There will be no First Night this year. The family-friendly New Year’s Eve celebration, held in around North and South Straub Park for 30 years, has been canceled for 2024. First Night board president Hal Freedman said there were several reasons – the most serious of which was that the nonprofit simply couldn’t find any financial backers. “We have no money,” Freedman said, adding that the City of St. Petersburg declined, as it did in 2023, to contribute to the event budget.