What Shall We Drop?

To bring in the New Year, New York City drops a ball made of crystal triangles. I just read that the City of Boise, Idaho, at midnight, will lower a 16-foot glowing potato from their U.S. Bank building. In St. Georges, Bermuda, they drop a papier mache Bermuda onion. Key West? A 6-foot conch shell. Raleigh, NC? An acorn. Marion, OH? A ball of popcorn.

Closer to home, Pennsylvania is the state where the most towns (45) drop (or raise) something on New Year's Eve -- everything from pickles to a bag of potato chips to a wooden cow to a giant shoe to a Crayola crayon (dropped earlier than midnight so kids can stay up to see it).

So I got to thinking what we should drop in Norristown next year.

Food-wise, we've got great BBQ, soul food, pizza, and the best and most authentic Mexican food around, but probably our one uniquely Norristonian dish is the zep sandwich. 10-foot papier mache zep? Who would understand the symbolism but us? Everyone else would say we're dropping a hoagie.

Our architecture is one of our pride-and-joys. But which building to clone into a New Year's symbol? And how could we be sure Council wouldn't vote to demolish it before January 2015?

Our Dragon Boat Club has done so much to promote Norristown, maybe a dragon would be appropriate. It would definitely look cool.

But I'm thinking Norristown ought to be one of the communities that raises something instead of drops it. Something like a phoenix, rising from the ground to, say, the top of one of the turrets of the old prison on Airy? Or to the roof of One West Main?

Something to show that Norristown's not going down, but on the rise again. What do you think?

Happy New Year, N-town.