Manhattan Beach locals got to see a snapshot of the city at the crux of the new millennium this weekend.

Leadership Manhattan Beach’s class of 2000 revealed the contents of a time capsule the group buried as part of their project that year during a special event on Saturday. The nine-month leadership program, which brings together local stakeholders each year, teaches participants about the city’s inner workings through mock council meetings and other sessions, and has each class complete a project with that knowledge — to build community leaders.

For its group project, the class of 2000 buried a time capsule.

The tangible memories were hidden beneath the “Wave of the Future” public art sculpture on Veterans Parkway across from the Joselyn Center, likely unbeknownst to passersby. On Saturday, the class of 2000’s members and other attendees looked into the art piece that the time capsule was buried inside before viewing its contents on display at the Joselyn Center.

People looked back on, and some saw for the first time, an old Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair T-shirt, menus from since-closed restaurants and hotels, gear from the Manhattan Beach Police and Fire departments, memorabilia from the Mira Costa High School girls volleyball team’s 2000 state championship win and much more.

The capsule was removed days before the reveal event, said class of 2000 member Liz Laffoon, because retrieving it was an hours-long process that crews had to figure out as they worked.

The monument, after all, had been welded shut since the turn of the century.

The class of 2000 actually began the program in 1999 and, Laffoon said, she and her classmates felt a time capsule was the perfect project to document city history amid the fear of a “Y2K” disaster.

“We didn’t know if all the computers were going to shut off,” Laffoon said, “and if the world was going to implode.”

But none of that happened. And the “Wave of the Future” and the time capsule were installed in June 2000.

For Laffoon, seeing the items for the first time in 25 years took her back to the experience that introduced her to everything and everyone she got to know in Manhattan Beach when she first moved to the city in 1998.

“Honestly, it was like Christmas,” Laffoon said, who was surprised to relearn what she had contributed to the capsule more than two decades ago.

Opening the box, she remembered moments through her husband’s old Nokia flip phone, one of Manhattan Beach Middle School’s first yearbooks from her inaugural year teaching during the 1998-99 academic year and more.

The patina on the sculpture over the years now mirrors how the items inside aged, Laffoon said, adding to the charm and nostalgia of looking back onto the day the project was unveiled 25 years ago.

The class is figuring out whether Manhattan Beach will display some of the items in City Hall and the Manhattan Beach Historical Society, Laffoon said. “Wave of the Future,” meanwhile, will remain in place as a public art piece.