The New Year's Eve olive drop in Palm Springs

Perhaps the residents of Palermo will join in this new Palm Springs tradition — the olive drop. An article in the paper explains: "More than half a dozen downtown Palm Springs restaurants are getting into the olive-dropping tonight.“We just thought it was a great idea, especially for New Year's because there's not one central event for Palm Springs,” said Chris Turner, director of operations at LG's Steakhouse downtown. The restaurants plan to encourage patrons to simply drop an olive into their martini glasses to ring in 2012. All will offer special martinis featuring Oregon-based Crater Lake vodka owned by part-time Palm Springs resident Jim Bendis. “A lot of people like to have champagne for New Year's Eve, but I have noticed that's not really the case here,” said Ranz Weinert, co-owner of The Tropicale Restaurant & Coral Sea Lounge, which will be celebrating the city's first olive drop. “This is a town full of people who enjoy martinis so it's a perfect — and very creative — idea.” If this first drop is successful, (they) plan to take the idea to the Palm Springs City Council and even developer John Wessman to see if they would consider building in a New Year's Eve drop area at the new Desert Fashion Plaza, where work should be mostly completed by the end of 2014." Miss Penny Lane says: Just for tonight, she might switch to a martini, because dropping an olive in her Cosmo just won't do the trick.