The 1990S f the 1970s and 1980s were a party danced to the throb of disco and Michael Jackson’s funky tempos, the 1990s in many ways were the morning after: a global reckoning marked by the Gulf War, riots speared by concerns about racial injustice, and mass killings – Oklahoma City, I Columbine, and others – that sadly in retrospect seem to have been just the beginning of a long list of senseless and unforgivable acts of malice and terror. Of course, the decade wasn’t all bad. The Cold War ended (at least for that time), the Hubble Space Telescope took flight, the World Wide Web debuted, the stock market soared (and then didn’t), and Y2K’s predicted computer crash turned out to be a big non-event. In the 1990s and extending into the early 2000s, the Balloon Fiesta completed its transformation into essentially the event it is today, with multiple balloon glows, the featured Special Shape events on Thursday and Friday morning and evening, the Dawn Patrol Show on mass ascension mornings, and the thrilling America’s Challenge gas balloon race across the U.S. The event also found its permanent home at the current Balloon Fiesta Park, ending a quarter-century of wandering north through Albuquerque. No longer a teenager, the Balloon Fiesta was coming “of age” and into its early adulthood. PHO T O: BILL W AL T ON FL YNT OFFICIAL PROGRAM 155