Popcorn Ball Drop 2024
This is the third year that Will and I have worked with the Chagrin Falls New Year's Eve Popcorn Ball Drop team. The first drop Will and I were involved in was in 2022 which was the ten-year anniversary of the drop.
Resurfacing the Ball
This year's Ball Drop was a rough one. It started with re-surfacing the ball to remove a few years of spray foam, popcorn bits, mold, and mildew. We also brought it back to a more spherical shape.
Resurfacing was absolutely miserable work. Next year I will use ear muffs, because the ear plugs pushed foam bits deep into my ears as I removed/reinserted the plugs to talk with people and wipe off sweat.
Applying Popcorn to the Ball
This year's "Mooshing and Smooshing" party (the spelling of that event is in dispute) was completed in record time with the end result looking positively spherical. The M&S party is where we coat the ball with spray foam (like you use to fill cracks in framing around windows) and press a layer of popcorn into the foam. Smarter team members wear blue smocks because spray foam is very difficult to remove from clothing.
This year's M&S crew was, from left-to-right (above):
- Jim Newell
- Cathy Schwind, one of the team launching 400 popcorn balls to the crowd on the night of the drop.
- Rob Schwind
- Scott Butler
- Sue Hogan, was in Township Hall handing out snacks to the public on the night of the drop.
Moving the Ball to Chagrin Falls Popcorn
A motlier crew is rarely seen. Here the ball is on a trailer, ready to depart for Chagrin Falls Popcorn in downtown Chagrin Falls.
From left-to-right (above), this year's moving crew was:
- Steve King (in red sweatshirt) Spotlight-operator-extraordinaire the night of the drop.
- Rob Schwind (in flat cap) the brains behind the design and fabrication of the 6-foot ball.
- Scott Butler (tall guy, center) Rob's man Friday.
- Dewey Forward (hand extended in an "alas poor Yorick" manner) owner of the Chagrin Falls Popcorn Shop.
- Jim Newell (frontmost, right) Jim generously donates space in his business (Clearwater Operations) for off-season storage.
Dewey's team at the shop applied some festive decorations to the ball and we got a nice banner hung.
Rigging the Flag Pole
Every year, the Chagrin Falls Fire Department assists with securing the top plate of our hoist rigging to the village's flag pole. Details of our rigging can be viewed here.
Rigging day was brutally cold with an unspeakable wind chill that was even more cruel at the top of the ladder. Other than that, a beautiful day.
Here is a view of what the fire fighters were rigging. The yellow element gets attached to a cable rig that is ratchet-strapped to the top of the flag pole. Then the daisy-chained rope gets dropped, the four-rope rigging un-chains, and our rope is in place, ready for the day of the ball raising.
Raising and Dropping the Ball
Raising the ball was uneventful. I don't even have any photos of it. The weather on December 28 was pleasant, assembly was smooth, and many hands made light work. The only disappointment was that I expected our new rigging — climbing-rated pulleys and braided rope — to make raising the ball a piece of cake. I had visions of raising the ball twice, dropping it after the first hoist to time how long the drop was going to take. I think the pulleys and braided made a difference, but Will and I were knackered by one hoist.
"Dropping the ball." Now there's an interesting turn of phrase. Nobody dropped the ball, but we had a technical failure where the lights on the ball went out after it was raised. We do not know for sure what caused the failure, but suspect that something was damaged as the ball was rocked by very high winds. I consider it a win that the ball was still at the top of the flag pole after the storm.
If you look at photos from the 2022 Popcorn Ball Drop you can see how pretty the ball is with its twinkly lights. Dewey, recovering from leg surgery, texted us the name of the guy who ran Dewey's downtown Cleveland concert venue back in the day. Maybe he could come up with a lighting solution. So I called Dewey's guy and he pointed me to two Cleveland-area lighting companies: the kind you'd call of you needed to light a coliseum for Van Halen. One of them set me up with a spotlight that had just come back from Browns Stadium. I think the end result was awesome.
Here is the ball from the crowd's perspective. I think it conveys that we are open for business and ready to drop.
An interesting effect from the combination of the spotlight and the weather was the projection of the ball's shadow onto the clouds. I definitely think the spotlight was bright enough!
And then, after a free-fall where the ball pulled hundreds of feet of rope through the rigging as fast it would go, the drop was over. It took the ball 30 seconds to *almost* reach ground. At about four feet off the ground, it was stopped abruptly by running into the cleat that is used to secure the flag pole's halyard. The collision occurred the instant the countdown timer hit zero and seemed so intentional that the crowd went wild. Here are Will and Scott, giddy and being interviewed by Jan Jones after what they were happy to describe as a picture-perfect drop.
The crowd dispersed, the rain turned to snow, and the ball was on the ground ready to be dismantled and moved back to the Chagrin Falls Popcorn Shop.
All in all, this year's New Year's Eve Chagrin Falls Popcorn Ball Drop was, in my opinion, a success. It was miserable weather, as you can see from the photos, but we still had a crowd and they were in fine spirits. Our team, as ever, was awesome:
- Our DJ (Buford T. Hedgehog Productions) did an absolutely fantastic job.
- Jan Jones was non-stop, moving around town doing a live broadcast of the event with man-on-the-street interviews
- Team members were serving free cookies and hot beverages at the Chagrin Falls Township Hall.
- Other team members were launching 400 small popcorn balls into the crowd from the Chagrin Falls Bandstand. You can see the Bandstand in the photo above, behind the popcorn ball.
