Seamonsters

There's something calming and grounding about a body of water, especially salt water. I grew up close to a salt water river, and about 10 minutes away from the Gulf of Mexico, so that might have something to do with it. Maybe if I grew up in Nebraska I'd be all awestruck over wheat fields.

Every morning I bike by the St. John's River for about a mile or so. It's the highlight of my commute, mostly because I know I'm not going to get hit by a car. Seriously, America. Turn signals. They're not that hard.

I get to see people walking and fishing, and the different colors of the water, and the sun shining off the waves. Every once in a while I'll see manatees or dolphins. It's so much better than sitting on Butler Boulevard, cursing the traffic in front of me as I moved another inch every couple minutes. The physicality my ride combined with the calmness of the water keeps my craziness under control better, and I feel I can be a much more productive member of society.

Morning commute. Driving can suck it.

Plus, the St. John's is home to a sea monster.

Yeah, no crap.

 Or at least it was.

These sea monsters weren't tales from olden days when sailors would mistake manatees for mermaids (as a kid growing up in a city that had manatees posted on everything, I never understood how anyone could mistake a lumbering manatee for a sexy lady mermaid, but I guess if you've been cooped up with a bunch of dudes on a boat for six months, just about anything would start looking like a woman.). No, these were modern people, people from the '70s who had TVs and glasses and a knowledge of the animals in the St. John's.

Seriously, if these look like sexy mermaids to you, you've been on the boat too long.

In the mid-seventies, several different people reported seeing strange creatures swimming in the St. Johns - usually a long snake-like animal with a large head and a spiny backbone. According to the Jacksonville Times Union Dave Green reported the creature as "...quill-feathered, fanned tail, like an eel with a ridged-hump down the middle of it" in 1975. A spoil sport later in the story said that the creature was really a school of otters, even though otters are rare on the St. Johns.

The creature was spotted again that year, described as "a 25 foot long creature with a head the size of a basketball."

Once reports came in, more people reported seeing the creature, saying "...they never reported what they saw to the authorities or to the press out of fear of being ridiculed by friends for drinking too much or being branded 'some kind of nut.'"

The creature slept for a few years, then was reported again in 1977, when it was seen again, and was described as pink and bony looking.

Nothing has been heard from the creature since then, at least according to Times Union searches. Or possibly people have been too afraid of being "branded some kind of nut."


As a kid, I devoured books or TV shows about the unexplained - ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, UFOs, everything. It helped that I grew up in the '70s when there were whole industries churning out nonsense about how aliens helped the Mayans construct pyramids to communicate with the ghosts of Yetis by using time-traveling crystal skulls.

I've since heard that men are more likely to believe in weird animals like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, while women are more likely to believe in ghosts and weird supernatural stuff. I have no idea where I heard that, let's assume it was in one of the many scientific journals I subscribe to, but it works in my case.

If you tell me you saw a ghost, I'll think it's pretty cool, but I'll run down all sorts of scientific theories in my head to explain it. If you mention that you think you saw a Bigfoot, I'll take out a loan to buy fancy cameras and traps to help you capture it.

Especially if you think you've seen a sea monster.

Logically, I know that there's little chance of these beasts actually existing today; just the massive amounts of food these things would have to eat to survive makes it pretty unlikely. Plus, with everyone in the world having cameras on their person, it seems like we'd have some proof.

But still, with scientists finding giant squid over 40 feet long or fishermen finding a previously thought extinct Coelacanth, there's always hope that something's gonna turn up.

And every morning I ride my bike to work, I swear that this is the morning that I'm gonna see it.

Everybody Knows that the Bird is the Word

A friend was here for a few days this summer. I try to show visitors the best our city has to offer, so I compiled a pretty good schedule of the area's dining and drinking establishments.

While drinking at Birdies one night, we started talking about strip clubs.

I'll have to admit something here, at risk to my reputation as a dude. Other than delivering food in Atlanta, I've never been to a strip club.*

It's not like I've got anything against naked ladies. It just always seemed kind of ...pointless, I guess. I mean, it's not like you can do anything, you know? You just watch them dance around, listen to Kid Rock, spend a bunch of money, then drive home alone.

Anyway, after more cheap drinks, a strip club seemed like exactly the right place to end the night. But where to go? I had no idea, so I texted some friends. While waiting for their replies, I realized, hey, there's a place right near my neighborhood.  It seems pretty sleazy, too. We'll have a couple drinks, look at some sketchy strippers, then go home and either drink more or fall asleep.

As my friend put it later, "We looked like George Clooney and Brad Pitt walking in there compared to everyone else there." Mostly because we were wearing shirts with buttons and had like, hair, and teeth and everything.

We're sitting there watching the dancers (who have to wear bikinis. Weird.) and a couple of the girls come to our table. They're not as crack-y as I'd expect, and one of them, a curvy goth girl who would later dance to Portishead instead of bad strip club hip-hop, was actually kinda cute. I think she really liked us.

One of the cooler things about being older is that you don't care anymore. The bikini-clad girls are chatting us up, and we're talking to them just like we'd talk to, well, anyone not wearing a bikini in a neon-flashing club trying to get us to buy them expensive shots.

We're so old and square that we're asking them about what they're studying in school and what they're planning to do after they stop dancing, just normal stuff, as we're drinking $75 Coronas.

"So what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen here," one of us asks.

"There was a guy who paid me $100 to hit him in the balls," one of our new friends replies.

"Shit, I'd do that for $10," my friend said, which struck me as really funny, but didn't seem to amuse the dancers as much.

She tells us more about ballbuster and about some guy who wanted to tickle her and then casually says, "Oh yeah. There was the turkey guy."

"Turkey guy?"

"Yeah, this guy paid me a hundred bucks to pretend he was a turkey."

"Wait, wait, wait, this is the third story you bring up? How was turkey guy not the first thing you thought of?"

Actually, that is kinda hot.

"So, did this guy want you to, like, stick a thermometer up his ass?"

"Did he want to wear those little booty things they put on drumsticks in cartoons?"

"No, no, he just wanted me to talk to him, but talk to him like a turkey."

"What? Nobody talks to a turkey."

"He wanted me to pretend he was baking in an oven. So I'd have to say stuff like, 'Oh, you're so golden brown, you're really looking tasty now. I can't wait til I take you out of the oven. You are such a juicy, delicious turkey."

"So you didn't have to pretend to eat him or ... I dunno, gravy him up or anything?"

"No, I just talked to him. After a while it gets hard to come up with things to say about a turkey, but it's easier than dancing."

"Yeah, I guess so. Man, that guy must go nuts around Thanksgiving, huh?"

She described the guy to us a bit, and naturally I've been looking for him ever since. Every once in a while I'll be out in public and I'll start scanning guy's faces, thinking, "I know it's one of you. One of you is the dirty, dirty, bird."

But even more than that, I kept thinking about this poor dude's secret. As a man of the world, I don't care what consenting adults do with each other, but could you imagine having this as your secret fetish? How would you bring that up? Would it be weighing on your mind every Thanksgiving?

"Mmmm, honey. That turkey smells delicious. You know Thanksgiving is my favorite time of the year. I just...sometimes I feel like just eating a turkey isn't enough, you know? Like, I love turkey so much that...why are you looking at me all weird? Uh, you know, just forget I said anything. Help you set the table?"

Or do you bring it up earlier in the relationship? Sort of laying all the cards on the table?

"So...I'm sort of kinky."

"Oh, that's OK, my last boyfriend and I used to watched Cinemax movies together."

"Uhh...Yeeeeah."

Whatever their predilections, I hope both of my faithful readers have a happy Thanksgiving. And if you notice someone gazing just a little too wistfully at the turkey, well...well, it could be me. Are we gonna eat or what? Or you could be at a table with the Turkey Man. Try to be understanding.




* STOP THE PRESSES! I just remembered I've actually been to the Clairmont in Atlanta twice. Once to see Shellac, which probably doesn't count, and once with some friends. My wife at the time was waiting to use the bathroom when a dancer came out and said "Sorry, Hon, didn't know anyone was waiting. Glad I wasn't fucking anyone." Classy!

Elvis has Left the Building; or Stories I Like, Yet Am Not Entirely Convinced They Are True, Part Three

I was watching Elvis on Tour a couple of weeks ago, thanks to TCM, one of the channels that justifies my sending about half my paycheck to Comcast Cable each month.

The movie documents Elvis on a 1972 US tour, a few years before he blew up and got all rambling on stage due to his 'medications.' I've always had a soft spot for '70s Elvis, mainly because his voice sounds more melancholy and ... lived in or something, and songs like "American Trilogy" will instantly transport me to falling asleep in the back of my parent's car as we drove through Mississippi. Plus, he looked all awesome:

King of Rock and Roll, King of his Castle.

At one point there's a shot of the Jacksonville official seal, which reminded me of a story I heard years ago that I've been telling ever since.

Florida Theatre is this cool old downtown Jacksonville theater that has been around since 1927. All sorts of people have played there through the years, including Elvis back in 1956, when the mayor had to be on hand to ensure Elvis' pelvis didn't inflame the Jacksonville youth to unheard of heights of juvenile delinquency and public sexiness.

The upper level of the Florida Theatre is now office space, but it used to house a radio station in the old days, according to the story. Since this was back in the days when bands had to give interviews all the time before rocking, everyone who played the Florida Theatre would go upstairs, give an interview and play a song or two in an effort to get people to come out to the show. Then I presume they ate a fried chicken dinner provided by the theater owner's wife and drank some whiskey before going on stage.

These performances were recorded onto acetate records, which were then just sort of stored away in boxes or used to prop up uneven tables or used in primitive Frisbee games.*

Years later when the theater was renovated, crews went through all the stuff in the top floors and threw it all out. Decades of posters, old props and clothing, and hundreds of unmarked records all ended up in the dumpster.

So somewhere in a North Florida landfill lie hundreds of interviews and performances from the '20s til about the late '60s. Who knows what lies unheard and broken? Elvis is definitely in there, as well as countless other irreplaceable recordings.

This is the part where I would make a dramatic pause when retelling the story and say something profound like, "If only they would have known," while gazing wistfully off in the distance.

So is the story true? I asked Raymond, a senior librarian in the Florida department via email. This is his reply:

"Sounds entirely plausible. I can't find anything on a radio station there by randomly searching city directories, but I do know there was a fully-functional small theatre upstairs in that office building portion on the side of the theatre - like a screening room. Here's a pic of it **with a mic from WJAX, the radio station the city used to own:

I guess WJAX could've set something up to record there, but I think their studio was always elsewhere.

And yes, they probably threw everything away. That's Jacksonville SOP."

The verdict? "Entirely Plausible" is close enough to give it an Unverified But True which might be the highest level of truth we're ever gonna get here.

So feel free to use this story as your own, and remember the dramatic pause and wistful gaze at the end. People really like that.

Oh, and Raymond, I guess I should have asked before using your email like that, but I think Florida's Sunshine Laws should protect me if you try to sue.

*OK, so I made up the Frisbee and table leveling part.

 **You should check out the library's Sandgren Collection. Not all of it has been digitized, but it consists of thousands of photos of old Jacksonville buildings, old school wrestlers and entertainers and general olde tyme awesomeness.

There's a(n Ice Cream) Riot Goin' On; or Stories I Like, Yet Am Not Entirely Convinced They Are True, Part Two

Jacksonville's logo, "Bold New City of the South" brings to mind several things: like Atlanta's logo "A City Too Busy to Hate," it sent a message that we weren't like the rest of the South, we were progressive, forward looking, and open for business. It also brings to mind this photo of our old mayor about to get smacked in the face with a titty while his Benny Hill-esque sidekick looks on:

I wish I knew how to embed "Yakkity Sax" here.

But Jacksonville had a darker side, a face we hid from the rest of the nation. No, I'm not talking about the paper mills, those have been gone for decades. No, not the Civil Rights struggle, white people were dicks here just like in every other Southern city.

I'm speaking of the Great Ice Cream Riot.

Local historians ignore the Great Ice Cream Riot of Sometime in the Mid '90s. This could be a deep-reaching conspiracy to protect the city's image. Or it could be because it was all made up.

I'll explain:

We had a great team at the Fine Arts Department at the old Hayden Burns Library. One of the advantages to working there was that the new Main Library was about to open, so nobody really cared about the old library. That meant we could do whatever programming we wanted.

And boy, did we.

We had a series of themed amateur film festivals, which went over well - the theme would be whatever our obsessions were at the time - Liberace, '70s truck driving movies, whatever. They were a lot of fun and got a few people into the library who otherwise might not have come. We hosted annual Halloween festivals which would combine whatever public domain movies we could play with live bands and whatever scripted foolishness and in-jokes we could get our part-time pages to perform.

Then one of the librarians mentioned something about an ice cream riot.

She vaguely remembered hearing something on the news years ago about a riot erupting at the Jacksonville Landing after the frozen treats ran out during a free ice cream day.

We had a new obsession and had to had to have a program. So, tempting fate, we decided to stage an ice cream social, combining more public access films with special guest appearances from Kenny Rogers and a cranky Thomas Edison. I'm sure Liberace was in there somewhere, along with the free ice cream. We immediately started work on the centerpiece of the program, a Ken Burns-like recreation of the Great Ice Cream Riot's aftermath.

We wanted to slowly pan over a sepia-tinted photo of kids clutching ice cream cones while lying on the ground while a narrator said something like, "Ice ... cream...Everywhere, I see the remnants of ice cream."

Then we discovered that such a film was way beyond our capabilities and some digging discovered...well, I'll let her tell you. Ladies and Gentlemen, Laura will walk us through the real story of the Great Ice Cream Riot.

 

Q: So did you have the Great Ice Cream Riot in your mind for years? Like if someone mentioned the Landing was that the first thing that came up?

Do you remember our plans to reenact the Great Riot? I seem to remember wanting to do a Ken Burns-style panning over the bodies reaching out for ice cream.

A: Yes, for some reason that story really stuck with me and it did come to mind when I thought about the Landing. Something about those 11 o’clock news stories. There was another one about a guy who donated a giant robot (like the ones they have at monster truck shows) to a small town in Texas and the police used the robot to tear down crack houses. You might want to research that for another “Great stories that might not be true.”

I’m sure the reason we never made the film about the ice cream riot was because our vision was so ambitious.

Q: So it was basically just a food fight that broke out in the food court, right? How did that make the news? And this would have been in the early ‘90s, right?

A: It was in the mid ‘90s. Maybe it was a slow news night? I wish I had saved the article Glenn found for us. The problem is I wanted to believe the riot was a result of the ice cream social so much that I forgot the truth. I think they were actually two separate news stories from the same night. We found evidence that the Winn Dixie-sponsored ice cream social happened at the Landing and Glenn found a story about some guys who started a food fight up in the food court. For some reason I’m thinking the guys were in their early 20s and the whole thing started at Sbarro but I could be making that up.

Q: I seem to remember you were pretty disappointed when you actually found the truth. There is a lesson there. Not that it stopped us from trying to portray the Great Ice Cream Riot in all our following programs. Speaking of which, am I correct in remembering that you and Matthew both feel the Thomas Edison Ice Cream program was one of our worst? I think that was a totally underrated program. 

A: You’ve been talking about how great the Edison program was for so many years that I’m starting to believe it myself.

Q: Was there a point after you found out the truth that you didn’t want to accept it or at least tell me and Matthew about it?

 

A: No, Scott. That would be crazy. My version of the story didn’t mean enough to me to consciously deny it.

Regrettably, the story of the Great Ice Cream Riot will have to be rated FALSE, which deeply pains me, as the idea of a riot breaking out over free ice cream is simply awesome. HOWEVER, even if the story itself is false, it inspired both some extensive library research and an underrated program, as well as an entertaining story, so we shouldn't be too hard on it.