Firecracker, Firecracker: Year of the Snake Slithers into SDR Park in Big Chinatown Ceremony

Thousands of Lunar New Year celebrants, noise enthusiasts and Chinatown curiosity seekers in general convened upon a stretch of Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Wednesday, Jan. 29, for the popular firecracker ceremony marking the calendrical start of the Year of the Snake. Following the city’s recent deep freeze, the weather was delightfully sunny, with temperatures in the mid-40s and rising.

Among the notable solons spotted were local City Council member Christopher Marte and Manhattan Beep Mark Levine.

The event began at 11 a.m. on the basketball courts that dominate the northern half of the linear park section between Hester and Grand streets. Because this section of the park is below the grade of its other bordering streets, Chrystie on the west and Forsyth on the east, the basketball courts—as well as their neighboring handball courts—serve as something like a sunken auditorium.

This effect is quite pleasant, and seemed to accommodate a large crowd as happily as it did during the New York Mini 9-Man volleyball tournament that likewise commandeers the courts each July.

Indeed, while the seasons were different, the grand admixture of people amiably sharing public space was redolent of Chinatown at its concatenated best, the rich loam of Asian-American culture over a stretch of the city where every old building has an alternative, prior Jewish history that lasted until the 1960s.

Today would be a day of dumplings—pork, beef, shrimp, vegetable, more—for many, but first some dragons, flag and banner waving and, of course, firecrackers.

Unlike the freestanding boxes of bottle rockets and packs of other explosives that litter many city streets on July 5, the fireworks at SDR Park were arranged with great care, being set up on a guide wire strung between the baskets, with bright red bands on firecrackers hanging, or snaking, down with their tails on the court.

When lit from below, glorious sparks and cracking explosions redounding to cheers and squeals of delight!

The fireworks serve a symbolic function as well, hopefully scaring away the bad spirits of the year past.

For Chinatown, this would include still-common problems with street crime and drugs, and congestion pricing, which many Chinatown residents fiercely oppose.

Asked his thoughts on the New Year, one Chinatown elder told a local TV in enthused English, “The year of the snake [means] prosperity and prosperity and prosperity. Snakes move all the time. Snakes [mean] happy health new year. That’s most important.”

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The older, original heart of Chinatown was recognized earlier that morning by the annual Chinese New Year Day Parade. Starting outside the New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club at 211 Canal St. at 10:30 a.m, the route proceeded east to Baxter, skirted Columbus Park via Bayard and Mulberry, then returned home on Worth Street and Bowery.

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Jan. 29, 2025, was also notable as the first time schools were actually closed for the holiday. It was approved as a school holiday for Lunar New Year 2024—the Year of the Dragon— but since it fell on Saturday, Feb. 10, schools did not close last year.

Whatever the best intentions behind this declaration, the school holiday meant that working parents, including Chinese-Americans, had to find, and pay for, an additional day of childcare—or take a day off from work to handle kid duties themselves. This occurs in an NYC public school calendar already packed with holidays and a week-long mid-winter break

For some parents, the holiday can be a burden since in Manhattan, a typical quality kids’ day-camp program running from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. costs upwards of $200, with additional fees for extended hours to 6 p.m. Meanwhile, citywide Chinese New Year celebrations run—happily—for weeks, meaning kids had and have plenty of time to partake in them, just as they have for many decades past.

One mitigating factor is that because Lunar New Year was only a Department of Education school holiday and not a governmental holiday, the public libraries remained open. Locally, this meant that NYPL’s Chatham Square and Seward Park branches were both open to delight kids and their families at a time when their services were most needed and appreciated.

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Speaking of kids and the plentitude of the Lunar New Year activities, the annual Lion Dance Parade—being held this year on “Super Saturday,” Feb. 8, isn’t to be missed. Starting at 211 Canal St. at 10 a.m., the event featuring over 20 Lion Dance groups, each with their own costumes and style of movement. The route covers a fair section of today’s Greater Chinatown.