Marina, resident mermaid at Wreck Bar for the past three years, will still be eating fire at Off the Hookah and she'll still performing as a mermaid at Bahia Cabana for Hukilau. But it's likely this was her last time to peer out at these stunned drinkers, her eyes shot with red and her hair fluttering in the water.
The final happy hour (final, barring an intervention of good sense at the Sheraton Corp.) was not heavily attended. Actually, there may have been more children there than adults. I expected there to be tears, old drunks clinging to greasy old ropes wrapped around the old boat wood, and loyal patrons bidding on relics. (Who wouldn't want a table with sand and fake gold sealed inside?) But it was quiet and slow, and Marina's last mermaid show there was over by 7 p.m.
A toast: To a passed era -- a symbol of kookier, sweeter times gone by.
