Mermaid Galene
01-02-2015, 11:35 AM
On New Year's Eve, Mermaid Galene and Salty Stuart the Pirate performed at Tropics Waterpark in Shoreview, MN for their New Year's Eve party. This was our first paid gig (not counting our online mermaid music concerts). It was one of the most fun gigs we've ever done, including the 600+ paid gigs we did in 25 years of puppeteering.
NINE HUNDRED people attended this event! OMG! I think the staff's heart rate must have gone through the roof! But they handled the crowd well.
First Stu and I posed for photos with the kiddies, the entire lifeguard contingent, and several other staff members. Then I got in the water and swam with the kids. It was just delightful. The children were so cute and adoring. During the photo session they sat with me on a treasure chest on the park's Shipwreck Beach, and it was exactly like being Santa Claus. I asked each child's name and told him or her that I had a magic power to make her/him a mermaid/merman for the evening. I said I'd let them keep their legs so they could still walk around, but when they swam they would feel like a real merperson! That never failed to bring a big smile to those little faces. We gave away Mermaid Galene bookmarks to every kid so they and their parents know that we're available for parties, concerts, etc, as well as my new Etsy shop.
Swimming among the crowd was challenging; the pool was a seething soup of wall to wall humanity! So I mostly just hung out in the water and talked with the kids, told jokes, sang to them, gave them hugs. I had a core pod of about 6 cute little girls who never left my side the whole evening. Eventually the lifeguards got folks to clear a little path to deeper water so the organizers could get some video of me swimming. Maneuvering my fluke was tricky, but I managed to not hit anyone!
This was actually the maiden voyage of my Jor Jor tail (neoprene and sequins), and swimming with it was quite different from my fabric tails. I knew from MerNetwork posts to expect the neoprene tail to be positively buoyant, but wow. In shallow water, my huge fluke wanted to stay on the surface like a raft! So I just let it. It actually worked out great; 2-3 kids sat on the floating fluke and were happy as little clams!
Once I got to deeper water and was able to go under, I was totally blown away with how well this tail swims. I thought the big fluke might cause a lot of drag, but just the opposite was true. The large fluke with my Hydra monofin gave me AMAZING propulsion! I do plan to make a weight belt, though, and wear it just above where the fluke begins. I can't wait to go when the pool is uncrowded and get in some serious tail swimming.
The icing on the cake: this pool is a minimal chlorine facility. They use a sphagnum moss filter and add just a small dose of chlorine as needed. That being said, I spent over an hour detoxing all my equipment when we got home, in spite of being totally exhausted. But it was so much more pleasant swimming there than in any other pool I've tried.
Soon I'll post an album of pics from the New Year's Eve event, but here's one of me swimming with an adoring escort. This girl was a bit older (7ish), and she told me she's wanted to be a mermaid for years. She positively devoured my performance in the sweetest way!
26274
In January I begin a continuing, monthly storytime series, Mermaid Galene's Waterstories, at my local library. And our mermaid concerts continue with the next on January 25 on concertwindow (https://www.concertwindow.com/4194-neptune-s-keep). I hope to get more gigs at Tropics Waterpark, too.
So, hooray for being a professional mermaid! We're on our way! :yay:
NINE HUNDRED people attended this event! OMG! I think the staff's heart rate must have gone through the roof! But they handled the crowd well.
First Stu and I posed for photos with the kiddies, the entire lifeguard contingent, and several other staff members. Then I got in the water and swam with the kids. It was just delightful. The children were so cute and adoring. During the photo session they sat with me on a treasure chest on the park's Shipwreck Beach, and it was exactly like being Santa Claus. I asked each child's name and told him or her that I had a magic power to make her/him a mermaid/merman for the evening. I said I'd let them keep their legs so they could still walk around, but when they swam they would feel like a real merperson! That never failed to bring a big smile to those little faces. We gave away Mermaid Galene bookmarks to every kid so they and their parents know that we're available for parties, concerts, etc, as well as my new Etsy shop.
Swimming among the crowd was challenging; the pool was a seething soup of wall to wall humanity! So I mostly just hung out in the water and talked with the kids, told jokes, sang to them, gave them hugs. I had a core pod of about 6 cute little girls who never left my side the whole evening. Eventually the lifeguards got folks to clear a little path to deeper water so the organizers could get some video of me swimming. Maneuvering my fluke was tricky, but I managed to not hit anyone!
This was actually the maiden voyage of my Jor Jor tail (neoprene and sequins), and swimming with it was quite different from my fabric tails. I knew from MerNetwork posts to expect the neoprene tail to be positively buoyant, but wow. In shallow water, my huge fluke wanted to stay on the surface like a raft! So I just let it. It actually worked out great; 2-3 kids sat on the floating fluke and were happy as little clams!
Once I got to deeper water and was able to go under, I was totally blown away with how well this tail swims. I thought the big fluke might cause a lot of drag, but just the opposite was true. The large fluke with my Hydra monofin gave me AMAZING propulsion! I do plan to make a weight belt, though, and wear it just above where the fluke begins. I can't wait to go when the pool is uncrowded and get in some serious tail swimming.
The icing on the cake: this pool is a minimal chlorine facility. They use a sphagnum moss filter and add just a small dose of chlorine as needed. That being said, I spent over an hour detoxing all my equipment when we got home, in spite of being totally exhausted. But it was so much more pleasant swimming there than in any other pool I've tried.
Soon I'll post an album of pics from the New Year's Eve event, but here's one of me swimming with an adoring escort. This girl was a bit older (7ish), and she told me she's wanted to be a mermaid for years. She positively devoured my performance in the sweetest way!
26274
In January I begin a continuing, monthly storytime series, Mermaid Galene's Waterstories, at my local library. And our mermaid concerts continue with the next on January 25 on concertwindow (https://www.concertwindow.com/4194-neptune-s-keep). I hope to get more gigs at Tropics Waterpark, too.
So, hooray for being a professional mermaid! We're on our way! :yay: