Village Halloween parade to feature recreated iconic NYC photo

Bronx native Christina Simon Ciurdar and her husband, Ben, meticulously recreated the image of ironworkers eating lunch 850 feet above street level during the construction of Rockefeller Center. The ensemble will include five people, comprising another couple and Ciurdar’s sister.

“We’re going to have a newspaper, a lunch box, hold a sandwich, pieces that are similar to the actual photo,” Ciurdar, 39, explained. “And it’s also nice too because the lunchbox doubles as my purse.”

The costume’s design prioritized the original photograph’s color palette of black, white, and gray, with the group sourcing clothing from stores like TJ Maxx. The estimated cost per person was approximately $100.

Ciurdar constructed a foam board cityscape backdrop and a separate board to simulate the sky, both positioned behind the participants. The costume’s pants, filled with polyfill and reinforced with wire for flexibility, dangle from a foam beam to create the illusion of the workers sitting on a girder.

“There is wire running through the leg to add a bend and keep the shoes on,” Ciurdar noted. A string of Christmas lights will be placed under the beam to mimic twinkling windows, enhancing visibility in the parade’s darkness.

The couple, now residing in Tampa, Florida, arrived in Queens a week before the parade to assemble the elaborate costume, a process that took three days to construct, plus three days of planning and preparation.

Ciurdar, a manager at Citi, and her husband have been attending the parade since 2014. They now purchase $125 tickets to bypass the lengthy general admission lines.

The 6th Avenue parade, a tradition since 1974, will begin at Canal Street and conclude at 15th Street, with organizers anticipating 80,000 participants and over 2 million spectators.

Previous group costumes have included a deck of cards (2021) and the Wizard of Oz (2022), with the latter proving particularly demanding. Future plans include a recreation of New York City landmarks in 2024, including the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, and Yankee Stadium.

The group typically takes an hour and a half to complete the roughly 1.4-mile parade route, often at a slower pace to allow onlookers to appreciate their creations.