own Y2K problem now: his center has financing for only two more years. "If I just had $36 for every time that someone asked me what I was going to do now that the millennium is over, I would be funded," he said, adding that there was still work to be done in understanding the significance of what has just happened.
Others play down any significance ascribed to the alignments of the stars or the calendar. "I don't care whether it's the faux millennium of a year ago or the real millennium of a few days ago," said Edward I. Koch, New York's former mayor. "I just get up every morning and say, `Thank you, God.' "
