Celebrity

They gathered to say goodbye and good riddance to 2008, to consign a gloomy year to drunken oblivion and stumble into 2009 with hope for better times ahead.
“Get rid of it!” said Afton Burdick, a 23-year-old visitor to downtown’s Fremont Street Experience in a leopard-print dress. “It was a long, sucky year.”
Burdick and her husband, Jacob, both stationed at Washington state’s Whidbey Island with the Navy, were celebrating his 21st birthday — and the end of a grueling 2008.
An estimated 291,000 tourists rang in the new year in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, up from last year but down from the visitor count in 2006 thanks to the ever-worsening economy.