Photo Pest: mermaids

When we emerged from the mermaid show at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, Thom commented "While you may tell people you're a 16-year-old girl inside, she's really about eight." Touché! If only they'd looked like this.

I'd wanted to visit ever since the New York Times ran a pictorial in 2013. In memory, the show had morphed into an underwater camp extravaganza or at least an Esther Williams spectacle.

In reality, it was a monochromatic dinner theater retread of The Little Mermaid although the sculptures did meet my kitsch expectations.

The mermaids have been performing since 1947 in an auditorium that seats about 400 people. Let's just say we were the only pair of men in the audience.

When the curtain lifts, it reveals an aquarium.

What might me mistaken for an underwater microphone actually enables the performers to sip air.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

We Can Hitch a Ride to Rockaway Beach

My knowledge of the Rockaways was limited to uninformative Ramones' lyrics, a single visit to the gay beach at Riis Park in the late 70s and the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy on the peninsula's communities in 2012.

Patti Smith kindled my interest after reading M Train. She bought a small house in Rockaway Beach shortly before Sandy. Little evidence of the hurricane exists today thanks to an influx of federal dollars and commercial development, especially at the eastern end, near Arverne by the Sea.