Sushi and Champagne on the Alameda Central Plateau for New Year’s Eve

I was 20 years old and it was the third New Year I had spent away from home. At 18, I decided to spend the next 18 years without the classic family celebration, which more than a tradition, seemed to me to be an obligation. So, at 36 years old, I spent more than 8 years eating sushi and drinking champagne in the central aisle of the Alameda.

The tradition started in 2007. I suggested to my friends that we spend New Years together, doing something different. Everyone quickly got hooked on the idea, and just as quickly, they disappeared from the picture. The only one who stuck with our goal of doing something “outside of the family dynamic” was my friend Sol. She was going through a not very pleasant time at home, so going out was a more than perfect alternative.

I remember once seeing in a photo album people in Valparaíso eating in the street to get a perfect view of the fireworks. They told me that this had also happened in Santiago, with the Entel Tower fires, so that year we wanted to see them up close. I thought about the menu and found something we didn’t eat every day, something that deserved a special occasion: sushi. It was right at its peak, and it was also extremely convenient because it came on a platter, with chopsticks included and soy in wells.

That day we arrived around 11 p.m. to the Los Héroes metro station. As I left, I was shocked by the noise. Street vendors, people talking. The excitement of the end of the year has been heard and felt. We walked a few meters through the center of the Alameda and settled in a space in the central plateau, on a small patch of grass that we found. I was impressed to see so many people on the same plane, there were entire families dining. Some had the trunk of their car opened to serve as a table and others had brought camping kits. We ate the sushi and at midday we hugged each other, opened a bottle of champagne from which we drank straight and enjoyed the show.

That time I also realized how long they lasted fireworks. They last between 15 and 20 minutes, And For the first five minutes, you dedicate yourself to kissing people, but then there is a kind of “silence” between people, because the noise is so loud that you cannot speak. I see these minutes as a time for introspection: a new year is coming and a cycle is closing and I think it is time to ask ourselves what we want and what we expect from this new cycle.

After giving and receiving hugs from strangers, we started walking towards a party. At this time, there is almost no locomotion and if you want to move from one place to another, it is best to walk. And people are walking in the middle of the Alameda in the middle of the night. At that time it felt like a safe place, because everyone was partying, no one was anywhere else. That day I realized that there was a small subculture, because On TV you are shown people waiting for the fireworks, but you don’t know how they arrive, how they leave, what happens in between or what happens after. It’s like discovering things that you have no idea are true until you experience them.

I still remember looking up and seeing people partying on the balconies of buildings. I felt so comfortable, so happy with the project that I had developed myself, that I decided to repeat it for eight years.

In my family, I am the youngest of three brothers. The oldest one has been with me for eleven years and the middle one for nine years. Most years I remember waiting with my family until noon, hugging each other, then turning on the radio to listen to the national song followed by a beautiful message from Sergio Campos. After that, my brothers went to their respective parties and I stayed with my parents with the door of the house open so that neighbors and other relatives could come and greet us. We did the same: we walked around this town of Macul, where everyone greeted us with hugs and best wishes for the coming year. I don’t remember what, but it was about one in the morning and I fell asleep. It was my New Year’s celebration until I turned 18.

On December 31, 2005, I was at my best friend’s house after school. We had graduated fourth grade and thought we were adults because we were 18 and legally adults. I had stayed the day before and around noon I was getting ready to go home to spend the New Year with my family, as was usual. But my friend invited me to spend it with him, his father and his brothers. At that moment I felt strange asking my parents this, because I thought it was a family vacation, but I asked them and they said yes, although I noticed a little disagreement in their response.

I went home to change and put on the nicest T-shirt I had at the time: a black one with the Superman logo in silver. I was letting my hair grow out, so I felt super good about myself and super good about myself. We went with his father to a field outside of Santiago where other members of his family were. I don’t really remember what we ate or how many people there were, but I do remember that one of the songs played next at prom time was Hung Up, by Madonna. For me and my friend, that moment was everything.

The next day, already at home, I realized that I had such a good time that I wanted to repeat every year, on New Year’s Eve, the excitement of doing something that I liked, which made sense to me. So, every year, I would try to convince my friends to join the initiative and come up with a plan where we would feel welcome in the bubble we would build that evening.

Although the 18 years I spent away from family tradition weren’t all perfectly planned, I made sure each one had the special touch I wanted when I turned 18. For a long time, this holiday was the second most important day of the year for me, after my birthday. I work for a newspaper and the first year of the pandemic I had a night shift on the 31st. It was hard for me to go somewhere to party, so I stayed in my apartment, super well dressed , but to go nowhere. When I was 12, I drank a glass of champagne because, even though I was alone and working, it was a special day.

I fondly remember New Year’s Eve 2008, which was also spent with my friend Sol and one of her friends. We went to her apartment in the center and before 12 p.m. I dedicated myself to taking photos with a digital camera, because my look deserved to be immortalized: a friend who was studying hairdressing had made me a bun and a tail very high horse, very typical. Fashion from the 2000s. I put on jeans with white pockets that I had bought at Central Station especially for this date and I combined them with a light blue and gray striped t-shirt.

Or that time I climbed San Cristóbal Hill with my boyfriend and several friends. There were six of us in total, the highest call I have ever made. Some of them were strangers to me, but we all became close when we arrived at the virgin and settled in for our sushi picnic. I repeated the plan of the hill several times and on one of them my family accompanied me. They wanted to do something out of the ordinary, something other than being in the house. Now I had nephews, so we brought snacks and saw the fireworks from Entel Tower, which seemed much further away than from the central platform, but there they were, exploding in the sky at far.

Now that I add it up, I realize that I spent several of those years with strangers, whose names or faces I no longer remember, but who were also looking for an unusual space, and that this gave them has often been used. good confinement to feel accompanied on a special day.