Cootertober gets more family-friendly

By John Labriola - As October approaches, the city of Inverness is getting ready for a month of festivities known as Cootertober, but this year's activities will be a lot more family-friendly and a lot less dark.

The Twistid Arts Initiative, which organized the city's Cootertober events for the last two years and was criticized for its focus on the occult, won't be involved this year, City Manager Eric Williams said

Last year, residents packed city council meetings to protest events they said were attracting occultists, including a Vampire Ball, which encouraged attendees to "dance, drink, and party the night away in true vampiric style" while "donned up in the style of your favorite vampire character," and a Vampire Pub Crawl, which asked participants to join in "grabbing our capes and Vamp'ing it out as we cruise around downtown and drink the night away!" 

Those events will not be taking place this year, and the Old Courthouse also will be left alone. For the last two years, Twistid Arts had transformed the courthouse into a creepy haunted site full of fog and disturbing scents that falsified Inverness history by suggesting a witch trial in the building had caused it to burn down. 

Williams said Twistid Arts was too busy this year to get involved, so the city increased its partnerships with local businesses, which will be organizing a number of the events themselves. 

This year's $50,000 price tag for Cootertober also is down from last year, and the city expects downtown shops and restaurants to generate more revenue because some of the events are moving from Liberty Park to the downtown district this year. 

"It helps them and helps us," Williams said. "It's sort of a mutually beneficial situation."

The edgiest thing at this year's Cootertober will be the Oct. 1 kickoff event, which will feature an Ozzy Osbourne tribute band in honor of Osbourne's recent death. But the city's contract with the band asks it to keep the songs family-friendly, Williams said.

The year's lineup includes other music acts ranging in style from country to classic rock as well as new events like a cornhole tournament, a chili cookoff, and a "Roper Romp," along with annual staples like Cooter Carnival, the Teen's Night Out costume contest, and Cooterween, the Oct. 31 trick or treating event.

Cooterfest started as a three-day festival in 2004 to honor the Florida Cooter, a species of freshwater turtle. It was rebranded as Cootertober in 2023 and expanded to a month of activities.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Schlabach still causing Citrus County problems

Image
By John Labriola - Citrus County voters thought they had seen the last of former County Commissioner Ruthie Schlabach after her humiliating election loss last year. Sadly for the public, Schlabach is still finding ways to cause problems for the county.  The latest controversy involves her role as a lobbyist for The Southern Group. Last month, she convinced the commission's current chairwoman Rebecca Bays to nudge County Administrator Steve Howard into secretly signing a $3 million appropriations request to the state legislature to widen County Road 491 on behalf of the lobbying firm's client, Metro Development Group, which has an open application to build a 5,000-unit project along 491 called Tuscany Ranch.  In an email to Howard, Schlabach asked him to sign the funding request as soon as possible.  “That way, we can show you the money!” she wrote. The problem is that the rest of the commission never approved or even knew about the request, a serious breach of protocol, ...
Read more

"No Kings" demonstrations dishonor the nation

Image
By John Labriola - This past Saturday was the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, an important date that coincided with Flag Day and President Donald Trump's birthday. It was a day to celebrate America, and President Trump did so in style with a patriotic military parade in Washington D.C. that honored all the heroes who have put their lives on the line to keep our nation safe. The Democrat Party chose to spend the same day attacking President Trump's popular agenda and defending criminal illegal aliens in what they called "No Kings Day," with angry demonstrations across the country. Here in Citrus County, the angry minority of Kamala Harris voters, who represented 26 percent of the vote last year compared with the 72.41 percent who voted for Trump, took over the intersection in front of the Old Courthouse in downtown Inverness with obnoxious signs calling President Trump a tyrant and "king." Local crossdresser "Rhonda Santis," who has been identif...
Read more

Library board bows to haters of Charlie Kirk

Image
By John Labriola - The Citrus County Library Advisory Board (LAB) meeting last week turned into a hate fest against Charlie Kirk, as leftists angered by a motion to commemorate him with a library display outnumbered residents supporting the idea. Rita Fox of Lecanto said Kirk, who was assassinated on Sept. 10 by an angry leftist, deserved it.  "When you preach hate, things like that are bound to happen," she said, attacking Kirk for rejecting Marxist ideas like critical race theory, for which she accused him of "white supremacy." "In the end, the violence he rationalized and the racial fear he amplified converged in his own fate," Fox threateningly stated.  Later in the meeting, she and another liberal woman stormed out shouting obscenities at LAB Chairman Justin Strickland.  Other leftists said Kirk was a "racist," "bully," "bigot," "homophobic," "incredibly divisive," and a "white Christian nationali...
Read more