Title: The Last Mermaid Show - The New York Times
Headings: The Last Mermaid Show
The Last Mermaid Show
This Is What Real-Life Mermaids Look Like

Content: In 2001, at 27, Anderson was elected mayor of the tiny municipality, which made her one of the youngest mayors in the United States. “ And the only mer-mayor,” she adds, deadpan. “ Whatever sells tickets.” Anderson is now paid less than $10 per month for her mayoral duties, which involve managing agreements with the local utility companies and negotiating deals to bring in a CVS, a Dollar General and other businesses near the city’s main intersection. When she was first elected, just as the attraction’s financial crisis hit its peak in the early 2000s, she refused even that salary, donating it to the “Save Our Tails” campaign, which she, Athanason and other Weeki Wachee officials established in 2003 to attract media attention and keep the struggling enterprise afloat. “ We were desperate,” Anderson says. At various points, she and Athanason tried shopping a reality show and brought in Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie to film an episode of “The Simple Life 2” at Weeki Wachee. In 2008, several years after the attraction was given to the city of Weeki Wachee by the last in a succession of owners, Anderson and the rest of the city management decided to donate it to the state of Florida, converting it into Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. Suddenly the “mermaids” were state employees. With government support, as well as money raised by a nonprofit called “Friends of Weeki Wachee,” the park was able to put on a fresh coat of paint and hire more employees. (