Large crowd expected for San Francisco's New Year's Eve fireworks show

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A large crowd is expected Saturday night in San Francisco for New Year's Eve festivities and the big fireworks show.

Many people rung in the New Year at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, with a 16th century Japanese bronze bell.

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The bell ringing ceremony is a Japanese tradition to purge bad luck and welcome the new year. "These things just happen, a way of symbolically cleaning at the end of the year," Buddhist monk Justin Juntoku McCoy said.

Mirem Villamil has a lot to clean from 2016. "It's about letting go of things and we have a lot of things to let go of for 2016," she said.

Midnight came early at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley where kids and parents were showered by a balloon drop. "We wanted to do something cool for new years because my daughter is into balloons ," Berkeley resident Ken Woodruff said.

The sky over San Francisco's waterfront will pop with a dazzling fireworks display at Pier 50 at midnight.

Pyrotechnics experts are setting the fuses for thousands of shells that will welcome the new year. "We've been checking out the weather, luckily things will be clear, good view from all over," Fireworks technician Zachary Wetzel said.

Police will be out in force along the Embarcadero looking for anything suspicious and say at least 200,000 people are expected in the area.

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