MY YEARS WITH KING MANGO
And Other Coconut Grove Artistic Endeavors
by Glenn Terry
PROLOGUE
In February, 2021, I was interviewed by a curator from Florida International University's art museum. She was collecting information for an exhibit on Coconut Grove artists forty years ago. She asked me to share my memories of the art scene then and the wacky parade I helped start.
A few months later I received a transcript of our conversation. I was stunned by how long it was. The usually quiet me was running at the mouth that day. I decided to expand it even further and to add some of my photographs.
When I tell King Mango tales to friends they often say, “You should write a book!”
This is probably as close as I’ll get.
Glenn
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LANDING IN THE GROVE
I'm a Florida cracker, a native who grew up in Miami Springs on the north side of the Miami airport. Dad was a pilot and my mom raised six kids. I’ve been around since 1947.
I'm lucky to have spent most of my life on the shores of Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove. I moved there in '74 but I started visiting in the 60’s when I was a teen. It was clear that all the cool stuff was happening there. Because I liked hippies, I'd see the flower children dancing, singing, and smoking weed in Peacock Park and think, “This is some place!”.
When I went to college, (University of Florida, 1965) I’d come home for the holidays. My friends and I would gravitate to the Grove, the most exciting place to be, especially if you were drawn to creative things which I was...and still am.
Audrey, another Grove artist
at the Mad Hatter Festival
In the late 60’s I’d go to concerts at the Dinner Key Auditorium when home from college. I was in Gainesville when the Doors played there in 1969. While I couldn’t go, many of my friends attended that well-known event.
That’s the night the band’s lead singer, Jim Morrison, showed up late and drunk. After a couple of songs he unzipped his fly and let folks jeer at his johnson. His subsequent arrest gave the Grove world-wide attention. Ten years later I was a Coconut Grove lawyer on the board of the local Chamber of Commerce. When I suggested that we put up a historical marker they thought I was kidding.
Fifty years later this brief moment is still mentioned by tour bus guides as they glide by Dinner Key. Jim grew up in Tampa. Maybe he was the original Florida Man.
FAVORITE PLACES
The Grove had it all and what is gone I miss. Forty years ago it was discovered by developers. Over time their "New Grove" has replaced the old one. You fight your battles but things change and you have to move on.
Before hippies there were beatniks. In the late 60’s there was still a Bohemian bar called "The Last Word" on 27th Avenue near US 1. I used to go there in my college days. It was a coffee house with folk music. With walls painted black, drippy candles on Chianti bottles, and a Don Martin mural on the wall, I felt comfortable there.
I adored the Tom Thumb Restaurant on Grand Avenue. It was, like “Tom”, very small, just enough room for me and my breakfast buddies. Like the bar in “Cheers” everybody knew my name. When their rent doubled in the late 70’s they had to move to Homestead. They sell $900 designer running shoes in that space now, very New Grove.
There was a lot going on, many public events and some were spontaneous. Like the day I went down to the bay (in the mid-70's) to hang out by the water at Captain Dick’s beer joint. I recognized Richie Havens as he stood outside holding a guitar. After chatting a bit he sat on a box and started playing. It was a beautiful, impromptu concert. I thought, "This is so magical. It would NEVER happen in Miami Springs”.
Woodstock happened a few years earlier. On the lawn at Captain Dick's I sat at the feet of Richie Havens, the opening act at the legendary concert. That day he sang backed up by a glistening bay. It could only happen in Coconut Grove.
There were a lot of talented artist living in or passing through the Grove then. You could go to the Grove Playhouse to see plays, concerts, and Broadway productions like “Equis” and “Hair”.
It blows my mind that the playhouse been closed -like a huge, dead elephant- for fifteen years and the City of Miami has failed to do anything about it.
Back then the Coconut Grove Playhouse sparkled, it was the center of attention and the Grove’s history. My mother went there to see movies in the 1930’s, the only air-conditioned theater in town then. Now it’s the massive corpse on Main Street with every politician we elect promising to save it.
Captain Dick's (later, Scotty's Landing) was my favorite place to hang out. Anyone could go there, buy a beer, a fish sandwich, and watch boats glide by. It was heaven. Scotty’s live music was terrific too.
Scotty’s held on for a half- century. Eight years ago our deranged city commissioner decided to allow developers to turn our much-loved beer joint into a Shula's Steak House (the city owned the lease). We fought it, we lost, and so it goes. No Miami politician has ever stood up for the Old Grove.
We had folk music clubs, candle stores, and sandal makers in the 60’s. My buddy, Seth Lefkow, says there were more head shops than restaurants. Michael Lange, the young man who later gave us Woodstock, owned one.
Some folks thought it was cool that “Deep Throat” was filmed in the Grove. I didn’t care. I was never into drugs, porn, booze, gambling, or any of the other stuff. Making art, sipping sangria, and goofing off with my friends was enough for me. Getting married in the 80's was another story. I actually had to grow up and be responsible for a family.
The Grove Cinema showed experimental and foreign films. They had double features, a different one every night. The Flying Fendlemen Brothers rocked the Grove with great movies for years.
In the late 70's I rented their place to show my own experimental Super-8 films. I do love mangos so most had mango themes like "Mango Madness", “Mango on a Half-Shell", and "Last Mango in Paris". I had four Super-8 film festivals in two years.
Everyone loved the “The Bionic Hippy” so I turned it into a full-length script and tried to get comedian George Carlin, to star in it. After I tracked him down at his Hollywood home in 1979 he told me, “No thanks. I don’t want to be a hippie anymore”. I still think it would make a great film.
I stuck around L.A. for twenty months hoping my incredible talents would be discovered.
One Halloween I won a hundred bucks in a bar's costume contest.
I wore a reconfigured milk jug mask, six jugs that I had weirded out with a propane torch. When the judge asked me to state my name,
I just screamed. The audience loved it.
I also had minor roles in a sucky horror film. (Yes, that was me, the delivery man and the zombie crawling out of the grave in “Demonoid”).
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After you've been dead for three days, its not that easy to get on your feet
In the movie's final scene I also play a UPS guy. I deliver a severed hand to Demonoid's heroine which... (well, the ending is much too gruesome to describe in this family/zombie friendly blog).
Rejection letters were piling up, friends were scarce, and the Grove
was calling me back. I flew home, settled in, and formed a rag-tag
marching band. That later led to creating the King Mango parade.
The
early 80’s Grove was a happenin’ place, pleasing to the bachelor l was
then. The cocaine cowboys were tearing things up but I saw little of
that. I fell back into
While writing more scripts and waiting for success I won $100 in a Halloween costume contest. I also my old Grove groove creating a Fourth of July event for the Barnacle. It included sack races, watermelon seed spitting, and a Yoo-Hoo chugging contest easily won by Bobby Deresz.
The state park continues to be one of my favorite Grove hangouts. Walking the winding, woodsy trail back to the 1880’s house puts everyone at ease. Their monthly concerts have been popular for years, one of the few places Grove-ites can gather.
After they bulldozed Scotty's Landing, the Barnacle became my favorite place to relax in the Grove. Illustration courtesy of the Barnacle Society
BRINGING THE HOLIDAYS HOME
I rented the Grove Cinema again in 1986 to put on a Christmas variety show. With so many talented people around I thought putting them on stage would brighten the Grove for the holidays. That freezing December evening we gathered to present local musicians, comedians, and poets. Buzz and Kathy Fleishman made us laugh.
Ward Shelley and Homer Wells played “Jingle Bells Rock” and a woman wearing a cardboard Christmas tree belted out “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”. Les Cizek's Conch Band serenaded us too. For some reason, that was the Grove’s first and last Christmas show.
Five years earlier, I had returned from my attempt to find fame in Hollywood. In Miami I had friends to help produce the shows that were playing in my head. I figured, “If Perry Como and Pee Wee Herman can have their own Christmas shows, why can’t I?
A week later I was walking into local bars with a borrowed video camera. I took charge of the lunch-time crowds with the question, “Who wants to be in Miami’s first Christmas Special?”. Most were drunk enough to say “Yes!” and they sang Christmas songs I had re-written. The Taurus Chorus, led by Keven Hurley, performed “We Wish You a Scary Christmas”. Martin Livergood shared his secret hamburger recipe ("plenty of grilled onions"). Artist Tony Scornavacca had a terrific voice so I gave him his own scene. I filmed him singing, “I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas” as he stood barefoot in his front yard.
My mother sang a holiday hymn in front of the Barnacle.
What a good sport she was, not just with this, but in supporting all of my crazy endeavors. Thanks Ma.
David Clarke was good enough to do the editing so “Dave and Glenn’s Christmas Special” aired on Christmas Eve on a local TV station. The resulting Miami Herald article called it my “Christmas Card to Miami”.
South Florida hasn’t had its own Christmas special since. Every five years I show mine at Books and Books. Tony Scornavacca's voice is as strong and velvety as ever.
STRONG WINDS, GOOD SAILING
The Grove is next to an ocean full of possibilities. When I finally moved there some of my new friends had sailboats. If you didn’t have one you probably knew someone that did. We’d go sailing and have terrific parties on the bay.
We'd get lit, watch the sun set, then swim in refreshing water. Diving into a bay at night stirred up bio-luminescent plankton. Their bright, blue sparkles were magic. Not many can say they experienced that.
Photo above- Sailing with friends on my boat, "Putney Sloop" in 1975.
Sometimes we’d weigh anchor and sail off to the Bahamas for a week or two. Shep Linsday would head out for months with nothing but water and a twenty-pound sack of rice. He’d say, “I can dive for everything else”. It was easy livin’ for sailors on the cheap.
Dolphins were Grove residents too. Dr. John Lilly experimented with them in downtown Coconut Grove, where Starbucks is now.
He had a couple of them in tanks for linguistic research purposes. You could walk in to visit or play them a song. Some say he gave them LSD but I think there was more acid in the visitors than the imprisoned fish.
Entrance to the Lilly house.
Dr. John had one in his South Grove swimming pool for a while too. I lived two doors away long after they enforced the “no dolphins in your pool” rule. I never met the guy but was friends with his daughter. Her neuroscientist father was apparently quite a character, inventor of the isolation tank, and a close friend of Timothy Leary.
The Grove was filled with great places to visit. All of them were enhanced by the liberal, artistic atmosphere and their proximity to the bay. I'm living in North Central Florida but when I think of the Grove I can almost sniff a sea breeze.
AN ARTIST HAVEN
The Old Grove was a magnet for artists. I knew many but no one famous. The few that became well-known had to move to New York or L.A. to reach that level. Grove artist Ward Shelley was sculpting here and drawing there but he did not make the big time until he moved to the Apple. My former Irvington Avenue neighbor is now well-known as an architectural performance artist.
The Grove art scene was worthy but no one got rich. It was an incubator for anyone wanting to develop their talent. We had exceptional painters, sculptors, and one wood carver who lived in a tree.
“Sunhawk” was a quiet man who resided in a large Banyan near 27th Avenue. He’d carved things out of driftwood sell them in the Taurus for $25. That goes a long way when you live in a tree.
“Uta” is another unusual Grove artist. She is as long on talent as she is short in name. For years she has toyed with photography, sculpture, painting, and jewelry. Recently she showed me her match-box dioramas and painted chicken bones. Visits to her North Grove cottage were like exploring an exotic mini-museum.
Playwright Edward Albee, Sly Stallone, and Madonna -they’re artists too- had homes in the Grove but I never saw them laughing over beers at the Taurus. I only saw famous people at a distance. Like, at concerts. My friends and I saw the Stones, The Who, Neil Young, James Brown, and all the others who passed through.
I did make a short documentary in 1978 called, “Real Famous People”. In it I interviewed friends who had seen celebrities in airports, public bathrooms, and shopping on Rodeo Drive. My list included Henry Fonda, Orson Welles, and Sharon Tate. Like most of my artistic endeavors my film is “out there”, enjoyable to me and my friends but has no commercial value.
I did see one guy before he was famous. Back in ’75 the Miami PBS TV station announced, “We have a musician coming to our studio to perform. We need people for a small audience.” I went with my girlfriend and we were directed to sit on on a bale of hay. A guy named Jimmy Buffet walked in the room with a guitar and sat on one himself. He was promoting his first album and sang songs like "Come Monday” and “Pencil-thin Moustache”. I thought, “This guy’s pretty good!”.
It was like another Richie Havens moment except Jimmy sat on a bale and Richie, on a box. We had a great time as did the dozen others serenaded that afternoon.
Later I learned Jimmy B had been performing at Bubba’s, one of the Grove's folk clubs, for $25 a night.
BAD PORTRAITS
I am convinced that all of us are artists. For instance, anyone can draw a portrait that has redeeming qualities. If you drew me it might be awful but I wouldn’t care. Your rendition would reflect something unique that you saw in me.
Taking this idea further in 1981, I asked the people running the Grove art festival to let me do a performance piece. My group would be amongst the other artists having a blast drawing bad portraits.
These would be rendered by my friends plus a few local celebrities. Thus, the “Bad Portrait Project” was born. For a dollar you could stop at our booth, take a seat, and have your portrait drawn fast and bad for a buck. They let us in the show because we were funny, we donated the proceeds to charity and, most important, I knew the show's director. It was a hit for the next three years.
Miami has "Love Burn", a little version of Burning Man every February. My son, Ian, draws bad portraits there.
ARTIST FRIENDS
I became friends with some of the Grove’s visual artist back in the day. Folks like Grail Douglas, Mark Diamond, Cynthia Shelley, Michael Carlebach, and Dina Knapp come to mind. Dancers and choreographers loved living in the Grove too, artists like Mary Luft, Wally Lord, and Delma Isles.
Mary let me be part of her backyard multi-media performances in the late 70’s. Once she had me lying in a hammock with my clothes on backwards ( that’s another strange story). What fun it was pretending I was someone I wasn’t. You could make any creative thing happen in the Grove back then.
For an artist to earn a decent income you had to be good and work your butt off. Creating art wasn’t enough, you had to market it beyond Miami. If you had something people wanted, you needed to sell it in every way possible, in every possible place. That meant getting your work in galleries, gift shops, weekend art shows, and later, online. I enjoyed witnessing the success of four Grove friends who painted what we love about the living in the tropics.
TROPICAL WATERCOLOR WOMEN
In the seventies I practiced law and created art, a weird combination. At the same time I began to hear about several Coconut Grove artists who were finding success selling paintings, posters, and prints of tropical scenery. Through the years they developed all kinds of products and venues to sell their work.
Painting by Lisa Remeny
My hat’s off to Lisa Remeny and the others for their success.
Replicating scenery had no appeal for me. I enjoyed experimenting, creating unusual art while practicing law at the same time.
Here are a few examples of my experimentsbeginning with a tattooed wahoo.
In my artist life boxes become robot heads
Milk jugs turned into lion fish
and an old bike helmet was transformed into another orange fish. Perfect for bugle calls.
I have made many masks. It's typical of my work, making unusual things that have little commercial appeal. While they don't make money but they do make me happy.
That's my artist life.
Or in family portraits,
When I was teaching my young art students would happily wear them in class.
In the late 90's I was still thinking that people wanted to buy my odd art. I created a dozen, paper-mache "Happy Monsters".
I thought they would "fly off the shelf" when they
were featured in a local art show.
I wasn't able to sell any of them. I did trade two for a chair and some dental work.
Below, "Gimme Four"
I love perusing the discarded art in thrift shops. Another brilliant idea of mine was to take the unloved paintings home and to improve them by adding my popular creation, the Mango King.
I'd buy one for five bucks, paint in the king, and make as much as $10 selling the final product.
" King Mango with Aunt Millie"
" The King Catches Some Rays"
I can't say that my Blue Mango series fared any better
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or my shillelaghs, which I advertised as "The fighting sticks that say, 'Don't Mess with Ireland' ",
or, my mahogany slices of carrot cake (low on calories but at 30 lbs. each, heavy on weight).
I attempted to sell my curious creations at the annual, one-day, Gifford art show. One year I made a series of simple portraits of children painted in their own style. I sold all of them to kids whose parents had given them a little spendin' money (at ten bucks, my prices were little too.
After I did my first art shows in the 70's, I realized you had to make a lot of the same thing over and over to make enough money to live on. That wasn't for me.
I stopped the art show thing until 2004 when they started the Gifford show. In 2004 I began to show my work there as a performance piece, a strange, delightful thing for strangers to encounter. For me it was a way to socialize (it was a 5-hour party!), entertain, and to pay for art materials. Often friends would see me there and say, "I didn't know you were and artist!".
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| Rocky Lyons wearing his purchase at my "Mango Republic" booth. Gifford Art Show, 2013 |
It seems I gave everything a try. Thirty years ago I was asked to be a part of a new event, MDCC's Vulture Culture Festival. It celebrated fall's return of migrating turkey vultures. The first year I put together a vulture parade on Flagler Street. For the next one I created a sit-down cafe featuring road kill at the downtown campus.
No, these things don't make money but they sure are fun!
CAREER CHANGE
Years ago my life took a new direction. In the early 90’s I gave up law to become a public school art teacher. That way I could continue to be a part-time artist, share what I love with kids, and still feed the family.
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| Finally, one of my scripts made it to the stage, "Snow White and the Seven Robots", 2014 |
It was a good move. I became twice as happy by making half as much money. And besides, the world can always use one less lawyer.
While I was creating edgy art a whole 'nother group of Grove artists were making music. My neighbor was Bobby Ingram.
BOBBY INGRAM & FRIENDS
The Grove was a magnet for many talented musicians in the 70's. Many came to record at the Bayshore Studio, guys like Bob Seger, Jimmy Buffett, and the Eagles.
Bobby Ingram was my neighbor for years. He was a Grove legend who left us a year ago. Bob was the consummate Grove folky/hippy musician. He and his wife, Gay, lived the artist life in the South Grove.
When he started out in the late 50's, he was part of a folk group which included David Crosby who later became quite famous. You probably know, after his stint with Bobby, he became a part of The Byrds and later, Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Bobby knew him well for sixty years.
When Crosby was in town playing with C S & N, he’d come to the Grove, visit Bobby's, or have lunch with him at Greenstreets. Thirty years ago -and these are all old musicians I’m talking about that you might not be familiar with- Neil Young would be out in front of the Ingram cottage washing his car. Young was a big car guy and he needed a good spot and a water hose to baby is latest ride. Bobby knew all these people...Fred Neil, Vince Martin, Steven Stills, Spanky McFarlaine, Jose Feliciano and a couple of Eagles. His star stories were endless.
While Bobby never made it big like some of his friends, he did stay put and raised beautiful kids with his sweet wife. I'm sure many of the "stars" wish they had experienced that. Many remember Bobby Ingram as the musician who charmed audiences from the thatched-roofed stage at Monty’s Bayshore Restaurant in the 60’s and 70’s.
The crowd at his memorial service last year was testament to his extensive network of friends and a life well-lived.
Once the Ingrams went on a 3000-mile journey on Crosby’s sailboat to California with Crosby, Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash. They were all connected and Bobby, a Navy vet, was the one who knew how to sail. As he told it, once they reached the Panama Canal Joni had had enough. He showed me a photo of her waving from the dock as they continued their journey. A guitar, of course, was by her side.
Living on Palmetto Avenue I could cross the street anytime and hear another one of Bobby's tales. And oh was he funny and his backyard concerts, incredible. I lived all over the Grove for forty-seven years, knew Bobby for forty, and was his neighbor for the last fifteen.
MOST OF MY DAYS
When things got too crowded and the developers, too greedy, my wife and I fled to North Florida just before Covid hit. I know I was lucky to have lived most of my days in Coconut Grove.
Remarkable people were repeatedly drawn to the place. Many artists and musicians arrived in the 50's, 60's and 70's to live or visit. David Crosby is an example; he hunkered down in the Grove when he was just another guy with a guitar. When he hit it big he returned with an 80-foot sailboat. Crosby kept it at Dinner Key for years.
Many developed their music here. Early on Bobby ran Bubba’s, a folk club on Main Highway, where people like Jimmy Buffet, Jerry Jeff Walker, David Crosby, Vince Martin, and Fred Neil performed. He later ran one in the Gables too, “The Flick”, where the Titanic brewery is now. We also had “The Gaslight” folk club in the Grove.
BAD ADVICE
Bobby Ingram loved to tell the story about Jimmy Buffet being a regular at his club, “Jimmy was from Alabama and he was looking for new possibilities. He told me he was thinking of moving to Key West. I’d spent a year there in the Navy. I told him to forget it, it had no women and too many drunk sailors." Bobby added with a laugh, "It was the best advice he never took”.
The owner of Bubba’s told the budding Joni Mitchell to sing old favorites as her own songs were too strange. He advised, “Nobody wants to hear about clouds getting in your way.”
THE GROVE IN SONG
People wrote songs about the good life in the Grove. John Sebastian’s “Coconut Grove” reminded us, “It's really true how nothin' matters. No mad, mad world and no mad hatters
And no-one's pitchin' 'cause there ain't no batters, in Coconut Grove”.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “American Dream echoed how our village was as close as most could get to island living with its chorus, “I think Jamaican in the moonlight, sandy beaches drinking rum every night. We got no money, mama, but we can go, We'll split the difference, go to Coconut Grove.” Every time I’d hear those hit songs I’d think, “I living here. How lucky I am.”
STEVE’S BIG BREAK
Steve Martin performed comedy in the Grove when he was less than famous, in 1973. In his autobiography, "Born Standing Up", he mentioned the night he performed at “Bubba’s”, the club Bobby managed on Grand Avenue. He got the audience crazy with laughter and then told them, “Enough of you guys, I’m outta here!” He then jumped off the stage and out into the street. The audience followed like lemmings. And there, in the middle of Grand Avenue, he continued his surreal, one-man vaudeville show.
John Huddy, the Miami Herald’s entertainment writer, was in the audience that night. The next day he wrote the first glowing article about the budding comedian including, “He parades his hilarity right out into the street”. Huddy went on to describe Martin’s act as something new and surprisingly strange; it led to national attention. As Martin wrote in his book, his first big break happened that night in Coconut Grove.
MAKING MONEY REPLACES MAKING ART
A lot of artsy things came to life in the Grove back then. Now priced-out artists do their creating elsewhere. The art era ended in the early 80’s when the Grove was "discovered" by developers. There was money to be made and politicians were willing to help them tear down the Old Grove, building by building, tree by tree.
Our grocery store, Winn-Dixie, was replace by the mammoth “Mayfair" back then. To commemorate that sad occasion I threw a “Goodbye Winn-Dixie” party in the parking lot on the store’s final night. “The Meat People” band entertained and someone got the top prize in the “Store Manager Look-a-Like Contest”. This was typical of my work as an artist, “Glenn doing some wacky thing that makes no money”. You can go broke raging against the machine.
This “Out With the Old and In With the New” trend has continued ever since. Making money replaced making art. The concrete continues to get piled higher, crowding the sky with bigger-is-better buildings. This type of thinking makes me gag. Any reputable city planner will tell you it’s best to preserve what makes a community unique. Our city leaders failed Coconut Grove miserably. It looks more like Bal Harbor every day.
When I first saw The Grove as a kid in the fifties it seemed like a funky fishing village similar to the old parts of the Keys. The artists must have fit right in. When it began changing an odd thing happened, developers began to market the Grove as the sleepy fishing village that they were intent on destroying.
The tree canopy we were so proud of began to get torn away by the land grabbing mega-duplexes, MacMansions, and the latest developer style, huge white boxes that could pass for dentist offices. I guess we can take some pleasure in remembering what we lost.
It didn’t have to change. Key West kept its “Old Grove” charm and Coral Gables manages to hold on to most of its historic buildings. As an artsy guy I’m fortunate to have lived there when I did. That being said, there’s still many wonderful people and special things remaining in Coconut Grove. My sons live there and enjoy the things that thrilled me when I arrived.
GROVE GALLERIES
Artists came to the Grove to live, produce and show their work. In the 70'swe had a dozen galleries. They had "gallery nights" where they were open late and the sidewalks were crowded with art fans. They were very festive and musicians played here and there.That occurred for a number of years.
The Grove House art studio was next to the playhouse in the 60’s and 70’s. All the best artists could create and exhibit art their. It was created by artists for artists and you could even take lessons. In an old house out back, Penny Praig made beautiful stained-glass art. I remember watching her create sixteen huge, colorful windows for a new Mayfair restaurant.
I knew Kay Pancoast. Trained as an architect she branched off into ceramics in the 50's and became internationally known. Her huge tile mural in the Gables library (1970) is incredible.
Sometimes it seemed every other person in the Grove was an artist. I sold wooden creations at Jack's jewelry studio on McFarlane Road in the 70’s. Living was easy for me, my shack on Matilda Street set me back $175 a month. I rode my bike to my law office over the Bird Bath Laundry.
People all around me encouraged creativity. The Recorder Workshop was just across from my office. The owner, Arnie, worked to acquaint the world with the magic of ancient wooden flutes. That wouldn’t fly today.
THE GROVE GETS A GUILD
By the 90’s the Grove artists were dwindling, drifting apart, and their exhibition space non-existent. I decided to organize the artists and exhibit their work. I called my new group, “The Grove Art Guild”. In 1996 we had our first one-night exhibition in the Hampton Inn. We carried on monthly with hopes of finding permanent gallery space. When that dream faded I let the other artists take the reins.
They thought “GAG” sounded bad so the group became “The One Ear Society”. Trina Collins and AnnaMarie Windisch-Hunt led the way as they found temporary space on Grand Avenue. Grove artists had a home once more.
A forced move took the Society two blocks east to an empty storefront in Mayfair. AnnaMarie and her husband, Fred, managed that place as they kept local, original art alive for a several more years.
THE BIG ONE
The Grove Art Festival was a big deal back then (and still is). When my friend, Charlie Cinnamon started it in 1963, it promoted the works of Grove artists.
Heck, I was even in the show with my woodwork back in ’76. That changed completely over the years. Now, if they have 350 artists in the big show, maybe two will be from the Grove and five from South Florida. That stinks. Still, it attracts hundreds of thousands to our village every year -for four days- to see and enjoy art. It is certainly the Grove’s biggest event.
THE SMALL ONE
Fenced off and pricey, the Grove show is now a huge commercial event. I rarely attend anymore. But this growth resulted in something both wonderful and surprising. Locals tired of the The Big Show started their own small one, “ The Gifford Lane Art Stroll” in 1998.
The Gifford is sort of a secret. Once a year, this hard-to-find residential street near Coconut Grove Elementary has its own, intimate, art festival. Everyone that lives there allows artists to show their work in their front yards. The stroll rises up magically like Brigadoon, five hours of The Old Grove once a year.
I've shown my artwork in the Gifford Lane exhibition for 16 years and unlike the Grove's Big Show, it's free.
It is everything that the Grove Arts Festival isn’t. Some of the artists aren’t the best but so what? They’re people doing their best, sharing their creations. There’s authentic magic in the air.
The Stroll has plenty of art, musicians, and spiked cucumber punch that’s makes you silly fast. It’s just wonderful, a hush-hush affair that lasts just half-a-day.
Where 400,000 people go to the Big Show, maybe 4000 attend to the Gifford Stroll. It’s off the path and that's good too. Too many people would screw it up.
Anyway, there are a few precious secrets in the Grove that, if you live there, you know them. (photo by Harry Emilio Gottlieb)
We offer a free beer with every shirt sold
Here’s one more secret. I spent two weeks building a coral rock wall in 1977. My fifty-foot section is across from the Coconut Grove Playhouse on Main Highway. Maybe you can find the hidden cave and the naughty sculpture I included.
KING MANGO ORIGINS
Ashlye- So how did the King Mango Strut Parade begin? How did that come about?
Glenn- Miami used to have an Orange Bowl Parade. It was a big deal in downtown Miami every New Year’s Eve. It was led by a giant cartoon named King Orange and it began in the 1930s. When I was growing up in the 50s, and my parents would take. the family there to see this bright, night-time holiday event.
They’d would throw down a blanket next to the Biscayne Boulevard and there we’d sit. It was enthralling to watch the colorful floats roll by. They had beautiful women waving plus plenty of brass bands. It was amazing.
I LOVE A PARADE
I’ve loved parades ever since. To me they’re street theater and like any performance, they can be good or not. I’ve seen many and have learned a lot about the art form.
In the late 70’s the Orange Bowl parade was losing its glamour and TV ratings. At same time Grove promoters came up with an idea for a new parade in the Grove’s African-American community. They called it a “Goombay Parade” and it was part of an all-day, Bahamian-inspired festival. I went the first year, had a great time, and wondered why I seemed like the only white guy there.
The parade was a party that boogied down Grand Avenue. The spiffy Nassau Police Marching Band, was followed by Goombay dancers and Goombay bands. The procession wasn't long but what they had was terrific.
The parade attracted fans that followed. I found myself marching along with the happy throng. Dancing in the street, groovin’ to their beat I thought, “This is great. I’m gonna be a part to this next year. I’m gonna have my own group!”
The problem was I was not a musician or a dancer. I’m more of a quiet clown who enjoys being surrounding by loud ones. What I
have are good ideas and an ability to organize, publicize and blow a conch shell.
Months later I created The Mango Marching Band, a musical group for non-musicians. We played conch shells and kazoos. Anyone can do that. We wore crazy clothes in public topped with silly hats. Not everyone can do that.
We marched in the Goombay parade the next year and had a blast. I led the group as we played “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Stars and Stripes Forever”. The audience loved us. We felt like minor celebrities.
While it was exciting to be in a band it probably would have been fun doing anything in that parade. I think that’s why
Marching successfully in the 1980 West Grove parade we decided, “ The Orange Bowl Parade needs us!".
We applied to be in the ‘81 Orange Bowl Parade going through its entire application process. After weeks of photos, demo-tapes, and short essays on why we were special, we got their rejection letter. It said something like, “We thought we had a slot for you but we decided to fill it with clowns”.
How could they? We were more than ”clowns”, we were tie-dyed, kazoo-playing, in-your-face hippy clowns! Something new and unexpected for their staid show. At first I was bummed but soon got to thinking, “To heck with them. We’ll start our own parade”.
And so the King Mango Strut come to be.
PARADES 101
The first step I learned, was calling the local parade experts, the City of Miami Police. They have that parade thing down. They hooked me up with the special events people. They get paid to watch parades. I met with them and received their booklet, “How to Start a Parade”. Just kidding. They were very helpful and at this point of my life I could write that booklet.
The process began, of course, with filling out paperwork. My law school background helped with all the forms and the necessary advocacy skills. I finally got the green light to have a parade on the last Sunday of 1982.
Our parade would be small, only 4 blocks long, but big in many outrageous ways. Our groups would move slowly and interact with the crowd. Our bands would only play the blues or rock n’ roll. The procession we were planning would be very different, almost an anti-parade.
Our first "poster" was flyer
BILL AND GLENN’S GREAT ADVENTURE
A few weeks after proposing my parade ideas I met a funny guy named Bill Dobson who had similar thoughts. We got along well and decided to promote the parade together.
I came up with the name because I had used Mango themes in all of my weird, experimental films a few years earlier.
Also, I loved to eat them and a mango king was so much cooler that one made from an orange.
“Strut” was just this high-steppin’, highfalutin word that seemed right for both roosters and the procession we were planning.
Bill and I recruited our crazy friends to help put the first one together. That's how we started the first King Mango Strut that stepped out on December 26th, 1982. Our budget was $300. We put in our own money in hoping to get it back in t-shirt sales. We wanted the whole thing to be non-commercial, no sponsors were allowed. We were the Un-Orange Bowl Parade; their's was festooned with sponsoring signage. Being a parody of all other holiday parades was perfect for us. Our permanent parade theme then (and now) was,
Every year reporters would ask, “What’s your theme for this year?” We never had anything new so we’d make stuff up. One year I’d tell 'em, “Don’t Piss in the Wind” or “Everything Tastes Great If You Put Enough Barbecue Sauce On It”.
HOW WE DID IT
Our plan was simple. On the big day we would control traffic by blocking streets with large cardboard boxes. On them we’d paint, “No entry. Parade in Progress.” We put one at each end of Commodore Plaza which is 150 yards long. Then, we’d have everyone line up between the boxes. Each group received a number which we was drawn on the pavement. That’s how you start a parade.
The first year we were required to hire 3 police officers for $50 bucks each. One of them was going to keep cars from running into the front of our procession, one was going to protect our rear end and number three was gonna drink coffee because we couldn’t figure out anything for him to do.
As it turned out, #3 didn’t show up so the cops only cost $100. That was pretty much it.
At 2 p.m. cop #1 stopped the traffic on Main Highway, I blew my whistle and the parade started. We headed up Main Highway like we owned it.
I blew my whistle and the parade started
Photo by Michael Carlebach
Led by the Mango Marching Band, the 200 participants had a great time entertaining the crowds. It usually took an hour to march the long four blocks. Because The Miami Herald gave us terrific publicity, 4,000 people showed up to see us strut. The weather was perfect and amazingly, in all these years, the Strut has never been rained out. It could be luck but I think God is a big fan. She has a great sense of humor.
We thought it would be a one-shot deal but, we got a nice review in the paper and people told us, “We can’t wait until you do it again next year.” So we did it again and again and again. I thought we’d tire of it but for years, for me and many others, it was something we looked forward to, those Sunday afternoons when we brought laughter and irreverence to Coconut Grove. That’s how it all began.
WHAT MADE IT DIFFERENT?
Maybe some reading this don’t know what the Strut is. It’s an unusual, satirical parade that pokes fun at politicians and current events. Most groups get easy laughs like 2007’s “Shopping Zombies”. They were the bleeding dead stumbling along carrying Bloomingdale's shopping bags. They’d mumble things slowly like “Guc-ci” and “Rol-ex” while reaching for your watch.
Any edgy humor was perfect for us, especially if they made fun of politicians. Bad ideas were rejected at our drunken meetings at the Grove's Taurus Bar. If a group's idea need help we would rush to their aid.
We knew we had to make fun of the Orange Bowl’s queen, the star of their parade. I came up with the idea for a “Little Miss Mango” competition. Any girl between the ages of three and nine could enter our contest a half-hour before the parade. The audience listened to them answer tough questions like, “How much ice cream can you eat?” or “How many boyfriends do you have?
The
judges would then huddle to choose the winner. Amazingly, every year,
all the girls tied for first place. If you must have beauty contests we
think everyone should win. Everybody’s beautiful.
Years later, some of them became mothers and rode on the truck with their "Former Little Miss Mango" signs and their Little Miss Mango daughters.
Apparently the young royalty was not enough. The second year a Grove character named “Draino” told me he wanted to be the parade’s queen.
“Fine”, I said, “If you wear a loud dress and pink stockings we’ll find you a convertible". Dwayne Sowatsky was a magnificent queen for fifteen years with crooked lipstick, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
The third year I was approached by a determined young women who announced, “I’m Lynn Klein, the World’s Greatest Jewish Princess, and I am going to be in your parade." How could I say no?
Of course, she brought her own convertible and her boyfriend in chains. Princess Lynn was hit as she smiled, filed her nails, and occasionally tossed bagels into the audience. Back then that line of humor wasn't considered politically incorrect.
The organizers, the “Mangoheads”, would gather every week for the three months preceding the event. It was challenging leading that raucous mango crowd. I was the sober one, the designated driver trying to keep the meetings on the road. After fifteen years, Wayne took on that role and later, Antoinette.
We tried to keep things cheap and simple. Most marchers
We frowned on vehicles, we didn’t want anyone waving from a car. We didn’t let politicians in the parade either for years. Finally we let Mayor X. Suarez in because he promised to dribble a basketball for the entire route. We thought that’d be funny.
We didn’t want marching bands because they were usually too big and boring. We told one they could join us if they marched backwards. We let in the Flamingo Freedom Band because they promoted gay rights and wore silly costumes. We admitted the
Strutting through Wynwood, 2016
Like a party, every parade needs music. We encouraged blues bands and rock bands to join in and that’s what we had. Some bands would say “I’ll be in your parade for $300,” and we said, “To heck with you. We’ll get garage bands for free”. Their lack of polish was just our style. We weren’t going to pay anyone to march.
Years later, we began paying some people to perform which I think, in retrospect, was a bad idea. Our excuses included, “Those ten-feet tall stilt dancers are amazing”, “Its the only way we can get that terrific Cajun band”, or “If we raise more money we can try new things”.
Premier sax man, Joe Donato, has played the Strut almost every year, Iko Iko too. On the other extreme, my band, “The Nematoads”, marched in 1990.
The "Toads" belting it out- Dave Barry, Ward Shelley, Gene Weingarten and Bill Kunz. For maximum cool we wore popcorn tubs on our heads.
BECOMING A BIG DEAL
As mango parade got more popular it became an iconic Grove event. I was its top banana for twenty-eight years. Others, like Wayne Brehm and Antoinette Baldwin took on the major responsibilities in the 90’s and beyond.
As I mentioned earlier, I was doing the initial planning with my friend, Bill Dobson. As the parade’s co-founders we had great fun bouncing ideas off each other. Unfortunately, Bill died 16 years ago, way too young. When others took on the roll of “primary organizer” in the 90’s, I continued to be the artistic director. My official title was “Top Banana of the KMS”. Bill called himself the Strut’s ‘Grand Poobah”.
It still surprises me that it’s gone on this long, watching the budget zoom from $300 to $30,000. Isn’t that nuts, that much money to put people in the street for a couple of hours? Success and increasing regulations did that.
ADDING TO THE MANGO MIX
After a couple of years we had the parade thing down so we figured, “Why not add to it?”
In 1986 we sponsored the “King Mango Trash Dance” at the Shell Lumber Yard (the name was a play on “Flashdance”, a popular movie at the time).
You could only get though the yard gate if you were wearing something trashy. Boxes, garbage bags, and blue hurricane tarps (always popular in storm-ridden Miami) worked fine. We danced to the music of our favorite garage bands.
Bob Deresz and Patricia Wiesin
Another year we raised over $62 for the parade by staging a cheap wine tasting event. Monty provided stone crabs while we mulled over which tastes better, Boone’s Farm, Bali Hi, or Ripple.
By 1989 we figured it was time to have some sort of banquet the night before the parade. The Grand Ballroom at the Biltmore was booked so we opted for a popular restaurant on our home turf. “Black Tie At Burger King” was another success. Funny guy, Dave Barry was our guest of honor in a white tux with tails.
Performance artist, Art Kendallman, won the coveted Strangest Strutter Award. I presented him with his trophy, a bottle of the expensive stuff, Kraft barbecue sauce.
Peter O strolled among the Whopper fans pretending to play a violin. Most of us wore formal wear while a few had black ties on t-shirts. That night we had it our way.
In the early 80's developers began tearing down our historic downtown buildings and replacing them with hideous designs. The 1985 Strut we held an "Ugly Building Competition".
The three getting the most votes were replicated in cardboard. People wore them in the parade. The Strut was a great place to replace tears with laughter.
"The Winner"
After twenty years of successful strutting we decided to do more than make fun of our problems. We resolved to address one of them, the world’s lack of adequate, clean water. If Georgia could have a Peach Festival why couldn’t South Florida have one for water? And so the WaterFest was born.
WATERFEST
We had no one to follow, there had never been a water festival, anywhere, before. Putting our mango minds together and came up with a mix of serious and silly. WaterFest took place at the Nature Center on Key Biscayne. 
While the experts lectured inside about pollution and water conservation, others were outside splashing each other with gobs of colored water or zipping along a waterslide. Squirt gun fights were encouraged.
AJ and Antoinette manned our "Wet Bar”. It featured eighteen different varieties of water from “Florida Spring” to “Ice Berg Melt". With a hammer and chisel you could make your own ice sculpture accompanied by Handel’s “Water Music”. Antique sprinklers danced on the lawn.
WaterFest continues but was never quite as big as the Strut. Given a choice which would you choose, Evian on ice or a mango mojito?
ZOOMING UP MAIN HIGHWAY
We’ve had a parade every December for 39 years. We did it in the street for 38 then, when Covid-19 hit, we “zoomed” the 2020 event virtually. That was almost as weird as the real one. Where the parade on the street costs thousands of dollars the twelve-minute one in cyberspace was free.
Raising the funds for our street show was always a daunting task. We’d sell T-shirts, posters, hold silent auctions, and begged businesses -and the City- for donations.
The shirts were always a hit. I came up with the King Mango logo, our original T-shirt design.
KING MANGO ART
I’m an artist along with being a recovering lawyer, and now, a retired art teacher. King Mango stepping out was our first design and every year I -or some other artist- came up a new one. I created most of the parade art over the years. We had some pretty cool designs and our parade art became quite popular.
You may have seen some of my posters. The one for the parade after 9/11, was our 20th and Janet Reno was going to be our grand marshal.
FLORI-DUH
In the last twenty years Florida has suffered a severe influx of stupid people. That’s where the “Florida Man” thing came from. Folks started calling our state, “Flori-duh” for good reason and that played right into our 2002 parade.
I designed that year’s poster. It was a parody of the placemats I’d seen at roadside diners in the 50’s, you know, a colorful map of the state with all the tourist attractions depicted. But our version had all of the embarassing things like, “O.J. Simpson lives here”, “Where the dead can vote”, “The 9-11 terrorists learned to fly in Ft. Lauderdale”, “Elian floated to Miami”, “Hanging Chads”, “Most Alligator Attacks”, “Most Lightning Strikes’, and “Most Shark Attacks.” In the top left illustration a shark jumps
out of the water with a leg in its mouth. That was my favorite poster, something to offend everyone.
Some years we had outstanding guest artist doing our poster designs like Steve Radzi, John Soeder, Lisa Remeny, and Phillip Brooker.
This one's by the talented
Bill Chiodo.
We’d come up with these posters and make money selling them. We guilted bars into donating as we brought them so much business.
Parades are expensive. Like I mentioned earlier, the first one cost $300, 10 years later it was $10,000, and later, three times that. The city kept piling additional expenses on us. One year it hit $40,000. It made me crazy to be required to do things like rent barricades for $5000. We didn’t need them. Our event was well run. We had had no problems with the crowds and no one was ever injured.
I got my entire neighborhood to pose for this one, even my mom and Aunt Dorothy
It took a huge amount of work to make the Strut happen every year. Thoughts of that effort and the fund-raising makes last year’s virtual (no cost) parade look pretty good. Still, there's unmistakable magic when you take over a street. We were fortunate to have the many volunteers who came together to make it happen every year. They are too numerous to name but tthere would have been no parade without them. Our group was like a family. Yeah, we had a few problems but a family just the same.
SPAWN OF THE STRUT
There’s a long history of silly parades going back hundreds of years. I was inspired by one in Pasadena, California, “The Doo Dah Parade. It had groups like “The Right to Arm Bears” and it started in the late 70’s. We helped one get rolling in Columbus, Ohio, also a "Doo Dah Parade”, 25 years ago.
In 2016 I happened to be the Columbus on the day of the Do0 Dah. I threw together a costume and proudly marched in it. I was an Ohio pea farmer holding a bowl of peas in one hand and a sign in the other, “Give Peas a Chance”.
Who knew there was this much Strut-like insanity in Ohio?
We helped start one in Orlando called “The Queen Kumquat Sashay” and one in Washington D.C. called “The Gross National Parade”, so we’ve had s few spin-offs. The most successful one was in Tampa, “The Mama Guava Stumble”. Unlike the Strut -which you could take kids to- this one was at night, cocktail-fueled and utterly decadent.
The King Mango Parade was initiated by a bunch of young hippies -like myself- who are now old hippies. We strut more slowly these days. About a third of the originals have died. When you party hard you don’t last long (Keith Richard being the exception). Like I said, others have run the show since 2009. They're not getting any younger either.
OLD HIPPIE'S DILEMMA
The Strut organizers, “The Mangoheads”, haven’t been successful in passing the parade off to the next generation. I’m not thrilled with that but as I mentioned earlier, things change.
Many would rather stare at their phones than watch a silliness in the street. My own kids enjoy the Grove life but unlike their dad, they are not driven to put on crazy parades.
They have marched in the Strut with their dad many times.
The Grove has had 39 years of the mango king, a great run we can all be proud of. We out-lasted the Orange Bowl Parade. In fact, the Orange Bowl Parade people marched in the Strut -after theirs closed down- with a sign that said, “We started this parade!”. The Goombay Parade ended long ago.
We’re a part of Miami’s history having been around so long. King Mango is older, wiser and still hasn't faded away.
A reunion of the Mangoheads in 2018. Two of those pictured are no longer with us.
I put on a King Mango Halloween parade up here at my new Gainesville home.
We’ve got silly people up here too. Julie dressed up as the King and led a gaggle kids around the neighborhood. I followed blowing my conch shell.
My art work these days consists of writing my blog, woodwork, and keeping our old house from falling down. I’m doing my thing in a new location. When the pandemic is completely is gone we will have parades again. Hopefully one of them will be the next Grove Strut.
GRAND MARSHALS
Ashlye- What were some of the more interesting grand marshals that you had at the parade?
Glenn- Well, Janet Reno was our best known. She about to join the fun when her campaign manager called and said, “We noticed your parade poster has Janet marching next to a naked guy. We think that might look bad as she’s running for Governor. I told her, “No, the naked guy is behind her, and you can’t even see his privates, and most important, there won’t be anyone naked in the parade”. She wasn’t convinced and replyed, “We’ve had some second thoughts and I’m sorry, she can’t be your Grand Marshal”. So, we came up with someone else, a woman who had been fired as the MIA airport manager for being too honest.
Janet did the honors the following year.
We looked for unusual people to be our marshals and usually found them. Austin Burke was the best. Here was a guy who had appeared on local TV for 40 years selling suits. In his crazy commercials he would wear six jackets at the same time saying, “I’m Austin Burke and I want to sell you this cashmere jacket!,” then he'd peal it off and there’d be another one to sell. We watched that lovable little guy strip for years.
In that year’s parade he proudly stood in the back of a slow-moving Cadillac convertible. Wearing multiple jackets he stripped them off as the crowd went wild. The Miami Herald called him our “Jewish Leprechaun” he was a terrific one. When Burkie died the following year, his wife said in his obituary, ‘That parade was one of his proudest moments as he knew he was loved by so many”.
Another guest star retired NFL football player, Ted Hendricks who had played in five Super Bowls. I grew up with Ted in Miami Springs. He was almost too famous for our parade.
Rick O’Barry was just right as the savior of dolphins and stunt man for “Thunderball”. Dave Barry was often suggested but he was much too famous. He did come every four years campaigning for President. It still makes me angry that he was never elected to fulfill his campaign promise, “I’ll get rid of those stupid stickers on fruit”.
We had fun with the marshal thing. One year we auctioned it off to help pay expenses. Some fool paid $5000 to wave from a convertible. The year Janet Reno came was a secret. I announced to the crowd, “We couldn’t find a Grand Marshal this year so we’re just gonna pick somebody from the audience. Raise your hand if you want to be the Grand Marshal!”. And I pointed at hands raised saying, ”Eenie, meenie, miney, mo,” and of course Janet was planted in the audience, and by the time I got to, “Catch a tiger by the... toe!”, I was pointing at our former U.S. Attorney General.
There was another guy who electrified his front store window because he was tired of people breaking into his shop. Someone broke in and, unfortunately, was electrocuted. The State put Prentice Rashid on trial for second-degree murder. Fortunately the jury agreed that it had been an accident. Prentice was trying to protect his business and they found him not guilty.
Mr. Rashid was our grand marshal that year and he received a hero’s welcome. I think people identified with his effort to protect himself and his business even though it did not end well.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas led our event in 1990. She loved our parade and we loved her.
Marjory being led back to her convertible after giving the Strut crowd a rousing speech. At 102 she was able to scratch this one off her bucket list.
Mister C and Mark loved publicity so they both agreed to lead that year's parade. He was our best barnyard animal ever. Running a close second was 1988's beer-drinking pig.
OUR DEAD MARSHALL
In 2006 we had a dead Grand Marshall. Our friend Wayne Brehm had died weeks earlier. As he battled cancer he made it clear he was going to be in the next parade “one way or another”. His widow, Phyllis, brought what was left of him in an urn. Earlier we had announced that his remains were going to be the Grand Marshal.
As his vehicle entered Main Highway an urn was perched on the back of the car. Inside were ashes which we threw into the surprised audience. They were the ones I had scraped out of my fire pit. Wayne’s were in the other urn, on the car seat. In Miami the dead can vote and ride in parades!
We didn’t ask politicians to be Grand Marshals as they are too numerous and boring. We looked for unusual people that you would never expect.
I tried to get Rico Browning who played the creature from the Black Lagoon but the former stuntman was too frail by then to travel.
These are the ones I remember. I guess we’ve had thirty-nine so far.
NELSON'S BIKE REPAIRS- This is the one time we allowed a commercial entity to advertise in our parade. Photo by Michael Carlebach
STRUT SAMPLE
Ashlye- What are some of the most memorable groups who have participated in the parade?
Glenn- There years where we could not locate 9/11 terrorist Osama Bin Laden. Our government spent millions of dollars searching but it came up with nothing. We decided solve the mystery ourselves.
The amazing Amanda Force marched up Main Highway wearing a large hooped skirt. A friend marched behind her opening a sign every fifty feet saying, “We know where Osama Bin Laden is!” Then, Amanda would lift up her dress to reveal Osama hiding between her legs. It was an incredible performance by a very talented mangohead. Ms. Force had created a life-size stuffed dummy with a photograph of Bin Laden taped to the face. She blew a lot of minds that day.
MUCH MORE THAN MARCHING
You see, this parade is much more than marching. You are expected to perform for the audience around you. Fifty feet later you’ve got a new group anxious to see your act. You perform for them. That's why our procession takes an hour to go four blocks.
One year I wore fake muscles as Sly Stallone. He had just purchased a bayside mansion and and was putting up a gate to keep us out of his new neighborhood. Carrying “Stallonegate”, I sneered at the crowd, shoved my gate at them and told them to go (screw) themselves over and over. That’s felt good because the real Stallone was doing the same thing. Later the gate came down and Stallone moved back to L.A.
Over the years we developed formulas that worked. You found something timely and funny to rif on, something you could repeat. On foot you could get close to the audience. We encouraged humorous signs because it was often too loud to hear jokes.
A beautiful African-American woman joined with a sign one year that said simply, "Vanna Black".
THE MARCHING KENNEDYS
In 1991 Ted Kennedy’s nephew was arrested for raping a women in Palm Beach. It was big news getting international attention. He was defended by a Miami lawyer and found not guilty.
At the end of that year I formed my own Kennedy group. We dressed like yacht club guys wearing blue blazers and white pants. We marched down the street with a big banner out front announcing that we were “The Marching Kennedys.” Me and the guys walked along laughing and drinking champagne.
Then, I’d stop ‘em every 80 feet or so and yell. “Who are we?!” And they’d go, “We are The Marching Kennedys!” And I’d ask, “And what do we do best?” And they yell in unison , “Drop trou!”
Then my Kennedy cousins and I unbuckled our trousers and let them fall to to our knees.
(“Drop trou” was a popular phrase 30 years, little heard now.)
FLORIDA LADIES AGAINST WOMEN
Another year we had a bunch of guys flying llamas. It was some sort of puppet trick. Seeing them I thought, “Whoa, this parade is getting surreal”. Another group had airline pilots and stewardesses tossing fake cocaine into the crowd. It was a play on a recent MIA bust.
In the early 80’s the women rights group, “NOW” came as “FLAW” (“Florida Ladies Against Women”). It was brilliant.
Bobby Deresz was always been the White Clown cleaning at the end of our parade
THE BOBBITT BRIGADE
You ever heard of Lorena Bobbitt? We had her group in the 1992 Strut. A few months earlier she became well-known for cutting off her husband’s, you know, thing below the waist that gets guys in trouble. After years of abuse he came home one night and passed out. That was her chance to get back at him by slicing off his wanger. She drove off and tossed it out the window.
There’s more. The police recovered John Bobbitt’s appendage and it was sewn back on. Lorena became a symbol for empowering women and her evil husband, a minor porn star. It was an awful story but perfect for our parade.
We tried to give our audience the edgy stuff, what they never would expect. So that year a dozen female friends formed ‘The Bobbitt Brigade”. These angry women headed up Main Highway wielding kitchen knives and hot dogs. They’d slice and toss them into the freaked-out crowd. None were re-attached as they were quickly eaten by appreciative dogs.
Like the sign said, "He Had it Comn'"
Lorena told John,
"Cut it out or
I'll cut it off!"
Photo by Michael Carlebach
MORE FUN
Another year we had a fake O.J. Simpson selling murder memorabilia, you know, bloody knives and gloves from a shopping cart. Our humor was often taken from the dark side of the news and it often traveled fr. NPR did a segment one year and the Flying Llamas made the front page of the Bangkok Times.
In 1991 Rocky Lyons came as Edward Scissorhands. Begging him for designer hair care was his bevy of babes, "The Mango Sluts". You never knew what to expect on the last Sunday of the year.
Here are Kathy and Buzz Fleishman emceeing the parade's sickness telethon. They raised over thirty-eight dollars that day to help wipe out one of the leading precipitators of death, natural causes.
The Mad Cow Disease was a threat twenty years ago so we made fun of that too. A Grove group of party-hearty youngsters wore cow costumes. They worked themselves into a frenzy yelling at the audience, complaining about all kinds things.
Antoinette Baldwin played Michael Jackson one year. He was known for playfully dangling his infant son off a hotel balcony. When AB did MJ -off a condo balcony next to the parade- she dropped her baby tied to a bungee cord. It allowed her to pop him up and down like a yo-yo. The crowd went wild.
ANOTHER MUD FIGHT AT CITY HALL
Photo by Michael Carlebach
THE MARCHING FREDS
Sometimes people would ask, “Aren’t you the guy who puts on that crazy thing, “The Fred Parade”? “The Marching Freds” were so popular some thought they were the parade.
They started when I told Miami Herald writer, Fred Tasker, about the crazy event Bill and I were planning. He supported it fully with great publicity.
A couple of years later he formed his own group, “The Marching Freds” as he thought people with his name deserved more respect. In the years ahead it grew to be our procession’s largest group. Marching with signs that said things like, “Take a Fred to Bed” and “Better Fred than Dead”, they probably got more laughs than respect.
THE MARCHING MARJORYS
Marjory Stoneman Douglas lived in the Grove for over a century dying in 1996 at the age of 109. She left her South Grove house, that she built in 1929, to the people of Florida to enjoy. When she left us 23 years ago, we just figured it’d be turned into a museum. Unfortunately, the State of Florida,(who owned it) never did that. They let fall apart, and and later turned it into a park ranger residence. It was so sad and stupid. Marjory Stoneman Douglas was known world-wide. She was not only an environmental hero but one of the Grove’s many talented writers.
At the age of 102 Marjory agreed to be the parade's Grand Marshal. I remember holding her small, soft hand as I helped her out of her car. What a thrill it was to be introducing a legend to the crowd.
After she died the State made plans to cut her house into pieces and reassemble down the road at Fairchild Gardens, far from the Grove. If you understand historic preservation you know that any structure moved from its original site losses most of its authenticity and value.
We fought that proposal with hard-edged, attention-getting humor. We formed "The Marching Marjorys" to fight for our departed friend and her beloved house. Twenty-two of us -including me, my wife and our three sons- dressed up like Marjory. She wore these long dresses and big hats. She was a short person but our Marjorys came in all sizes, ages, and genders. In the parade we were a chorus line singing and dancing. My son Ian, was an eleven-year-old Marjory riding inside a cardboard replica of her home. He’d swing the door open and yell, “Don’t take my house!” to anyone who would listen.
The Marjorys were a huge success, front page news, and the talk of the town. We helped spread the word and the State ultimately decided not to move the house.
Now, years later, it is slowly being turned into a museum to promote her legacy.
Most of the things we did in the parade made fun of celebrities, politicians, and crazy things that had happen every year. We like to get people thinking about how to make things better by publicizing our problems.
So, the list of participants is long, In almost forty years we’ve had a thousand groups in the Strut. I guess from what I’m saying you have a good idea of what we’ve be up to.
FONDEST MEMORIES
Ashlye- What were some of your fondest memories of living in Coconut Grove, or with the parade or anything else?
Glenn- Well, with the parade, what I’m proudest of, is that we entertained so many people. Folks would tell me, “Oh God it was great, like taking a bath in laughter!” We created a small town parade in a big city. In the Grove you could walk to it and take
that laughter bath every year.
The late, great, tie-dyed Allan Aunapu. At the age of 65 he crawled the entire length of the parade. Pretending to be Michael Vick's attack dog, he pissed on as many people as he could.
Many would walk to the Strut in costume, little parades going to form the big one. As 8,000 people attended and it was just four-blocks long, it could be little hard to view. If that kept people away that was okay with me. I didn't want it to get too big.
You could easily see it on front page of the Miami Herald the next day. So it was like this: 8,000 people came to watch, 300,000 people would laugh at the newspaper article. The local TV news would humor a half-million with outrageous Strut stories and now, the parade gets laughs on social media. I think we entertained a million people with our crazy parade every year. Being a part of that makes me proud. Maybe "King Mango's Best Friend" will be on my tombstone.
ISLAND LIFE
Coconut Grove had so much more going for it than our silly parade. With the palm trees, parrots, and beaches nearby, it could be like living in a tropical island. Biscayne Bay was a fifteen minutes walk from my house. For years I'd sail my Nassau dinghy all over it. Having my own little law practice gave me time for that.
After a while I tired of arguing with people. In the 90's I switch careers and began teaching art in an inner city school. Most of my students had never seen the ocean. I arranged field trips so they could experience South Florida's greatest asset. My kids got to dip their toes in salt water and later some even marched in the Strut.
But back to the Grove, I just loved living by the sea, the boating life, and the friendly folks who lived there. Some people would call my friends “crazy” and many were. I think they are called "creatives" now. The Grove had them and diversity too, black, white, rich, and poor.
MR. HALLOWEEN
One of my nuttier friends was Greg Gillingham, “Mr. Halloween”. In the 70’s and 80’s he threw monster Halloween parties that were so fantastic, so over the top.
Greg getting pulled our of his coffin, 1982 photo courtesy of the Miami Herald
There’d be live bands in both his front and back yards on Tigertail Avenue. Greg and his friends built large, scary sculptures and even a thrill ride that would zoom you on rails into a giant, screaming vagina. The multiple bars served both beer and moonshine. Ganja filled the air. Thousands attended and we had a blast. I was honored to be part or his prep crew, and early version of the Mangoheads.
Most neighbors enjoyed Greg’s parties but some were upset, just because it sounded like a punk band was playing in their living rooms at midnight. After several years they put enough pressure on the police to shut it down.
Faced with a possible jail sentence, the ultimate party animal moved his October blow-out to parking lots and warehouses in the early 80’s. They were pretty good but not quite the same. Twelve years ago he bought a little airplane, “The Cheeky Mooney”, with plans to fly around the world. When he got to Columbia he fell into the party scene and soon died of a heart attack. His memorial gathering at his Grove house was filled with hilarious Halloween stories. Greg was one happy-go-lucky pirate who put the nut back in Coconut Grove, big-time, every October.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS
Those were the days, the wild ones and more sedate years that followed with marriage, fatherhood and all that. And when I lived there -which has been most of my life- I was working to make art, friendships, and to build a better community. My friends were sailors, painters, and pilots. We brought people together with festivals, backyard concerts, and one wacky parade. My Grove friends even carved out a couple of new parks recently.
That pretty much sums up what I remember of the Grove art scene forty years ago, a fragment of my life. I had a blast hangin’ with my buddies and being around so many arty, eccentric people. We had parrots flying, salt water views, and the occasional red-bearded man in a blue dress. Seeing things like that made me smile and think, "That's Coconut Grove!" I’ll always get a kick out of those memories.
_____________________
Glenn Terry,
former Top Banana, KMS, and still crazy after all these years
July 12th, 2021
Again, the primary source of my "book" is the interview I had with Ashlyne Valines on 2-11-21. She was gathering material for the FIU exhibition “Place and Purpose: Art Transformation in Coconut Grove, 1968-1989” of which the interview is a part.
I offer my thanks to Ashlye for charming me into reminiscing about the Old Grove last January. Maybe it will serve as one more piece of our hippy dippy history.
While I have not seen it, FIU’s exhibit, “Place and Purpose: Art Transformation in Coconut Grove, 1968-1989” is up through mid-September, 2021 at the Frost Art Museum. I’ve seen it virtually and it looks terrific. As the internet is forever, I expect it can seen virtually until the cows come home.