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Weather: Sunny, with a high near 69. Friday Night: Clear, with a low around 51.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. See previous podcasts here. Today: a discussion about the feeding crisis ahead, if food stamps are cut off due to the shutdown. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
Rocky Horror Picture Show at Athens Theatre, Thursday, Oct. 30 at 8 p.m., and Friday, Oct. 31, at 11 p.m., Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand. Note: this is the show the idiotic Volusia County Council cancelled all $611,000 cultural council grants over Council member Danny Robins objecting to the “drag” show. So show up, and show your support. Whether you are experiencing “Rocky” for the first or 100th time (as long as you are over the age of 18) we invite you to come and do “The Time Warp” again. The evening will consist of a pre-show featuring several DeLand Pride drag performances (bring those $ bills for tips!) and the Absent Friends (with emcee Robert Baldwin) with their hysterical Rocky-virgin initiation fun, the ever-popular 1975 20th Century Fox film, live shadow cast (in other words, costumed actors portraying the movie while it is being screened above), dancing, and audience participation (with call backs and prop bags). The film’s plot revolves around a newly engaged and admittedly naïve couple (Brad and Janet) who get stranded on the side of the road during a stormy night and seek refuge in the nearby castle of a strange (yet alluring) Dr. Frank-N-Furter. From there the story becomes increasingly more ridiculous, raunchy, and above all, fun.
The Halloween Hall of Terror is back at Palm Coast Fire Station 21, 9 Corporate Drive in Palm Coast. Thursday, Oct. 30 and Friday, Oct.31 from 7 to 10 p.m. This year’s theme, Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Station 21, pays homage to the iconic Friday the 13th horror film series, with sets and locations inside the attraction inspired from the series’ first 8 entries. Visitors can indulge in a variety of delicious offerings from food trucks as they await their turn to tour the spine-chilling haunted house. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the firehouse on Corporate Drive, with overflow parking available in the Kohl’s parking lot. Please note that the event features strobe lights, fog, and other special effects. Those with epilepsy or sensory sensitivities are invited to join us for a special sensory-friendly walkthrough of the Hall of Terror from 6-7pm on both nights of the event.Hall of Terror
The Friday Blue Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Flagler Democratic Office at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214 (above Cue Note) at City Marketplace. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 7:30 p.m. most days, with matinees on Sundays, at 2 p.m., and on Nov. 15. Thornton Wilder’s timeless masterpiece chat quietly and powerfully explores life, love, and loss in small-town America. A deeply human story that resonates with every audience.
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach. 7:30 p.m. Box office: (386) 255-2431. Adults, $25, seniors, $24, Youth, $15. Book here. Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps: a fast-paced whodunit, with over 150 zany characters (played by a cast of only four), an onstage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers, and some good old-fashioned romance! Content advisory: Fake guns and gunshot sound effects
Editorial Notebook: Le Monde (and the Times) report on last Friday’s sentence to life without parole of Dahbia Benkired, the Algerian-born woman who the evening of Oct. 14, 2022, lured 12-year-old Lola to her apartment, gagged her with duct tape, tortured, raped and killed her. The fact that she is an immigrant played into her sentence: it was a marker for France’s far-right, with lusty demands for mass deportations of criminal migrants. I am just as sure, based on my own experience, that had I covered her trial in Flagler-like circumstances, I would have been rooting for the sentence. I am sure, based on my own experience, that by the time I’d reached the plaza in front of the courthouse a short time later, I would have felt the shame and disgust I always feel toward myself for being so engaged, for wanting a verdict to go one way or another, let alone a life sentence, though I would not be manichaen about it. While I find the death penalty barbaric in all circumstances–all means all, as Justice Black might say, but only about all laws in the context of the First Amendment. He did not mind hanging them high–I would not be so dogmatic about life in prison, revolting though even that seems to me. The point is this: Dahbia Benkired is the first woman to get life without parole in France since the country abolished the death penalty in 1981, and only the eighth person overall, all of them in cases of terrorism (such as the sentence of Salah Abdeslam, one of the mass killers in the 2015 Bataclan nightclub attack that left 130 people dead: Paris’s Pulse), murder and two cases involving children. Eight life sentences in 44 years in all of France, a nation of 70 million (55 million in 1981). Even in those cases, there is a possibility of parole after 30 years: the sentence is re-examined, reconsidered. Not in Florida. We are a county of 130,000 people. I have lost count of the number of life sentences without parole I have covered since 2010. A lot of them involve no murder, no death, like Giuseppe Verdone, sentenced in 2015 for carjacking and robbery. Life in prison? For that? Or Brian Pirraglia, sentenced last year to life for causing the drug-overdose death of his friend, or James Taylor, sentenced to life in 2017, for touching his 11-year-old stepdaughter’s chest, over her clothes, for “a couple of seconds,” in her words. He had priors. But life? And that doesn’t count all the innumerable sentences to life for murder or outright rapes, and more coming: one or two a year. Just in Flagler County. This county of 130,000 people. Terrence Perkins, the retired judge, told me during our interview for his profile before he retired that the first time he imposed a life sentence, he went back to his office and retched. I did not ask him if it happened again. I imagine not. We normalize. What should be an extraordinary occurrence, a rarity in the state, is a routine that barely draws press anymore, except me most times, unless there’s a salacious element. Then the reporters and TV cameras swarm. Fuckers. They’re what make me retch, along with my own self-disgust on the way to the car.
—P.T.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
April 2026
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Democratic Women’s Club
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Flagler Schools Jon Fair for Teachers
Chess Meet-Up At the Flagler Beach Public Library
“The Sound of Music,” at Athens Theatre
“Godspell,” at the Limelight Theatre
“The Sound of Music,” at Athens Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity’s Roundup of Standups from Around Central Florida
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
The Gallery of Local Art’s Bloom and Sip English Tea Party
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
“The Parlement declares “the said Robert-François Damiens has been convicted of having committed a very mean, very terrible, and very dreadful parricidal crime against the King. The said Damiens is sentenced to pay for his crime in front of the main gate of the Church of Paris. He will be taken there in a tipcart naked and will hold a burning wax torch weighing two pounds. There, on his knees, he will say and declare that he had committed a very mean, very terrible and very dreadful parricide, and that he had hurt the King. . . . He will repent and ask God, the King and Justice to forgive him. When this will be done, he will be taken in the same tipcart to the Place de Grève and will be put on a scaffold. Then his breasts, arms, thighs, and legs will be tortured. While holding the knife with which he committed the said Parricide, his right hand will be burnt. On his tortured body parts, melted lead, boiling oil, burning pitch, and melted wax and sulfur will be thrown. Then four horses will pull him apart until he is dismembered. His limbs will be thrown on the stake, and his ashes will be spread. All his belongings, furniture, housings, wherever they are, will be confiscated and given to the King. Before the execution, the said Damiens will be asked to tell the names of his accomplices. His house will not be demolished, but nothing will be allowed to be built on this same house.”
–From the death sentence against Robert-François Damiens, attempted assassin of France’s Louis XV in 1757.
Laurel says
Promises made; promises not kept.
Remembering that promise of “repeal and replace,” where did Trump’s plan of better healthcare go? Ten years later, he claimed he has “a concept of a plan.” Where is it?
C’mon Trump supporters, stop ignoring and making excuses for the lies.
Dennis C Rathsam says
PURE POPPYCOCK! GAS is way down, FOOD has come down too with gas prices. TRUMP flew 15 hours yesterday to hand out candy, at the Whitehouse with the 1st lady! TARIFFS are working, peace throughout the world. Many of the SWAMP are being indited, from OBAMAS WHITEHOUSE, & BIDENS WHITEHOUSE, with more to come!
Laurel says
Is “poppycock” in your pipe?
I keep asking you where you shop, and you never answer. Why not? Don’t you want the rest of us to know where these lower prices are?
Trump flew back 15 hours to hand out candy. What a humanitarian. Is that to keep American kids from going hungry? I’m sure they are greatful.
What was painted on the back of Melania’s jacket? I think it said ‘”I really don’t care, do U?”
Be best! Oh, that was last time. This time?
Pogo says
@Now this (trick, or trick)
… just close your eyes and think of Trump, et al., their flesh mingling on the floor of Trump’s ballroom as they shed their skins…
Laurel says
Snakes have far more class than Trump et al. They are a lot kinder, too. I have much more respect, and love, for snakes, than I do for the current administration.
Sympathy for the Devil does really fit him, though.
Bo Peep says
The leftist idiocy continues. Inflation is down if you haven’t noticed. The Dems are the ones who won’t sign a CRA which btw surrenders nothing to keep out military and civil servants paid while negotiations continue. They are still riding a ridiculous platform and that will hopefully and thankfully keep the Democrats out of power for years to come.
The dude says
Uh… serious question for our resident MAGAs.
Where are you guys buying gas and groceries? I’d like to get in on that too.
Laurel says
I know, right? An alternate reality, with Kellyann Conway’s “alternate facts.”