Psst: Wringin' out the old year

The last night of the year tends to bring out the best, worst and weirdest in us. (Remember those ludicrous 2-0-0-0 glasses everyone wore 10 years ago?) It's a time of revelry for many, but not for us during the better part of a decade.

We had long pondered why anyone would want to launch an annum feeling like death eating a cracker, but a 2001 incident sealed the deal. We were heading home from a New Year's Eve party at about 2 a.m., about to turn from Dale Street onto the I-94 ramp, when what to our wondering eyes should appear but -- a cop car. Coming up the ramp. The wrong way. In reverse.

After a moment of relief upon realizing that this member of the local constabulary had no interest in us, we decided that on a night when even St. Paul's finest were so derring-do, we had no business being out and about.

But many, if not most, folks still hit the streets, and the evening's goings-on prompt anecdotes naughty and nice. In the former category is this tale from veteran bartender T.J. Akerson, now at Mission American Kitchen:

"I was bartending at Chi-Chi's in Richfield. It was about 11:30, right before the big hoedown. This guy at the bar had to go to the bathroom. And I guess he thought he was in the bathroom, because he pulled down his pants and [urinated] at the bar. There was just a mass evacuation."

Meanwhile, Steve Englund, manager at the Lexington, recalled a much more felicitous event at the St. Paul mainstay. "There was a blizzard on New Year's Eve a few years ago, and nobody could go anywhere," Englund said. "The restaurant was totally full. So finally, somebody decided to start the '12 Days of Christmas' song and it went around the room, from table to table."

Given that it was New Year's Eve, did any table flub its lines? "No," he said, "they all nailed it."