Winter Haven Water Tower Gets a New Look Relations between Winter Haven and Auburndale have sprung a leak over a new design on the downtown Magnolia Watertower. The tower was covered last month while undergoing phase I of a project that will include “major maintenance including a fresh coat of paint,” according to a February 11, 2021 press release by The City of Winter Haven. In this first phase of the ongoing beautification project, the tower will be painted with a base shade called “warm sun.” For roughly two weeks during the renovations, elements around the tower, including the walking trail, were covered and closed to the public. A protective sheet was hung around the water tower so its surface could be sandblasted and painted. “This type of maintenance not only improves the appearance of the tower but also prevents corrosion and protects the life of the tower,” according to the city. The press release went on to say, “While there has been much dialogue about a special logo or graphic on the tower, it is still in the discussion stage. This initial neutral paint shade will serve as the first phase of the process. Once the partners involved reach an agreement, the base paint on the tower will prepare it for the second phase of additional painting.” Partners reached an agreement on March 15 when The City of Auburndale stepped forward with funding for the final design. “Creative rights went to the highest bidder. Auburndale just wanted it the worst, I guess,” said one confused Winter Haven city official. The Magnolia Watertower, located in downtown Winter Haven, will sport The City of Auburndale logo, a map to the city, the puzzling sentiment ‘Welcome to Auburndale,’ a mural of Auburdale’s official city animal, the screaming hairy armadillo, and a series of ‘Auburndale Fun Facts.’ We were able to obtain a preliminary list of ‘fun facts,’ which includes: “The world’s longest continuous bingo game took place in Auburndale from 1997-1998.” “The ‘I’m not sure what to do with my hands’ scene in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was filmed at The Auburndale Speedway aka The ‘Dale.” “Auburndale has more supermodels and macaroni per capita than any other city in Polk County.” “Tom Hanks bought a vacation home in Auburndale so he and Rita can have Peebles Bar-B-Q whenever they want.” “We have a dog park.” “The city’s full name is Auburn-Dale Earnhardt Jr.” Only one of these statements can be confirmed true at the time of publication. “We’re looking to capture tourists from the area and show them what we have to offer,” said Auburndale’s Chief Tourism Advisor, Alexa Chambers. “We’ve gotten some pushback from Winter Haven, but to those detractors, I say, ‘Water you going to do about it?’” Local grassroots movements, ‘The Alliance of Bryan’s Who Think The Water Tower Should Be Painted Like a Stormtrooper Helmet’ and ‘Citizens for Less Church Bells’ are pooling their resources to fight Auburndale’s busy non-Winter-Haven design and other ‘community ails.’ The latter group aims to compromise with an area church that chimes every hour on the hour. The group would like to see a less frequent bell schedule or temporary relinquishment of the church iPod to another person or party… literally any other person or party. Designers city-wide are in an uproar about the conversation surrounding not only the ‘fun facts’ that have yet to be proven true, but more importantly, the font selection. “We want it to be super fun. We want folks driving by or walking downtown to say, ‘Wow, now that’s a water tower,’” said Chambers. The current fonts in contention are Curlz, Comic Sans, Zapfino, Papyrus, Brush Script, Helvetica, Impact, and Courier New. “We have so much copy to include, we may end up using them all. I think such an avant-garde choice would make sense coming from the trendsetting metropolis that is Auburndale.” “I feel attacked. They have to be doing this on purpose,” said one hot-headed bespeckled magazine graphic designer. Supermodels and Comic Sans aside, phase II for the Magnolia Watertower will begin next month and is expected to finish up by mid-July. An official ribbon-cutting for the mural is slated for early fall. The ribbon-cutting will be held along the walkway below the tower. It promises to be a family-friendly event where folks can pick up informational pamphlets about the great city of Auburndale, enjoy a screaming hairy armadillo petting zoo, and all-you-can-eat macaroni. According to the Auburndale Tourism Office, Tom Hanks will be in attendance. To register in advance for the macaroni-eating contest at the Magnolia Tower ribbon cutting on April 32, email april_foolz@havenmagazines.com .

State Finals Come to Polk County If you’re a lover of all things rodeo, it’s time to dust off your chaps! The Hamster Rodeo State Finals is making its way to a roughly 5-square-foot patch of the Bartow Horse Arena at the Polk County Agri Civic Center. Be prepared for all the gruff and a lot more fluff at this must-attend event. The hamster rodeo is an endeavor by the Hadley Association for Hamsters in America (HAHA), a project spanning the last two decades. The sport of traditional rodeo may be all about cowboys, horses, and cattle, but hamsters are the wild west stars of this rodeo, roping and riding guinea pigs. HAHA Founder and CEO Buck Hadley explained the sport’s origins. “You might not know it, but there is a rodent hierarchy, of which hamsters are damn near the top,” he said. “It wasn’t hard to teach them to rope and ride. All it took was Waylon Jennings, PBR, and a little time. Hamsters are the natural cowboys of Rodentia.” These small but stout rodeo stars stand between six and eight inches tall and don blue jeans, boots, spurs, chaps, and cowboy hats. Miniature saddles and cinches adorn the riding guinea pigs, but the real show is bareback gronc riding. Taking the place of bucking horses (bronc or bronco) are rambunctious guinea pigs, aka groncs or groncos. Other notable events are guinea pup wrestling, saddle gronc riding, tie-down roping, team roping, barrel racing, and hamster wheel racing. “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a hamster, one tiny hand wrapped around the riggin’, the other hand in the air trying to stay on a bucking guinea pig for eight seconds,” said Hadley. “Their itty bitty hands are perfect for gripping a shoelace size rope. And when they get bucked off, all you see is a flash of fluff and high pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeeee sound. It’s great.” No hamsters are harmed during the rodeo; they always land on their tiny booted feet, according to Hadley. Staying true to rodeo culture, there will be hamster rodeo clowns as comic relief to the crowd and keep the tiny cowboys safe when thrown off a raging guinea pig. The Hamster Rodeo State Finals is sponsored by Skoal Smokeless Tobacco, “The chew of choice for chubby-cheeked cowboys everywhere,” and Wrangler as part of a campaign for their line of hamster jeans, Hanglers with the tagline “Hanglers – keeping your hamster double cheeked up since 1904.” For $10 admission, attendees will enjoy buckin’ and bulldoggin’ from the top names currently in hamster rodeo, including Wild Hamster Bill Hickock and even 2020 All-Around Hamster Rodeo Champion from Milford, Utah, Stetson Bite. For an additional $20, you can get VIP access and high-five a hamster. The event is strictly BYOH (Bring Your Own Hamster) as no hamsters will be for sale at the event. “Our small cowboys aren’t for sale. They’re their own men – a proud people. They love America, their mommas, apple pie, and rodeo. You can’t put a price on that,” said Hadley. With an average life span of 2-3 years, top names in this kind of rodeo tend to rotate quickly. To pay homage to the rough and tumble hamsters of history, a pop-up Hamster ProRodeo Hall of Fame will be on site. Learn the history of the hamster rodeo and its legends, including Chubby Fannie Oakley, Texas Pete, Billy the Hamster, John ‘Wiggles’ Wayne, and Cheeks. The Hamster Rodeo State Finals prize pool includes a lifetime supply of Skoal cherry chewing tobacco, a bag of baked timothy biscuits, a rhinestoned hamster wheel, and the coveted Hamster Rodeo State Finals trophy belt buckle. To enter your hamster into the state finals, send a photo, bio, and hamster rodeo credentials to april_foolz@havenmagazines.com .

On February 22, the Winter Haven City Commission voted unanimously to pass ordinance 0-21-06. The ordinance allowed chickens as an accessory use in all non-agricultural zoning districts within city limits, whereas they were previously only allowed in Agricultural (AG) zoning districts. The ordinance also provided “specific standards related to chicken quantities, permitted locations on the property, and coops.” What started as a simple run-of-the-mill reporting on a city commission meeting has become a dangerous game of corruption, bribes, and fried chicken. The findings of this investigative report may ruffle a few feathers, but at Haven, we believe in speaking truth to power. “The chickens are already here, and they’re problematic,” said City Manager Mike Himm. “The code compliance team is trying to be responsive to do the best that they can to be able to try to keep the issue at bay and at the same time allow folks to have chickens on their property.” The ordinance, first heard on February 8, proposed one chicken per every 500 square feet of parcel lot area with a maximum of 15 chickens per lot. Some commissioners felt the maximum number of chickens per lot was too many, resulting in a spicy discussion and a change in the rules to one chicken per 1,000 square feet with a maximum of 5 chickens and no roosters. Regulations developed for the ordinance also focused on the coop, which must be present on the property. Coops cannot be more than 125 square feet by 6 feet in height. This specific detail is in response to the numerous ‘chicken mansions’ popping up around town. A popular trend amongst millennials, these luxury coops are two, sometimes three stories. “If no one else will say it, I will. Chickens do not need marble countertops or wine cellars,” said commissioner JP Poultry who joined the meeting remotely. Commissioner Brian Yolks raised questions about compliance. He asked how many violations of the order someone would have to make before having their chicken privileges revoked. Additionally, what would happen to the offending chickens? Issues with dogs and cats are called into animal control, an extension of the sheriff’s office through the county. Mayor Brad Drumstick asked, “If someone has a problem dog or problem cat or problem chicken and we cite them, and we continually have a problem with them. Can you ultimately go in there and take the dog or cat or chicken? Or do you just keep giving them financial burdens until they get rid of their own chickens?” As I sat in the back of the room scribbling notes from the meeting, questions about chickens flooded my mind too. What if I want to walk my chicken on a leash? What if the chicken pecks someone in the shin while we’re out? What if my chicken lays an egg on the roof of my house and it rolls off and splatters on someone’s head as they walk down the sidewalk and they’re wearing their favorite shirt and some egg residue slides down their head onto the shirt and I say, ‘I’ll buy you a new shirt,’ and they say, ‘You can’t buy me a new shirt because they don’t make this shirt anymore plus this shirt has sentimental value because my aunt bought it for me at a Joe’s Crab Shack when I was 12 right before she died in a tragic crab leg accident,’? … I made a note to sit and have a good think over these issues later. The meeting continued. As to whether they were equipped to enforce the code provision effectively, someone pointed out that “There was some anecdotal information about this at our workshop meeting last Wednesday. Chief Bird said when he first came on board, he went on the 7th street chicken patrol, and they tried to get roosters in the trees and had a very difficult time getting them out.” ‘Hmmm, 7th Street Chicken Patrol… roosters in trees… Chief Bird… sounds serious,’ I thought. “My problem is if you have a small lot and you can put ten chickens in the backyard… It seems to me it’s too many. I don’t have a problem with a chicken or two in the backyard,” said the mayor. Mayor Drumstick sympathized with what the code department is up against, calling it a ‘conundrum’ … a chicken conundrum. But he also brought up the issue of care. If someone isn’t properly caring for their chickens and cleaning the coop regularly, would it cause an odor? “If all of us had 15 chickens, it would be a nightmare in my neighborhood,” he said. To the issue of a ‘fowl’ odor, Code Supervisor Tanya Air-Fryer said, “In the last 11 years, we’ve only had 81 complaints about fowl. Out of all of those complaints, the majority of the complaints were either that they were at large or that they had roosters. We’ve only had one complaint about odor.” Later in the meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Nathaniel Songbird added his thoughts on the odor issue. Songbird said, “We used to raise chickens. I don’t know if the technology of the coop has vastly improved since we raised chickens because there was an odor. … But we had 30 chickens.” I made the note on my legal pad and underlined it. ‘Songbird – former chicken hoarder?’ Details and statements swirled in my mind. This commission meeting was becoming very interesting. Something stunk – and it wasn’t the chickens. Back to the issue of what to do with rooster rule-breakers or folks with too many chickens per lot. Commissioner Tracy McNugget suggested that the Winter Haven City Police Department (as they were already familiar with the poultry problem via the 7th Street Chicken Patrol and Chief Bird’s sordid history with roosters in trees and suspicious last name) start a new department to maintain law and order – SCU. SCU or the Special Chickens Unit, said McNugget, would be tasked with ‘chicken raids’ to detain contraband chickens. She already had a few people in mind to head up SCU, veteran no-nonsense New York detectives Olivia ‘Barnevelder’ Benson and Elliot ‘Silkie’ Stabler. The commissioner went on to say, “In the criminal justice system, the chickens are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: The police, who investigate crime, and the chicken attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” The commission agreed with the idea, calling it “The best and most logical course of action.” The timing and thoroughness of those suggestions were fishy to me. I was going to have to do a little more digging into these avian affairs. Another issue raised was how will we know whose chicken is whose? Is that nuisance chicken mine or my neighbors? How will SCU know? Registration? Tag? Lower back tattoo? That item did not end up in the final ordinance. After all sides were heard, and no one from the public stepped forward to comment, the ordinance was passed unanimously on February 22. Hold onto your hens because this is where the story takes a turn. I had a hunch, see? And I was going to follow it. Roll the tape! But since there is no tape, I’ll explain to you what I saw in narrative detail. The commission heard several more items on their agenda and wrapped up the meeting late into the evening. I followed the mayor and his commissioner cronies out to the parking lot. I stayed far enough behind and peeked around a corner as not to be detected. One way or the other, I was going to get the s-coop. The group looked around wearily as if to be sure they weren’t being watched as they made their way to a shadowy corner of the lot, a dim area devoid of streetlamps. A suave-looking businessman in a red polo handed the mayor something discreetly – a white paper bag. The bag was suspiciously greasy as if its contents were perhaps fried and delicious. As the man in the red shirt turned to get into his awaiting town car – that’s when I saw it. The logo on his shirt… it was familiar. It was… Chick-fil-A. Red polo shirt guy turned to the mayor and said, “Thanks for agreeing to meet. I enjoyed our call yesterday. Nice doing business with you.” Wait? But today was Monday. That meant… the mayor and Mr. Chicken Sandwich had a business call the day before. On… a Sunday? Either this guy was working out of bounds, or Chick-fil-A is open on Sunday, and they aren’t telling us – maybe because that’s when the real dirty work gets done. I became disoriented as theories and conclusions raced around my mind and collided. What had I just witnessed? Even more troubling, who had just witnessed me? I stood stock still as every one of the commissioners turned and looked in my direction. I had been discovered. I locked eyes with the group’s alpha, Mayor Drumstick. I flicked my Virginia Slim, pulled my fedora further over my eyes, and buttoned my trench coat. It was time to scram (insert scrambled egg joke here). When I got home, I replayed the night’s events. I thought back to the February 8 meeting. When no one from the public stepped forward to speak, Mayor Drumstick ‘joked,’ “So Colonel Sanders is not watching.” But… was it a joke? Or was it to throw me off the trail? To be sure that the commission’s corporate daddy, Chick-fil-A, wouldn’t be implicated? I stepped up to my corkboard and started connecting photos with red string. The Winter Haven City Commission concocted an ordinance ‘addressing’ the ‘chicken conundrum.’ The goal was not to allow chickens as an accessory use in all nonagricultural zoning districts within city limits. It was really to create an excess of illegal chickens by setting a limit on the number one can own within city limits in non-AG zoning districts, knowing most people had more than what the ordinance permitted. They would then use the SCU to ‘detain’ any nuisance chickens or those at large. Unfortunately for the fowl, detainment meant ending up on the wrong end of a chicken sandwich. The commissioners accepted payment in the form of chicken sandwiches for passing the ordinance. I would also like to point out that we have a suspicious number of city officials with the word ‘Bird’ in their name. A coincidence? Perhaps… We know for sure now that commissioners are in the pocket of Big Chicken Sandwich (also known in the industry as Big Farm-a). And we know that Big Chicken Sandwich is in their bellies. The commission’s involvement raises the question as to what other special interests they could be working with. Big Taco? Big Mac? Big Lebowski? With chicken on the brain and a fire in my belly, I fell asleep with plans to write the exposé of my life the next day. But on Tuesday morning, around 8:35 am, I walked out to my car. The thinly veiled and lightly breaded threat read, ‘Keep your nose out of our business lady. Or you’re gonna get pecked!’ in honey mustard. I know it was honey mustard because I tasted it. Strange… the perfect condiment to put on a spicy chicken sandwich. If someone was sending a message, I tasted it loud and clear. Anyway, now my life is in danger. And I can’t go to Chick-fil-A anymore… or city commission meetings. If you have questions or comments regarding the “totally not a bribe” chicken ordinance, email april_foolz@havenmagazines.com .

It appears a hush-hush python problem is reaching a fever pitch around the outskirts of Polk County and rapidly slithering inward. The snake problem could reach critical mass within months, says resident python hunter and former A/C repairman Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts (no relation to the WWE wrestler). Reports of nonnative giant snakes plaguing the Everglades stem back to the 1970s – a time of bell bottoms and Burmese pythons. Over the past four decades, the population of pythons in the Everglades has exploded. These constrictors are popular in the exotic pet circuit for their gargantuan size, unique coloration, and strangling power. Though not venomous, rows of razorsharp teeth angled backward toward their throat make bites more painful and easier swallowing (for the snake). Adult Burmese pythons can reach more than 75 feet in length and weigh up to 2000 pounds. Lone python wrangler Jake Roberts has a manner at the intersection of stoic and sexy. The black duster caressing his dad-bod and well-maintained mullet gently flapped in the breeze coming off the lake as we discussed the snake problem and what Roberts is doing to combat it. His uniform? A gruff, nononsense kind of guy, Roberts keeps one cigarette in his mouth and another lit and ready to go between his fingers because “You never know which puff will be your last when dealing with pythons.” He also wears an eyepatch over his left eye. He considers the patch a cover for his ‘spare eyeball’ in case “the ‘thons get ahold of my other one.” On his snakeskin belt made from the hide of his first kill are a row of gator teeth, a .38 Chief’s Special, katana sword, and beer holster (a koozie sewn into the belt). He keeps the straps on his camo Crocs pulled down, at the ready. Roberts started as a part-time a/c repairman 23 years ago. He built up a clientele and eventually started his own company, Ice Ice Baby A/C Repair in 2005, servicing towns that skirt the Everglades. “It was routine to find a gator sunning himself near a condenser or a python hiding out in a vent,” he said. But when he and his wife Anna Konda-Roberts moved to Winter Haven four years ago, he expected to see his share of gators and snakes – though not pythons of man-eating proportions. “The first snake I came across in a duct here was a juvenile – not very big at all. He was old enough to have just been released when someone decided their pet had gotten too big. I removed him and moved on.” Two days after that, Roberts encountered something more alarming in the ductwork of a house near Lake Howard – recently hatched python eggs. As the scope of Polk County’s python predicament grew with each a/c job, Roberts felt obligated to do his part. “I’ve seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 pythons in Winter Haven alone over the last six months or so – way more across the county. Someone has to take care of these sneaky little snakes.” So, Roberts added an unusual service to his a/c repair business website – snake wrangling. For just $169, Roberts will wrangle and capture any pesky pythons – big or small. All of Roberts’ captured snakes are taken to the Fort Meade snake pit off East Broadway. Detractors have questioned the effectiveness of merely moving the invasive snakes from one part of the county to another. Roberts has partnered with a self-described snake charmer to minimize the risk of harming the animals or himself during a capture. His sidekick snake charmer and SoundCloud musician, DJ Hypno-Thighs, does what he can to lull the serpents into submission. His snake charming track record is...if-y. “I’ve been bit directly in the face once or twice, or every time I’ve gone out with Jake, but there’s a real connection between these snakes and me – I can feel it.” Wrangling isn’t the only part of Roberts serpentine services. He prides himself on the research he does to keep the problem from reaching Everglades levels. He seeks answers to questions like why they flock to some urban and suburban areas more than others and what factors increase the risk of a residential python invasion? A glaring correlation, Roberts says, in the number of chickens, specifically illegal chickens one owns. As you may have read in another feature this month entitled “Chicken Noir,” The Winter Haven City Commission recently passed an ordinance limiting the number of chickens per household to five and absolutely no roosters in non-agricultural zoning districts. This chicken mandate so close to the revelation of the kept-under-wraps snake situation is raising a few eyebrows. Does the commission know more about the snake/ chicken connection than they’re letting on? Are the commissioners training pythons to prefer chickens in numbers in excess of five to rid the city of its chicken crisis? Are the commissioners actually pythons dressed as people? That’s a political intrigue piece for another day. “The more illegal chickens you have, the higher chance of a python invasion,” said Roberts. “They’re clucking timebombs.” Suppose you have more than five chickens or a rooster. In that case, the odds that there is a python somewhere in your house right now, probably the toilet, waiting to strike when you’re most vulnerable, increases 25 percent with each illegal chicken. Roberts shared a few safety tips to give our readers. If you see any portion of a snake, head, or tail around your house or in a public area, the python wrangler urges you to stay clear and call his sneaky snake hotline, as this can be deceptive of the snake’s actual size. What looks like a small snake by the tail can be a fully grown adult or ‘big mamma,’ as he calls them. Reminiscent of the rhyme to help tell venomous coral snakes from the harmless king snake, “Red touching yellow will kill a fellow. Red touching black is a friend of Jack,” Roberts has a more succinct phrase to keep you safe around pythons. “Always remember, ‘they’re growers, not show-ers,’” he said. In addition to the ecological implications of an invasive species settling into the county, it appears there may be economic impacts as well. Investors see the python ‘problem’ as more of a python ‘opportunity.’ An unknown entity has already claimed intellectual property rights to the terms/ ideas: Chain of Lakes Python Emporium, Spicy Snake Nuggs, Burmese katana sheath, Python Belt with Beer Holster, and Girthy Gus the One-Eyed Python. Stay safe, friends! We’ll do our best to keep you apprised of the snake goings-on and whether our city officials are, in fact, sentient Burmese pythons in human suits bent on world domination, one chicken at a time. To inquire about Roberts’ python-related services, email, april_ foolz@havenmagazines.com .

Get all the hecks and fricks out while you can. A new ordinance is taking place in the City of Lakeland that will ban profanity and language construed as such. The City Commission voted unanimously to pass ordinance 21-053 on March 15, 2021. The ‘Do You Kiss Your Mamma with that Mouth’ Rule, as it has been dubbed, will effectively ban all our favorite swears between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm, Monday through Friday. The community can frig and darn at their leisure between 5 pm and 8 am and all day on Saturdays and Sundays. The ordinance was first drafted thanks to Lakeland resident Kyle Tucker. During a public disagreement with his younger brother in May of 2019, the elder Tucker hurled the derogatory term ‘butthead’ with such vitriol it practically shook the coffee shop they were sitting in, according to eyewitness reports. And now we all can’t curse anymore. Thanks, Kyle. “Won’t someone please think of the children!” cried one angry woman on the scene. In a statement to the police, (whom she called) the woman commented, “I was just so scared. I thought to myself, ‘Butthead? What’s next – Mother Trucker? Malarkey? I don’t want to live in a world where people can express themselves so freely. It’s terrifying.” That woman was Karen Lipshitz. Lipschitz was so shaken by the encounter and many other ‘unacceptable’ cursing-related events she had been witness to that she founded Karens Against Kussing an activist group with the sole mission of cleaning up Lakeland’s streets and mouths. It’s safe to say that these Karens won’t be taking anymore of the community’s Lipschitz. The bad word ban is set to go into effect on April 1, 2021. A department of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office called the Swear Squad is taking up the task of catching any naughty ne’er do wells and seeing to it that they get their cursing comeuppance. Anyone caught uttering a bad word between the days and times established in the ordinance will feel the full extent of the law in their wallet with a $200 fine to be placed in the county swear jar. Foul-mouthed offenders will be obligated to carry out the latter part of their punishment at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Cussers must show up to have their mouth washed out with a bar of soap and call their grandma to apologize. If you do not have a grandma, one will be appointed to you. The parameters are strict, said a spokesperson for the PCSO. “No dangs, dingdongs, or dagnabits will be tolerated.” For expletive aficionados who let slip Category 5 Swears of the 4-letter variety, it’s hot sauce on the tongue for you, buddy. Serial offenders will be subject to the stockades at Munn Park to endure passersby giving their best ‘I’m not mad – just really disappointed in you’ expressions. An addendum added during the ordinance’s second reading called the Flanderisms Clause will ban words and phrases that an eavesdropper could even construe as an attempt at a swear. Because, as Lipschitz put it, “We all know what you really mean when you say ‘kiss my grits’ or ‘oh fudge’ so don’t you diddly do it. And there’s nothing holy about crap, so stop saying that one too!” Thanks to the latest in obscenity technology, repeat cussers will be outfitted with a ‘Bleeper.’ The Bleeper is a digitalized sensor designed to predict when a swear or semi-swear is about to exit the offender’s mouth and issue a long monotone ‘bleep’ in its place. “I got the idea while watching my all-time favorite show – Jerry Springer,” said Clyde Minnows, the Texas-based inventor of the Bleeper. “It works by attaching to the neck just over the vocal cords and, using tone and speech cadence detectors, indicates when a swear is about to spill out.” Minnows is currently working on a ‘complicated lip scrambling technology’ that could potentially blur a person’s mouth. Citizens are advised to mind their P’s and Q’s moving forward as the no-cussing ordinance is no-nonsense. Detractors of this new rule are drafting a counter ‘mandatory swearing’ rule to be heard at the next City Commission meeting. For any questions or comments regarding the no-cussing policy, or to receive a comprehensive ongoing list of punishable expletives released by the city, email april_foolz@havenmagazines.com .

Haven Opts for Office Drive-Thru It has been over two years since Haven has had a permanent office space. Since then, we’ve worked in our publishers’ living room and two other temporary spaces – putting out two magazines a month, 12 times a year. Destroyer Media & Marketing is excited to announce that we finally have a permanent home in the works. One of the things we loved most about being in an office accessible to the public is how much we could interact with our readers through drop-ins and community events. Over the last year, we’ve worked primarily from home. We are thrilled to be creating magazines together in a collaborative space again. And we can’t wait to see YOU there. Part of our office design is a drive-thru lane down the middle of our shared workspace – think, Beverage Castle. We’ll be serving more than beers – though you can pick up a Bud Heavy here too. Always a dream on the backburner – our food concept/ publishing business model will finally launch! Drive on through for a slice of Haven’s famous meatloaf. If warm square meats aren’t your thing, check out our other menu items like H-shaped chicken nuggs and spicy chicken sandwich sliders. We’re proud to be serving up only the freshest local chicken, which has been easy to source due to a recent increase in seized Winter Haven chickens and our private partnership with a national fast-food chicken brand. We are constantly being asked, “Where can I get a Haven?” and “What if I want to read an unnecessarily long 2,000- word profile on the go?” We’ve got you covered! Slide on through our drive-thru and tell our customer service associate, Steven Downy Jr. Maynard, you want to ‘Destroyer Size your meal,’ and we’ll throw in a copy of that month’s Haven in with your meatloaf or locally-sourced chicken sandwich. Yell, ‘Spud me!’ and we’ll shoot a raw potato into your car with our high-powered potato cannon for you to take home and fry later. Just remember to watch for pedestrians (and pythons) as the drive-thru runs directly through the middle of our office, and we’d prefer not to scrape one of our employees off your hood. We couldn’t be more excited for the prospect of serving the community through written and visual storytelling, social media, chicken nuggs, and beers. Haven is looking to franchise our magazine office/ fast-food idea. Send inquiries to our business email, april_foolz@havenmagazines.com , if you’re interested, and we can set up a meeting to talk numbers.

Winter Haven’s Shawn Gravitt, aka Skinny McGee, spent his time during quarantine exchanging lyrics between pen and paper, completing songs for a new album. Skinny sat down over a coffee with us, talking tunes and telling band stories. THE SKINNY ON SKINNY Gravitt’s musical nickname is an homage to Gilligan’s Island. He can remember watching the show daily. Gilligan had a childhood friend named Skinny Mulligan and another called Fatty McGee; Gravitt meshed the two together for his namesake, Skinny McGee. In 1996, Gravitt and a friend started a band, calling themselves Skinny McGee and the Boxcar Boys, together they put out a 45. “At the time, there was a big Rockabilly scene in Europe,” said Gravitt. One of the band’s songs was picked up by a French magazine called Continental Restyling, published by Jerome Desvaux. “You could send him records, and he would review them,” Gravitt said. “One of our songs on his charts in Europe went to number four.” The Boxcar Boys dissolved, and Skinny later put together another band in 1998 called Skinny McGee & his Mayhem Makers with Gravitt writing lyrics, on vocals, and upright bass, Mark Hannah on lead guitar, and Chris Bell on rhythm guitar. Skinny McGee & his Mayhem Makers debuted as a band at rhythm guitarist Chris Bell’s Antemesaris RocknRoll People’s Party. The band’s music, described as ‘Authentic Florida Rockabilly,’ is steeped in mid-century southern sensibility and a ‘Johnny Cash type’ sound. The music put out by Memphis’s Sun Records was influential to the band. “Offbeat record labels would go and find the original acetates and re-release them,” he said. “So you’ve got a lot of really, really obscure songs and sounds that we could dig into and not step on anyone’s toes. By doing that, we came up and started melding our own authentic Florida Rockabilly sound. [...] Now it’s probably a little bit more country,” he said. Skinny McGee & his Mayhem Makers played countless gigs in Europe and the U.S. and put out two albums, Mint Juleps & Sweet Magnolia (2002) and 99 Years (Give or Take) (2005). After an eight-year break, the band got back together to play the 30th Antemesaris RocknRoll People’s Party in November of 2019. “With them, it was like putting on a good old pair of blue jeans,” said Gravitt. They played two more gigs following the Antemesaris People’s Party before the pandemic made its way stateside, putting a halt to public gatherings. WRITING AN ALBUM OVER QUARANTINE Gravitt, a hairstylist for 33 years, was shut down for about seven weeks last spring. “About two weeks in, I was like, ‘I’ve got to do something.’ So I started writing,” he said. “It was like somebody opened a spigot – it was song after song after song.” The bandmates worked together remotely, exchanging recordings to overlay guitar and mix songs. There wasn’t an express theme to the lyrics Gravitt wrote over his time at home, “but it felt a lot more country,” he said. The country sound is an old friend of the band. Their first full-length album, Mint Juleps & Sweet Magnolia (2002), featured two ‘very country’ tracks. Sweet Magnolia (named for Gravitt’s youngest daughter) was one of those songs accompanied by the metallic twang of steel guitar. “We listened a lot to that because my daughter now is at the age where she can listen to it and get it. She’s musical, so she was really digging it. That, I think, fed into the more country theme,” Skinny said. “There are two songs that have a bit more meaning than the other songs,” said Gravitt. “They’re dark, and they’re different from what we’ve ever done.” “The last song on the album is a song about a murder, but it’s seen from the eyes of a black man who didn’t commit the murder. […] The other one is about coal mining and black lung; it’s very old sounding, it sounds 30s, 40s style,” he said. Writing is the most cathartic aspect of making music for the band’s vocalist and upright bassist. “I love the writing – the creative part of putting things together. You’ve got a bunch of parts and pieces, and you don’t know how they fit together – that’s fun,” he said. “Usually what happens is I’ll catch a line, or I’ll hear somebody say something, and then I’ll wash it over in my brain [...] A lot of times, it starts with a little chorus, and it goes from there.” Skinny McGee & his Mayhem Makers put out a two-song EP, A New Place to Go, teasing their upcoming 13-song, self-titled album set to be released later this spring or early summer. The trio has been practicing at their private band space, ‘Schmoe Island,’ preparing for their spot at Stringbreak Fest in April. Skinny McGee & his Mayhem Makers Skinnymcgee.rocks YouTube: Skinny McGee and his Mayhem Makers FB @SkinnyMcGee99 IG @skinny_mcgees_mayhem_makers Photograph by Brandy Kay Photography

If you’ve ever savored the sashimi at downtown Winter Haven’s Tsunami Sushi or gotten a trim at Haircut Naturally, you probably know Mario Scifo. He’s the one with the big personality – and the skills and ambitions behind it to make waves in the downtown restaurant scene. Mario Scifo was born on the Mediterranean island of Malta. His family came to New York in 1951. Of his five sisters and one brother, one sister stayed in the Big Apple. She had their names engraved in granite on Ellis Island to honor their immigration to the United States. At 19, Scifo joined the United States Navy, where he became a barber. Four years later, fresh out of the Navy, he met up with a friend at a New York bar. His friend suggested he check out California for a week or so. He made it to the Golden Coast. “I stayed there 21 years,” said Scifo. There he became a master barber and cosmetologist. “I started as a barber and became a master barber because I wanted to know how to cut long hair – that’s when I went to beauty school in California.” He owned three salons in California, each called Haircut Naturally, along with his own shampoo company called Scifo with products like Scifoam, Scifoette, and Scifoglaze. In his spare time, the master barber played first division soccer. “I’ve always wanted to be like my dad. He was a professional soccer player… He had a business, so I had a business. He got married, I got married. He was in the Navy, I was in the Navy. He had seven kids, and he beat me on that one,” Scifo said with a smile. “After my own shampoo line, I got into training hairstylists and being an educator for shampoo companies,” he said. Scifo worked with companies including Rusk, Matrix, Wayne Grund, Oster, and Nelson. He kept up on the trends and continued his education – attending Vidal Sassoon Academy in London for hair cuts, Paris for coloring, and Italy for cuts and color. He traveled as an educator as well, doing hair shows at institutes around the country. “What I’m most fond about from my craft is, I became a platform artist, that’s what I always wanted to do – travel all over the country and do hair shows,” he said, describing it as being like “a circus.” He said, “You’re there with Paul Mitchell, Vidal Sassoon, Irvine Rusk – anybody who was anybody was there. It’s almost like going to the Emmys but with hair.” Thirty-one years ago, Scifo moved to Florida, where he’s made a name for himself as a small business owner in the community. Entrepreneurship runs in the family – Scifo’s father owned a local restaurant, Casa Catalina, for many years, and his niece Jessie Skubna owns Jessie’s Lounge and Jensen’s Corner Bar in Winter Haven. Mario opened Haircut Naturally on Highway 27, which he ran for eleven years. In 2003, he opened Tsunami Sushi downtown, along with his fifth Haircut Naturally location. “When I was building it, people thought I was crazy,” he said of the downtown sushi spot. “In California, they’re like gas stations – they’re on every corner.” A sushi lover himself, Scifo didn’t like that he had to drive to Lakeland or Orlando to grab a bite. “I wanted to have something downtown that everybody could enjoy,” he said. Tsunami Sushi was among the first of the current dining options in downtown Winter Haven, burgeoning a renaissance in the food scene lining Central Avenue. “The sushi bar was a nice add-on to what was to come later,” he said. Opening the restaurant was taking a chance for Scifo, who described himself as an entrepreneur. For the restaurant’s grand opening, he invited all of his clients to dine in three waves. They packed the house three times over and he made enough to pay off their debts in the first night. While running the sushi shop and salon, Scifo started a cleaning business – One Cleans All, with the motto, “We don’t cut corners, we clean them.” Juggling the responsibilities of three enterprises, Scifo decided to focus on hair about three or four years into starting Tsunami and sold it to the current owner, Vinh Nguyen. Nguyen took note of Tsunami’s splash downtown and opened two other successful locations on Cypress Gardens Boulevard and in Lakeland. “I did it because I thought it was a good thing – and it was,” Scifo said of opening Tsunami Sushi downtown. Focusing solely on his career as a stylist, Scifo continued at Haircut Naturally until December 23, 2020. At 75 years old, Mario Scifo had been doing hair for 55 years and was ready to retire with his wife, Tammie, also a hairstylist. Beloved by his clients to the end, Scifo’s last day in the salon was completely booked. Asked what he’ll miss most about working in the community, he said, “All my good clients.” When he wasn’t serving up sushi, playing soccer, perfecting a style, creating his line of shampoo, or overseeing a cleaning business, he wore an inventor’s cap. According to Scifo, he made a tool combining scissors with a comb and an adjustable hanging rack for stylists’ hair tools, which he installed in his salon. A few months into his retirement, Scifo is enjoying himself. “Right now, I’m doing all the things I’ve wanted to do around the house.” The retired hairstylist and entrepreneur is staying busy giving his Lake Wales abode a ‘new do,’ if you will, in the form of a new roof, doors, tile, lighting, painting, and the like. A bit of sightseeing is also on Scifo’s retirement to-do list. “I’ve always wanted to travel,” he said. A well-traveled man, Scifo has been all over Europe, South America, Canada, Hawaii and says he wouldn’t mind going to Japan, Abu Dhabi, and spending more time in Europe. He’s planning a trip to Mexico, though it’s been postponed several times due to the pandemic. With decades of success in craft and business under his belt, we asked Mario Scifo the secret to making it all happen. He said, “You’ve got to be at work every day. You have to have dedication, persistence, and you have to have a good skill.”

Winter Haven yoga teacher Prima Burney is ‘opening the door’ for others to navigate life and healing through her wellness and herbal alchemy business, Open Door Wellness. Using her own life experiences and talents to help her clients, Burney aims to solidify Open Door Wellness as a positive force in the community. Born in Winter Haven, Burney lived in Jacksonville with her grandmother until she passed away. At six years old, she came back to Winter Haven and didn’t venture out again until she was on her own, back to Jacksonville. She graduated from Polk State College and went into the healthcare field with the desire to be a social worker. “I thought that was going to be my life, and then my life decided that I needed more help than I could give other people,” she laughed. She got married and had three children. She returned to Winter Haven in 2007, after her divorce. “I definitely didn’t want to stay, but it’s been this growth and this evolution,” she said. “As Winter Haven has grown, I’ve found myself, I’ve found a home, I’ve found my niche – this place that I’ve gained, this community that I never expected.” Burney’s mother came to Winter Haven from Jacksonville to join a church. As all teenagers do, Burney began to forge a path of her own. “It’s kind of this long journey to find who I was and where I fit in the world. That’s why Winter Haven never felt like home until I found that part of me and connected to who I was. It has been this amazing journey that I don’t think I would trade for much else.” Burney credits her own life journey and “not always feeling like I belonged where I was” for her drive to help others. “I didn’t know who my father was until I was about 16, and when I found that out, that was part of what broke my world apart,” she said. “I wanted to provide support to other teens who had always kind of felt on the outside.” After having her second child two months premature, Burney knew she wanted a change. Cooking had always been a passion, and the door opened to the next transitional stage of her life. She earned a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando and remained in the culinary field for 15 years. She hasn’t strayed far from the underlying elements of social work, though, saying, “Everything that I’ve done as far as my career, I connect with people. People feel free opening up to me, so I spend a lot of time exploring other people’s lives with them.” FROM THE KITCHEN TO THE YOGA STUDIO Her sister had practiced yoga for years and encouraged Burney to try it. A smile flickered across her face as she remembered, “She tried to show me in my mom’s living room.” “I started going through those transitions in life again where life was going upside-down. I got divorced, became a single mother, and my life just started to come apart.” She had been attending yoga with a friend who encouraged her to find a yoga studio near her, that it would help her settle the troubles she was facing. Inside Out Yoga was running a three-week unlimited special. “I took them up on that offer, and it took all three weeks for my mind to quiet. But when it did, I thought, ‘Okay, there’s something to this.’” She’s kept with the practice ever since, noting it is the one thing that always “brings me back to center no matter what.” Burney completed YTT (Yoga Teacher Training) last year and now works as an instructor at Inside Out Yoga in Winter Haven. “Jody, from day one when I walked in the door, has been this magnetic, mentoring energy in my life. She made me feel comfortable. One of the things, as an African American, it doesn’t always feel pleasant to walk into a space and be the only one, and not have people look like you and not know how you’re going to fit in. Jody, always, always made this space something that was a safe zone for me,” she said of Inside Out yoga teacher, Jody Reece. “It’s been this thing that has its own energy and its own direction, and I’m just going along for the ride,” she said of her yoga journey. Slow Flow is the style of yoga she prefers. “I like to take it and make sure that we’re giving attention to our breath, that we’re focusing on our movements, that we’re focusing on holding the poses so that we have time to get out of our head and into our body,” she said. Burney teaches an early bird class, gentle yoga, and hip hop yoga at the downtown studio. OPEN DOOR WELLNESS In 2019, Burney did shamanism training in Lakeland. Part of that class included Ayurveda. According to John Hopkins Medicine ( hopkinsmedicine.org ), “Ayurveda, a natural system of medicine, originated in India more than 3,000 years ago. The term Ayurveda is derived from the Sanskrit words ayur (life) and veda (science or knowledge). Thus, Ayurveda translates to knowledge of life. Based on the idea that disease is due to an imbalance or stress in a person’s consciousness, Ayurveda encourages certain lifestyle interventions and natural therapies to regain a balance between the body, mind, spirit, and the environment.” “The lightbulb went on,” Burney said. “I was burnt out. I was on my own wellness journey; I was doing yoga, I was taking this shamanism training class.” She remembers thinking, “This is the bridge between my own journey and where I believe I want to go.” Training in Ayurveda, Burney began testing out spice blends with the crew she was training with and got a positive reception. “I started using the tea blends from Ayurveda for myself. In my years of going through culinary, going through my own transitions pretty much wrecked my digestion with stress.” She began using CCF tea, containing cumin, coriander, and fennel, and was encouraged by its transformative effect on her life. “The herbal alchemy was my play on bringing in some of the Ayurveda into Western herbalism,” said Burney. She wanted to be respectful of Ayurveda’s origins while including aspects of Western herbalism. “Herbal alchemy is about bringing in herbs and spices and finding how they fit into a plan for your body and your composition,” she explained. “It’s simply about putting them together in a way that could alchemise any problems or any support that you need in your life – that’s my approach to it. […] That comes into looking at the energetic properties of each herb, each spice, the best way to consume that which may be in a tea, maybe in a spice blend, maybe in a tincture.” Through her business, Open Door Wellness, which started in February of last year, Burney offers certified organic herbal products, yoga, energetic work, and herbal wellness sessions. Patrons of Open Door make an appointment through her website for a one-on-one consultation. “A part of what I do is listen to what you’re saying so we know we’re in the right direction — so tracking what really is at the core and the center of what’s going on. A lot of times, we feel that things are physical, but they are actually emotionally rooted in our bodies and causing these physical issues,” she said. “Some of that is sometimes just sitting down having a fireside chat, sitting one on one, creating some sacred space and just allowing time for you to download and listen to yourself.” Burney debuted her initial line of products at Indigo Moon in Bartow. She followed that by attending a few markets until everything closed in response to the pandemic. During that time, she designed her own website. “Since everything has opened back up, we have become a member of the Winter Haven Farmers Market, which we consider our home. It is where we aim to be every Saturday to get our name out there, have conversations, and be a part of the community, which is the ultimate goal when opening Open Door Wellness – being an influential, positive part of the community.” Open Door Wellness regularly attends the Winter Haven Farmers Market and Buena Markets in Lakeland. Burney’s market offerings include her prepackaged blends available in bags and tins. Custom blends are available upon consultation. The goal for Burney is to one day have a multipurpose wellness brick and mortar. Perhaps sharing a space with other wellness practitioners where customers can receive spiritual and energy work, select their own herbs, and have custom blends on demand. “I would like to grow the herbs that we are using to make our products,” said the herbal alchemist. “One of the things that I asked myself in trying to figure out where I wanted to go was ‘How can I use my creative talents and skills in order to help my community?’ Between the yoga and the herbal alchemy, I feel like that’s what my purpose is.” Open Door Wellness www.opendoorwell.com FB @opendoorapothecary IG @opendoorwellness_wh Photograph by Amy Sexson

If Brenda Joyce Patterson’s working title is Fine Arts and Adult Programming Librarian, then her working, working title must also include poet, essayist, columnist, author, and host of the PGTV show, Writer’s Den. Patterson has had an essay published among the words of Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks. She co-authored a book, “Soothsaying” with Suzanne Roth, which earned the 2005 Florida Artists Book Prize and remains in the permanent collection of the Bienes Center for the Literary Arts of The Dianne and Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library at the Broward County Main Library/Florida Center for the Book. She’s been a columnist for the Lakeland Ledger and DIY MFA and has had her poetry, flash fiction, and other work published across platforms. Born and raised in Lakeland, Patterson described the swan city growing up as “sleepy and small,” remembering a time of the Five-and-Dime Store and S.H. Kress and Co. After graduating from Lakeland Senior High, she got her associate’s degree in psychology at then Polk Community College, followed by a bachelor’s degree in psychology at USF and a master’s in Library and Information Science. “I thought I was going to be a clinical psychologist when I grew up,” said Patterson. “Then I realized, my heart was a little too not resilient to do that – to take on people’s pain every day.” The Fine Arts Librarian found a way to do psychology, in a way, amid the stacks at the Lakeland Public Library, where she’s worked for 37 years. Though her official title is Fine Arts Librarian, her working title includes Adult Programming Librarian too. A wonderful thing about working at a library, certainly at Lakeland Public Library, she said, is, “You get the opportunity to use the things that you love, and they let you run with it, within the boundaries of your job.” “I have always been a reader. My mother and my older brother read to me when I was a child,” said Patterson of her earliest bookish memories. She began reading on her own even before elementary school. Her interest in writing started when she was in junior high, increasing more seriously throughout high school. She stopped writing for a time and came to work at the library. “To see all the books that came across the desk when people were returning them, that was like nirvana because every reader has their little patch that they tend, like a garden. If you get enough different readers, you expand your garden because you’re seeing what they’re reading, and that’s what happened with me,” she said. Her own mental plot, ready to be tended, Patterson began writing more in earnest in her mid-twenties. When a library patron returned a book of poetry by someone Patterson had not yet heard of, her interests were piqued. She picked up the book, flipped it to the back, and was pleasantly shocked by the author’s photo of a young Nikki Giovanni. “It was a Black woman,” she said. “It’s the thing of seeing someone doing it right in front of you, actively writing, and the fact that they look like you. You can easily project yourself into doing that same thing,” she said. When you ask Brenda Joyce Patterson who she is, the first in a succession of accomplished writing titles is ‘poet.’ She lays her verse against the backdrop of her blog, Pinacasa. Random, stop-everything-and-write, lightning strikes of inspiration were rare when she described her previous writing efforts as less intentional. “Before I started claiming for myself the idea that not only am I interested in writing, but I too can truly do it, not just sometimes do it. The idea that I have to sit and wait for an idea – that made it few and far between.” That commitment to intentionality can be traced back to a series of life-altering health events. “I had a near-death experience six times,” said the poet. A series of spells in which she believed she was passing out, followed by tests that turned up nothing, and more awful bouts ended with an emergency room visit. She described the sensations as feeling ill, the need to lay down, and then “click, the lights would go out.” She would awake to someone, often her husband, in her face trying to wake her up. During her ER visit, attached to a heart monitor and EEG machine, it happened again. She awoke to a technician in her face saying, “She’s back!” After viewing the recording from the monitors, the doctors found that Patterson had flatlined. “They watched my heart stop,” she said. The recording revealed her heart rate slowing steadily before stopping, her brain following suit. Patterson had clinically died without any activity in the heart or electrical activity in the brain. No longer was she going to sit and wait for inspiration to strike – she would reach out and strike it herself. The ordeal had her asking of herself, “You like to call yourself a poet. Are you really writing poetry? Are you really writing, period?” A fire was lit in her belly, and she’s been writing poignant poetry ever since, on topics from writing amid the pandemic to lucid dreaming and even baking. “Sometimes it’s lavender hair, sometimes it’s baking, sometimes it’s somebody got on my last nerve, sometimes it’s just seeing someone walk down the street and thinking, ‘I hope they’re okay…’” From those simple musings, it’s about “letting the mind play,” she said. “I think we as writers do ourselves a disservice if we’re sitting around waiting for inspiration.” “You put some words on the paper, and then you hate them. You fiddle with them, and then you hate them a little less. I don’t know of too many writers that are totally pleased with what they put out. But by the time they put it out, they certainly feel pleased that they have done as much as they could with the product that they have in front of them.” In the blog entry preceding her poem, “When You Say,” Patterson writes, “Stories find their way into my poems. Somewhere in me, I think, is a fiction writer yearning to be free.” She has already had short fiction published and has experimented with mixing fiction into her poetry. “That’s because I don’t feel comfortable writing fiction,” she said. To circumvent her insecurities, Patterson uses an ability she’s confident in, her poetry, to explore fiction writing. A reader of eclectic tastes, Patterson enjoys romance, science fiction, even mystery during the right reading ‘season’ as she describes it. “If the thing that you return to over and over again shows how much you feel about it, then it’s definitely a love for me, and that’s romance.” With the general tone of angst and uncertainty reverberating throughout the world, “I need ahappily ever after. I certainly need a happily for now story, so I read romance,” she said. “The fiction that I write, one day if I become intentional enough, I have a science fiction fantasy/ speculative fiction that is at least a novel, but maybe a series of novels. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to do it – I push myself, but I don’t know if I’m brave enough to do it.” Patterson has a science fiction fantasy/ speculative fiction story within her that deals with sentient spiders. The idea came to her one day while she was brushing her teeth. Now, vivid plot details whisper to her almost like an out of body voice while she’s driving or falling asleep, urging her to write them down. Another plot stitching itself together in her mind is that of an assassins league. Dialogue for the story can be read at her poetry blog in an entry titled, “The Trick Is.” “I’m still trying to convince myself that I have imagination, and that website is showing myself that not only do I have imagination but that I can produce daily if necessary,” she said of her blog, Pinacasa. Much worth the mention in Patterson’s writing career is that of her essay, “The Kindness of Strangers.” Her first time writing an essay for publication landed on the pages of the anthology, “Go Girl!: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure,” edited by Elaine Lee. The book is a collection of essays from 52 women, including literary titans like Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, and, of course, Brenda Joyce Patterson. Wanting to travel and looking for travel stories from Black women, Patterson ended up in correspondence with Elaine Lee. When Lee mentioned that she had gotten a book deal, Patterson leaped at the chance to submit for it. “I said, ‘Great! If you need someone to put an essay in, I’d be happy to help you out with that.’” “Certainly, I don’t make a billion dollars writing. I just now make a little money writing,” she said. “Every sort of jump in my writing resume, literally every jump in my writing resume, my little heart is beating like a bird.” In moments when she was nervous or bogged with self-doubt, people around her would say, “Why are you freaking out? You can do this. Are you forgetting what you’ve already done?” Patterson has been a make-it-happen sort of woman all her life, though her insecurities may try and dissuade her at times. “I took it one step at a time, and I would just throw myself out there, and they’d say, ‘You’ve done these things that were difficult before, you can do this, and you can do more.’” “That’s what I would say to any writer, any person, who has something that they want so hard to do. You may not feel like you have the credentials or what have you, but do it anyway. Try – because you might get the opportunity,” she said. This year, Patterson’s goal is to monetize her writing. She is setting her prices and plans to start a Patreon. The esteemed poet and essayist aims for writing to be a career after she retires from the library. She also plans to seek help navigating the process of compiling her poems for a collection, and notes that she also hopes to submit more work. “I have a number of things that I know I need to work on, but I’m afraid. I’m trying my best to push through that fear.” Brenda Joyce Patterson Brendajoycepatterson.com FB @Brenda.Joyce.Patterson IG @brenda.joyce.patterson

A world-traveled performer, accomplished educator, and leader promoting community growth and diversity, Dr. Vincent Miller brings his talent from the stage to the board of Theatre Winter Haven. Dr. Miller was born in Winter Haven. “My grandmother’s roots are here, my great grandfather and grandmother’s roots are here, so this is home,” he said of the Chain of Lakes city. While in high school at Lake Region, Miller figured his path would be sports. “My brother was a football player, so I thought I was going to become a football player. I was great at it; I was great at athletics,” he said. But he was also great on the stage. Miller came from a musically inclined family and grew up singing in the church choir. His first performing gig outside of high school productions and the church was with Disney, recording the Candlelight Processional and Massed Choir Program with Louis Gossett, Jr. Signing that contract with Disney gave Miller a different perspective on his future, one that would take him around the world. Miller attended the University of South Florida, studying Vocal Performance under Annetta Monroe. Monroe suggested he audition for a show at Busch Gardens. Miller took her advice and landed the lead role. After that, he started working for the company Choozi Entertainment, which took him from Dubai to Africa and many places in between. Miller has performed on every continent but Antarctica. The arts are a continued passion for the globe-trotting performer, though that passion has found other avenues for expression that don’t always involve a spotlight. Miller’s grandmother babysat many neighborhood kids out of her house. Hers was a home that parents knew they could drop off their children, and they would be fed and well taken care of. A young Vincent Miller took note of the loving environment his grandmother created. At 98 years old, Miller’s grandmother passed away. Many of those who at one time or another were in her care spoke about Miller’s grandmother. “Listening to the youth that she directly impacted, now grown men and women, saying how she was the reason why they were at the point in their life with success in their lives, means a lot,” he said. His grandparents’ love and stewardship of community instilled the same within him. Growing up, Miller would volunteer in summer programs, even earning awards for his service. Stepping into the role of educator was natural for Miller. “Growing up in that environment … and seeing the appreciation that the people have for my grandmother and my grandfather – I think that’s why I’m here today.” His father passed away five years ago while Miller was in South Africa, bringing him back to Florida, where he finished his PhD and entered the education field with Polk County Public Schools. Dr. Miller teaches secondary math at Winter Haven High School and dual enrollment for Southeastern in Winter Haven. Miller leans into his entertainment background for his work in the classroom and the community. “I always say that being artminded… allows me to be able to see the diversity in our world, to be able to communicate with people better. It allows me in my current profession to build relationships with my students because I’m well-rounded and open to all conversations that kids or students or people, in general, may have.” FILLING THE LANE In 2007, Miller started the non-profit organization Filling the Lane with the mission to “Bridge the gaps between education, sports, arts, and community.” According to a press release by Theatre Winter Haven, of which Miller now sits on the board, “Dr. Miller works with at-risk youth to engage them in various activities, such as STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) through basketball.” “Filling the Lane is my baby,” said Miller. The organization was born after a summer team under the Police Athletic League (PAL), with whom Miller had been working with through his job at Denison Middle School, lost funding. Students on the defunct summer team were left asking Coach Miller if they’d get to play the next year. “I told them, ‘You come up with a name, and we can do something. We’ll figure it out,’” he said. The kids came up with the name, Filling the Lane. He thought, “How can we tie that to education, and how can we tie that to growth? [...] That was that goal. If I was going to create something or build something, how do we tie this into growth in our community and growth for our youth?” The students came up with their mission to “Bridge the gaps between education, sports, and community.” Miller was insistent on adding the arts into that mission. “The goal is to bridge the gap between students who are in middle school and high school to get them into college,” said Miller. Through the program, economically disadvantaged students travel across the country to play basketball. “Everywhere we go when we play a tournament, whether we’re in Oklahoma, Tennessee, New York, California, we take a tour of the city. We do a history piece of the city, we do a fine dining experience,” said Miller. The goal, he says, is to give his FTL kids experiences they might not otherwise have. The program has gifted Miller memorable moments over the years. One, in particular, stands out in his mind. He took a student to the Florida State University football field. The field was empty, and the boy asked, ‘Coach Miller, do you feel that?’ Miller didn’t understand what the student meant at the moment. “It wasn’t until I got back into the hotel, and I realized he was talking about feeling the experience of the crowd yelling his name when he got on the field.” The realization solidified the unique brand of good that Filling the Lane was doing in the lives of its students. Filling the Lane currently serves about 150 male and female students, providing a sports and education outlet and community outreach opportunities. Last year in response to the pandemic, FTL fed about 3000 healthcare workers at Winter Haven Hospital. They’ve done a Back to School Bash, where they give away shoes and school supplies, volunteered at nursing homes, and have donated clothing, shoes, and other necessities to the Clothes Closet at Miller’s school. “It’s about being able to be big in the community and do what’s right in the community and teach the youth in the program to give back,” Miller said. TEACHER OF THE YEAR Dr. Miller’s work in and out of the classroom earned him recognition in 2020 as Polk County Teacher of the Year. Of the accolade, he said, “It’s a platform. It’s a platform that you can use to spread positive messages, or it’s a platform you use to grow and help people see the benefit of growth and how to grow, especially inside education. [...] Being named Polk County Teacher of the Year was definitely an honor.” Miller takes mentorship from the 2020 Florida Teacher of the Year, Dr. Dre Graham. “His platform to me was so inspiring. I always saw him in the community, always doing something, and that motivated me. I took that and said, ‘You know what, if I’m going to be Polk County Teacher of the Year, I want to be that motivation piece too,’” said Miller. Every chance he gets, Miller awards fellow Polk County teachers for outstanding service in education. He wants to do anything he can to motivate his colleagues to excel inside their classrooms. Now the question is, says Miller, “What’s next?” For the acclaimed performer and community leader, Dr. Vincent Miller, “My ultimate goal is, I want to be president of a major college, and I want my program, FTL, to expand into whatever college I’m working into.” DIVERSITY AT THEATRE WINTER HAVEN Last month, Dr. Vincent Miller was welcomed to Theatre Winter Haven’s Board of Trustees, tasked with chairing the board’s subcommittee on diversity. “Any organization would be lucky to have Dr. Miller on its team. We have been lucky to have him in our Theatre Family since childhood,” said Producing Director of Theatre Winter Haven, Dan Chesnicka. According to a press release from the theatre welcoming him to their board, “For the past five years, Dr. Miller has led Theatre Winter Haven’s efforts to celebrate black voices in the arts and has planned our Black History Month events. In June, Dr. Miller brought the community together in song and spearheaded Theatre Winter Haven’s UNITY Concert, with all the proceeds being donated to six local black charities.” Having lived in countries and cultures worldwide, Dr. Miller emphasizes the value of and need for diversity. “Diversity in our county is much needed,” he said. “When I go to downtown Winter Haven or downtown Lakeland, and I’m one of the only Black Americans in the restaurant, to me, it’s not because the means are not there, there’s a lack of something somewhere – a lack of trust, a lack of knowledge – more so a lack of trust.” Growing up in Winter Haven, Miller was involved in many facets of the community, from church and volunteering to education and the arts. Being so niched into groups of every ethnicity, Dr. Miller felt he could be “that glue to bring everybody together.” It started with Brothers United – a program composed of four brothers at Lake Region High School. The concept became a show at Theatre Winter Haven to raised funds for Moffitt Cancer Center. “Growing up in Theatre Winter Haven, again, I was one of the only Black male performers in the theatre, and most of the audience was white, but when we did this show [Brothers United], there were diverse people in the theatre.” He asked himself, “Why can’t this happen all the time? Why does it take my show to diversify the theatre when we should be diverse all the time?” That show went on annually for some ten years, eventually turning into a show series called Voices. “We started doing a show that was very diverse in African American music and African American history to teach how important that piece is to know about in our community,” said Dr. Miller. He invites performers from all over the world to come to Theatre Winter Haven for a one-day show featuring anything from Motown and Gospel to Black musicals telling a story. He always likes to have a story “of why the African culture is so important, moving from the past and moving to the future and what we brought to the theatre, what Black culture brought to the theatre.” “Dr. Miller is a leader in our community and has been part of the Theatre Winter Haven family for the better part of two decades,” said Chesnicka. “We are equally as proud of his accomplishments as we are excited to welcome him to our leadership team in our quest to serve our WHOLE community – especially those parts of our community that are historically underserved.” “My goals are to do different shows like Voices, to produce different things, and invite people to see the good work we’re doing at Theatre Winter Haven. The goal is to get it exposed and visible, so youth are not scared to come in and say ‘I want to be a part of that.’”

Twenty-nine-year-old An’Drew Kamani Williams, aka Drew Willz, has created an ever-evolving brand centered around graphic art, clothing, coffee, matcha, and more. 16.92 Coffee Matcha Bar is in the business of bringing coffee and matcha drinks to Central Florida through the modernity and magic of social media and local collaboration. The brand took its first breath in 2012 in Williams’ design class. Asked to create a mock brand for an assignment, he thought up 16.92, an homage to his birthday, January 6, 1992. Williams graduated from Keiser University with a degree in graphic design. Along with his music, Drew began doing freelance work around the city, steadily building a collaborating network of vendors and artists. His freelance work entailed album covers, single art, and eventually corporate work – making logos, designing color schemes, and uniforms for businesses. “I feel like I had a brand,” said Williams of the company’s beginnings. POPPING UP ON THE COFFEE SCENE The mother of William’s son, Winston, is Colombian. Her grandparents own a coffee farm in Colombia and would bring coffee to the States. Williams described it more as a decoration, still in its husk. “I got a popcorn popper and started learning how to roast,” he said. “I would bring it around to local shops to see what people thought. I would ask every owner their opinions of it so that I could get better and better. I finally got it where I wanted it to be, and I started selling it.” Working as the Supervisor and Drink Consultant for Sabu Ramen at The Joinery, Williams would bring his AeroPress and pour-overs to make drinks for the staff. He said working with Kristy Scott in the past at 5th & Hall “sparked the idea.” Scott, the Director of Brand Experience at The Joinery, suggested Williams set up 16.92 at the Lakeland food hall. His first thought was to roast and sell his own coffee beans, but he thought it would be a good idea to make the drinks too. In early 2020, he started a coffee bar. “Making coffee beans is really hard. Roasting on a popcorn popper, trying to sell to a mass of people is very difficult,” said Williams. “So, I started working with Ethos Roasters, and now they sponsor me, and we created our own roast together.” Their collaborative roast, Roasted Caramel, is the blend he uses at the 16.92 Coffee Matcha Bar. A PERFECT MATCH-A Matcha naturally fits into the equation as an alternative for customers who don’t drink coffee. He first tasted the beverage in New York in 2019 while working as a latte artist at an upscale barbershop in Manhattan. Williams was captivated by a shop across the street, Cha Cha Matcha. It’s peppy pink and green facade invited Drew inside to what all this Fuschia fuss was about. The shop was beautiful and current, playing modern music with a steady flow of customers filtering in to get their much-needed matcha pick-me-up. He didn’t know what matcha was, had never tried it up to that point, and wasn’t exactly a convert when he did. “I had it – it tasted horrible. It was disgusting,” he said. “It was the worst drink I’d ever had. […] It wasn’t until I came back to Florida and started playing with the recipes that I started trying to figure out how I could make it taste better.” He utilized YouTube and other vendors to become a matcha master at his bar. “The techniques that I learned are from social media, through different baristas,” said Williams. He does a podcast on Instagram called “Brewz at Drewz,” where he makes drinks and interviews fellow baristas and artists from around the world. The 16.92 Coffee Matcha Bar offers refreshers, including macchiatos, classic pour-overs (using his Ethos blend), and matcha drinks. Their drinks are made with alkaline water and organic ingredients, and non-dairy options are available. COFFEE COLLAB In collaboration with another local business, La Sirena’s, Williams uses their homemade Fresca to combine with his matcha for a refreshing blend of complimenting flavors. Community collaboration has proved a valuable part of Williams’ business model. “I’m used to that because of music,” he said. “Everything feels like a big DJ Khaled record. It’s like a bunch of features – that’s how I work.” “I think I’m more of a producer, in a sense. I like to get the best things from everyone and put it together. That’s why I feel like being a bar is the best way for us to showcase different vendors through our taste palette.” The 16.92 Coffee and Matcha Bar premiered at the Buena Market. Williams said he worked with the market’s founder, Stephanie Gregg, to bring his coffee creations to a market setting. “She helped me launch 16.92 in a market,” he said. “While she was handling everything for the market, she assisted me as well with 16.92 in the beginning, and we just started growing with each other and growing with the different vendors,” he said of the Buena Market. Perhaps his most important collaboration is with his team of supporters, including his mom, girlfriend Philli, and son Winston. Williams spoke of his appreciation for the support and influence of his mother. She was an event planner in New York when he was younger, allowing him to meet artists, performers, and personalities like Missy Elliott, P Diddy, and Mike Tyson. “That let me know that that’s obtainable,” he said. BREWS, BITCOIN, AND BIG DREAMS For now, Williams is going with the flow. But you can expect matcha more from 16.92 in the coming months and years. He eventually wants to open a brick and mortar location, with more to follow. Williams’ background is Jamaican, he hails from New York and has attended school in London, saying, “I want to be able to go to all those places and have my work there.” The coffee creative envisions a future in which 16.92 is a cold brew delivery service, accepting modern payment forms like bitcoin. “I want this to be like Apple,” he said. Williams is happy for Polk County to be the backdrop for his brand-building endeavors. His grandmother first moved to Lakeland when he was in elementary school. He and his mom moved down from New York when Williams was a young teen. “This is an amazing place to live and start a business,” he said. “It’s a small town with a lot of people who love the people who come from here.” “I think of Publix, and I look up to that. I see where they started, and I like how they treat their customers. […] To know that that came from here, is like, it’s so possible.” Williams’ advice for others aspiring to create a project, business, or brand of their own? “Whatever is crazy that comes to your mind, just do it.” Get to know Drew and his up-and-coming coffee bar on social media and the many pop-ups and markets he attends, including the Buena Market and Winter Haven Farmers Market. Coffeematchabar.com FB @coffeematchabar IG @16.92__