Good morning. It's Monday, and I'm recording this on Monday morning because I'm discombobulated and I had this wonderful Absolute wonderful podcast you know prepared about gratitude having to do with old movies. It was nice Maybe I'll do it tomorrow, but today I want it because I was talking to my son's girlfriend Adriana And it's her birthday happy birthday Adriana But I was telling her about some of the wonderful things that we used to have in the city of St. Petersburg, Florida And one of those wonderful things was Web City Web City.
I am so grateful that I was able to experience that It took up like a couple of blocks down in the St. Petersburg It was called the world's most unusual drugstore and they had everything cheap I mean super super cheap They had a cafeteria downstairs in a basement like that you could go and have this fabulous meal for less than a dollar They had a drugstore with a soda fountain that was like long as could be and you could have Ice cream sundaes and cheeseburgers and all this stuff in the world there They had merchandise like you would not believe in it was cheap. You could get a good quality dress shirt for a dollar fifty And they just had and then they had all these events now another thing they had up on the third floor for I don't remember There's a there's this roadside attraction that still exists It's called wiki watchy the spring of live mermaids Which by the way should be a subject of itself of the last time I was there when I took my children there But they have a mermaid show it was cute. Well Web City not wanting to be out done They said well we have a wiki watchy mermaid here and we have a spring of live mermaids right here And you can go and you can actually talk to our mermaids You can look and they had these fake rocks with little holes that you can look in and you can see the mermaids Except so we would go quite often.
We would just go quite often I haven't announced to what the show is or played the music or done any of that stuff So we're doing it without music. This is a daily grateful I'm Michael crows and we're talking about the world's most unusual drugstore, but I wanted to see the mermaids I had been to wiki watchy I was a kid right and we'd seen the mermaid swimming underneath the water and with the hoses stuck in their mouth and all this other stuff And we'd see we'd seen all that but I wanted to see where you could talk to you couldn't talk to these mermaids It's underwater, but I wanted to go there where they had the spring of live mermaids and you could talk to the mermaids So I went there and I remember the first time I went I looked in all the holes I couldn't find a mermaid anywhere you can see all this it looked like it was under the sea But it was just a set with lights and a couple of blinking lights and I said oh okay Then I stuck my head inside one of the holes because I'm a little kid right I see the mermaids sitting at a table way over the other side smoking a cigarette So yeah, that was my yeah later I got to see the mermaids wandering around answering questions, but that was another trip but my favorite thing at Web City Oh my god, I love this so so much. It was so wonderful yet. It was so horrible But it was so wonderful was was they had a dancing chicken.
Yeah for a nickel You could see a chicken who would come out You know this you put a nickel in this little slot a door would open up now you you had glass there You couldn't touch the chicken, but you could look at the chicken this door would open up and some feed would just drop down Just a tiny little bit and the chicken would come in from the back of there I think they probably had a bunch of chickens but I don't know but they but a chicken would would come in there and Eat up the corn real fast and then it would sit there and then a few minutes later You hear like a little bit of music and the damn chicken started dancing and I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world And every time we went to Web City, I had my nickels Sometimes I would like put two or three nickels in and watch this happen. I found out much later as an adult Talking with someone who used to work there That the chicken Would come out because they knew that it was getting food He would hear the food drop and the door would close behind him He would eat up likes two or three pieces of corn and was happy and then he was on a metal plate in the middle Oh god, this is awful. This is so awful The metal plate would heat up and the poor chicken was dancing to avoid the heat And then the door would open and the chicken would skidaddle out of there the chicken would leave there so fast It was it was on Believable how fast the chicken would get out of there and then I but me dumb it will mean I wanted to see it again And I had another nickel so I stuck the nickel in there and there are people gathered around watching it I was on my nickel so I had the front you know right up and door opens up Chicken comes out wasn't the same chicken. It was another chicken.
So that's why I knew they probably had several of them back there Each the corn and we're sitting there then the music would start to play and then for just you know 20-30 seconds the chicken's dancing and then all of a sudden the door would open up and that chicken was out of there so fast Just so fast and I found out later Why am I shoring this with you this guy told me who worked there that they would go through like one or two chickens a day That would just die from that and that was okay We'd say we'd take the dead chickens down to the kitchen in the cafeteria and they would prepare them and feed the chickens To people in I need a sip. Oh, oh Hmm. Yeah after that. I need a city city But you know I remember one time we lived in this god awful town North of Inverness, Florida at the time But we would make trips down to Web City because we had to make trip one trip to Web City because We owned a restaurant and doc web Sun would come to our restaurant because he went to a fish camp in this little town And he said I gotta go to Web City next weekend.
Why they're going to have a live porpoise show in the parking lot and oh man We had it's free. Oh, yeah, because it to go to like the Aquitarium Which was the the porpoise place cost like five bucks or something a person and we know we were a family of five So free porpoise show in the parking lot of Web City. We were in oh We went down there drives all drive all the way to St Pete hour and a half drive Get down there park in the parking lot. We couldn't get close But we could see they had stuck an above ground swimming pool that was maybe four feet tall They had brought a dolphin in and they threw the dolphin in the water and the dolphins like swimming around this thing And there was a guy with a hula hoop trying to get the dolphin to jump through and it was boring as could be I said I'm gonna go see the chicken It was awful, but I'm grateful for the experience I we actually went there for Thanksgiving that year and we went down for a buck a person So it was five bucks for five bucks at the cafeteria.
They had turkey dinner for everybody Thank God not chicken because I don't know where the chicken was coming But they had turkey dinner with all the fixings and the place was packed people were coming there to have their Thanksgiving dinner at Web City So I'm kind of grateful for all of that. It was fun. Did you have unusual things like that when you were a kid? I remember the roadside stands when you would drive through different states on vacation and you paid 50 cents to get in and you would see Like I don't we went to Florida You know in the early early early 60s and live alligators and we'd go there and there's like an alligator in a concrete Then just sitting there it was underwater.
I think it had been dead for two years I don't know but that all of that stuff is happening. Oh, we'll see you tomorrow