By Katy Grannan
Katy Grannan for The New York Times
The Mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs: In a town with a population of four, "live mermaids" perform three or four daily shows for an entrance fee of just $13.
It was only a two-hour drive across Central Florida from Disney World to Weeki Wachee Springs, but the distance traveled was much further, from sleek theme parks, hotels with room service and package vacation deals to a rundown motel with broken Wi-Fi situated across the highway from a thrift store and a Hooters. To get there, I took State Road 50 through mile after mile of swamp and farmland, which was dotted with pawn shops looking to buy guns and gold, and billboards with photographs of babies and reminders that "my heart beat 18 days from conception." Strip malls were broken up by new town-home complexes, old trailer parks and churches.
When I reached the intersection of 50 and Route 19, a faded blue-and-white sign welcomed me to Weeki Wachee Springs, which is both a very small "city" (population: 4) and a 538-acre state park. It is also "the world's only city of live mermaids." For an entrance fee of just $13, the "live mermaids" perform three or four daily shows in the Newton Perry Underwater Theater. Perry was a local entrepreneur and diver who built the theater directly into the limestone side of the spring in 1947.
It was dark inside when I sat down on one of the long wooden benches facing a dusty blue curtain and waited for the 11 a.m. show of "Hans Christian Andersen's 'Little Mermaid.' " On that April Tuesday, the 400-seat theater was barely half full, mostly senior citizens and toddlers in Ariel T-shirts, and both groups shifted restlessly. But when the prerecorded music began and the curtain lifted, the mood changed. Through a glass wall, some 100 feet from one side to the other, we could see the sun shining into the spring, which stretched endlessly before us, stunning and turquoise. Schools of small fish and turtles swam into view; apparently it's not uncommon to spot the occasional manatee. And then a 32-year-old performer named Crystal Videgar popped up from some deeper part of the spring and swam up to the glass in a bright red tail and sequined bikini top. Waving and smiling, she swam the entire width of the glass without appearing to need to breathe. For a moment, I found myself wanting to believe in mermaids, despite having met Videgar, standing on two legs in a locker room, just 10 minutes earlier.
Videgar was joined by two other women, and they began lip syncing while doing a tail-clad version of a kick line to their signature song, "We've Got the World by the Tail": "We're not like other women/We don't have to clean an oven/And we never will grow old/We've got the world by the tail!" The number, with its throwback lyrics and synchronized dance routine, is meant to evoke a real "Old Florida feel," which is how everyone associated with Weeki Wachee describes the place, meaning the Florida of memory and pop culture from varying points between the 1940s and the 1970s, when the state's tourism industry hit its stride. "When you think of Old Florida, you think of pink flamingoes, racecars at Daytona Beach and the Weeki Wachee mermaids," said John Athanason, Weeki Wachee's public relations director, as he showed me around the spring.
But in fact, "World by the Tail" and the entire current production of "Hans Christian Andersen's 'Little Mermaid' " was composed in 1991, when "Old Florida" was already in retreat, and Weeki Wachee was determined to remind Floridians why they should cherish their state's cultural inheritance of quirky roadside attractions just as much as Disney and the other shiny new super parks of Orlando.
Weeki Wachee started out as a swimming hole, a natural spring 117 feet deep that feeds the seven-mile-long Weeki Wachee River, which pumps more than 100 million gallons of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico every day. When Perry built the spring's theater, he also submerged two airlocks into the rocky base and developed air hoses so swimmers could free-dive 20 feet down. Then he recruited young women, mostly local high-school students and waitresses, to work for him. He taught them the same kind of synchronized-swimming routines that were making attractions like Cypress Gardens so popular — except at Weeki Wachee, they would do everything underwater. Perry's swimmers learned to drink something called Grapette and eat bananas while sitting on a ledge in the spring. Perry didn't pay the women for their efforts; they worked in exchange for meals, free swimsuits (tails would come later) and glory.
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