Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.

While most visitors to Key West catch on to that fact fairly quickly, the island city’s New Year’s Eve celebration should provide definitive proof for anyone still in doubt.

Sushi, a.k.a. Key West resident Gary Marion, stars in the "drag queen drop" that welcomes the New Year in Key West. (Photos by Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau)

Granted, the festivities include a ruby slipper. But instead of adorning Dorothy’s dainty foot, the sparkling shoe is a supersized power pump — and it serves as a chariot for legendary drag queen Sushi.

For more than 10 consecutive years Sushi, otherwise known as Key West resident Gary Marion, has starred in the New Year’s Eve festivities at the Bourbon Street Pub/New Orleans House complex at 724 Duval St. — while perched in a gigantic red high heel suspended high above the street.

This year will be no exception. Seconds before midnight on Dec. 31, the shoe bearing the lavishly gowned and coiffed Sushi will be lowered from the second-story balcony of the complex toward thousands of cheering spectators below.

Sushi reaches the end of her descent to Duval Street during the revelry welcoming 2009.

As midnight strikes and 2010 officially begins, she will land and pop the cork on a ceremonial bottle of champagne.

Even if you can’t make it to Key West this year for America’s southernmost New Year’s Eve celebration, you can still share in Sushi’s “shoe-nanigans” through the magic of cable TV.

In what has become a tradition over the past seven years, CNN plans to be in Key West with correspondent John Zarrella as a facet of the network’s live New Year’s Eve coverage hosted by Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin.

While Sushi presides over the revelry from her “throne” in the second-story shoe, the unflappable John Zarrella, a favorite of Key West audiences, will offer street-level commentary.

Appearances on CNN are just one high-profile outlet for the multitalented Sushi. She’s also the leader of an acclaimed troupe of drag performers called the 801 Girls who strut their stuff at the 801 Bourbon Bar on Duval. A skilled costume designer, she’s even been prominently featured in a book titled “Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret.”

CNN correspondent John Zarrella provides live on-air commentary each year from the Key West festivities.

But it’s her role as a New Year’s Eve icon that has earned Sushi the most widespread fame. For starring in the island city’s “drag queen drop” — an offbeat take-off on New York City’s traditional New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square — she has even been mentioned in the “New York Times.”

“I never thought, growing up, that I’d be on television in a giant red heel,” confessed Sushi. “That’s not something that a young kid aspires to. But I’m so thankful that we live in a country that lets us do whatever we want to do as long as we don’t hurt anybody else.”