The Peach Drop is the name of the annual celebration on New Year's Eve held at historic Underground Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia. The entire event is similar in style to the event in Manhattan, New York City, including the Times Square Ball Drop, but the ball is a replica of a peach.
Media coverage of the celebration live from Underground was on America One network. A separate HDTV broadcast on WSB-TV 2.1 briefly aired the Peach Drop in split screen with the Times Square Ball Drop during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, with the same done on WXIA-TV 11.1 with New Year's Eve with Carson Daly.
The peach weighs 800 pounds and is 8 feet tall, 8 feet wide. Each year, the peach undergoes a makeover before it is ready to present. During the hours before its triumphant drop, it is raised to its place at the top of a lighted tower above Underground Atlanta. Then, during the celebration, it is lowered at 11:59 p.m. EST. It takes 58 seconds for the peach to descend the 138 foot tower of lights and arrive at the foot of the tower, precisely at the moment the new year arrives.
The arrival of the peach has been a favorite part of the midnight transition ever since it was first introduced in 1989.
Attendance is free. Family-oriented events are made available all day long and the celebration lasts all night long. A crowd of between 170,000 - 100,000 people came from all over the world to attend the all day and night festival at Underground Atlanta's Peach Drop held on December 31, 2009; between 100,000 - 150,000 attended on December 31, 2010.
The line-up of musical talent participating in the 22nd Annual Peach Drop New Year's Eve Celebration included headliner Tito Jackson, with his mother Katherine and "a host of Jackson family members in attendance for this". Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed joined Jackson on stage to count down the moments until the peach and the new year arrived together.
Famous quotes containing the words year, eve and/or underground:
“As the Arab proverb says, “The dog barks and the caravan passes”. After having dropped this quotation, Mr. Norpois stopped to judge the effect it had on us. It was great; the proverb was known to us: it had been replaced that year among men of high worth by this other: “Whoever sows the wind reaps the storm”, which had needed some rest since it was not as indefatigable and hardy as, “Working for the King of Prussia”.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable rôle with the promise of rewards—material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the Garden of Eden.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“An underground grower, blind and a common brown;
Got a misshapen look, it’s nudged where it could;
Simple as soil yet crowded as earth with all.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)