Mayor Netts and Fire Chief Beadle Show Their Coconuts and Bananas (For the Arts)

There was the duck dive, which featuerd a quartet of eminent local names who jumped in the pool and hunted for ducks in blind grab for prizes: Georgia Turner, the county’s tourist development director, Chamber President Rebecca DeLorenzo, Assistant School Superintendent Jacob Oliva and Auditorium Board Chairman Richard Hamilton, who dove in turns and called out prizes to lucky winners of a long list of goodies provided by local sponsors. (See the images below the videos.)

There was Flagler Auditorium Director Lisa McDevitt, who reminded an assembly of about 100 what this was all about–a fund-raiser for the arts ion education program at the Auditorum, which, by evening’s end, had raised about $8,000, and will make it much easier for Flagler County students to attend Florida State University’s band and choral pricey camps this summer. McDevitt finally jumped in the pool, too, fully dressed: she’s always done anything for the arts.

There was the fabulous buffet prepared by the Grand Club at Pine Lakes, where the duck dive was hosted. There was a lot of Polynesian dancing, compliments of the Ohana dancers. And there was good beer, good, wine, good whiskey and the best, driest weather after a week out of Noah’s rainiest chronicles.

But most of all, there was Palm Coast Mayor Jon Netts and Fire Chief Mike Beadle, wrapped from the waist down in the traditional Polynesian pāʻū, doing their best impersonations of Hula dancers. It was by far the late afternoon’s most entertaining–and most revealing–moment as the two men did their very best to get in touch with their inner kaholo. And bananas.

They did not go topless, as required by tradition older than the Mayflower (then again, neither did Ohana’s actual dancers). Beadle even kept his white socks on. But they followed their dance instructor’s directions well enough, flowing this way and that, doing the coconut move (hip thrust to the right), the pineapple (hip thrust to the left), the sugarcane (booty move south) and the banana. You can guess what the banana move, or thrust, entails.

Their instructor’s judgment: Beadle has a small one. Netts has a big one. Brian Mason was on stage with them, too. His, the instructor declared, was a crooked one.

If Netts or Beadle now claim to have been born in Hawaii, Donald Trump would never question it. But words could never do their dancing justice. So despite their best efforts to keep these videos from spilling beyond Pine Lakes, here they are, Netts and Beadle, in the full Hawaiian monty. Beadle, incidentally, now owes his entire department a round of ice cream.