New York rang in 2024 with its iconic ball drop atop One Times Square to the din of over one million celebrants cramming the Crossroads Of The World, but in Hell’s Kitchen, the new year was ushered in by a cozy group of some 20 creatives counting down the seconds under the multicolored lights of a descending turtle.
“It’s a new tradition, we’ve been working on it in a mad rush,” says Richard Knipel of Prime Produce, a collective space of citizen creators and educators at 424 W54th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues. “It’s a community effort, worked on by Prime Produce guild members, everyone working on a different part, and crafted from reclaimed materials from our Resource Library.”
Filled with simple string lights and at a modest four feet long and 15 pounds, the “Cosmic Turtle” is a far cry from the Times Square Ball, whose daunting dimensions include a 12-foot diameter and a hefty weight of 11,875 pounds. Strung up from the roof of the building, Knipel and his fellow revelers lowered the Cosmic Turtle to the cheers of the small crowd below.
If a turtle seems like an odd choice for a city that revels in images of big apples and never sleeping, just look at Native American cosmology. Tribes from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes saw the North American continent, and even the entire planet, as resting on the back of a giant turtle, going so far as to name both land masses as Turtle Island.
“Prime Produce also hosts Earthlings NYC,” Knipel adds. “Its Turtle Team cares for wayward NYC turtles who are undergoing rehabilitation in our space before re-release into the wild or adoption.”
When it comes to New Year “drops,” Americans get pretty creative. In Kennett Square, PA, a giant LED mushroom marks the hour — the town is the “Mushroom Capital of World,” after all. Many choices revolve around a healthy helping of hometown pride: As the favorite snack of Mobile, AL, a 600-pound MoonPie (non-edible) descends from on high, while in Panama City Beach, FL, it’s a light-up beach ball. It should surprise no one that Boise, ID, rings in the New Year with a potato.
Other traditions defy explanation; why did the people of Prairie du Chien, WI, decide on a dead carp? Or a deuce of clubs in Show Low, AZ? Or ladies’ undergarments at the Admiral Theater in Chicago?
Despite its impressively mythological background, a turtle suddenly seems positively vanilla by comparison.
“It’s Very Hell’s Kitchen,” said Knipel. “We wanted to build a local neighborhood event to match the quixotic American tradition of dropped objects around the country, something more community-minded and intimate than Times Square.”
But the celebrations did not end with the turtle back on terra firma. Even as the party-people flowed out in their thousands from Times Square into the surrounding neighborhood bars, attendees at Prime Produce headed indoors to mark not only the first hours of 2024, but also all the cinematic properties that suddenly entered the public domain with the New Year. First up was Steamboat Willie, a 1928 animated short from Walt Disney that gave audiences around the world their first glimpses of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Also shown was Fritz Lang’s heavily influential 1927 masterpiece Metropolis, which also lost its American copyright at midnight.
But what will happen to the Prime Produce turtle now? As any visitor to Times Square knows, the Ball maintains its vigil over the masses, never leaving its post.
“The plan is to hang our turtle in Cafe 424 at our Guildhall as a kind of chandelier afterward,” Knipel says. “And maybe get it on the Wikipedia page of such events!”
If a dead fish can make the list, anything is possible. Happy New Year from W42ST.nyc!
Interesting article. Obviously well researched. I enjoy your newsletter even though I live in the Village.
Happy New Year
Show Low AZ’s choice for an item to drop makes complete sense as the town is named after the card game that won it. The two equal partner ranchers / owners, decided the large ranch property wasn’t big enough for the both of them and one would have to leave. After a length set of poker with no immediate winner they decide whoever could show the lowest card in their hand would win. The deuce is the lowest of cards and what won the game for Cooley over Clark and so the town became known and why lowering a deuce is entirely fitting. The town’s Main Street is the Deuce of Clubs.
Also realize that leaving the ball in TSQ year round is a very very new thing. It was normally brought down yet after Times Square became a tourist DisneyLand and everyone kept asking where it was they eventually just started leaving it in place. Back in The Deuce Days of TSQ it was traditionally brought down.
💝 wish we had known.
Very nice story! I am pictured there in profile with my purple pimp suit costume + a silly smile. My friend an award winnin’ filmmaker & the producer of Manhattan’s first cable show + filmed at Woodstock & appears to be the actual reincarnation of David Crosby (gone just shy of one year), Lucky Goldberg is there too…
One small correction, Prime Produce is nearly right at half way between 9th & 10th Avenue, not just west of 9th Avenue.