First Night Austin is downtown's first family friendly and alcohol-free New Year's Eve celebration.
All kinds of artists will perform in outdoor and indoor places for the city. First Night Austin will feature art in 27 unexpected places, like an escalator.
The artists' challenge is to use the space they're given.
"We've probably all been on escalators in our lives. And we stand and we wait to get down the escalator. We thought it would be an interesting opportunity to play inside that space, to bring perhaps to the audience an opportunity to re-imagine their daily world," Ray Schwartz of Elsewhere Dance Theater said.
One artist is using the side of the Radisson hotel for his canvas. He's going to project a nine-story piece of artwork while performers scale the building during the projection.
A giant piece of art at Auditorium Shores will mimic the floor of Town Lake, upside-down. People can stroll through Town Lake without getting wet.
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First Night Austin
News 8 Austin's Amy Hadley gets a sneak peak at the festivities from downtown Austin.
 
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"We made all of the string lengths based on that topography. The topography runs from two feet above the ground to eight feet above the ground, so you'll actually be able to inhabit that space," artist Leah Davis said.
There will be a parade beginning at 5:30 p.m. that starts at Ninth and Congress with more than 800 costumed artists, stilt walkers and ballet dancers on Segway scooters. The celebration runs from 2 p.m. – midnight, ending with fireworks you can watch from Auditorium Shores or the First Street Bridge.
The First Street Bridge will close to vehicle traffic at noon for an art installation called Art is the Bridge. It's sponsored by Time Warner Cable and hopes to become the largest chalk art project in the world. Anyone can join in and someone from Guinness World Records will be there to see if it's official.
Two thousand-six people will also wake up Saturday morning to find a loaf of bread on their doorstep. That's part of Jaclyn Pryor's "Bread." Each loaf of sourdough was baked by Texas French Bread and features an invitation to join in a special ceremony that honors the Jewish tradition of breaking bread and sprinkling crumbs into a moving body of water.
“Most people will have heard nothing about this project and have no idea why there is bread on their doorstep. So I imagine the first thing many people are going to do is they're going to look at the note that comes with it that says, 'Please join us downtown this evening beginning at 4:30 until about 8 for First Night Austin's Bread ceremony,'" Pryor said.
This kind of eclectic entertainment and creativity is what keeps Austin weird.
"The artists are actually getting paid and they're given a site on an evening where more people will see it than probably any other night of the year. So it's giving back to the arts community and supporting the arts in Austin," organizer Ginny Sanders said.
