Radio Interview Segment 1
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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12. 60 w F T W This is Emerald Coast morning with Dan Diamond. Thanks for joining us. It is 7 36 but I'm not sitting here talking to myself this morning. Actually have a beautiful lady and a handsome butin here Mariam Merryweather from she's the executive director for Passard of Ink. And also David Parker, who's the president of Passard Inc. And you folks have got a nice haul over there that you're trying to keep open trying to keep it open for the majority of people out here to enjoy, right? Absolutely. Use a little history about that place. Well, good morning, Dan. Thanks so much for having us. First of all, um well, pass Arte. A lot of people wonder where is Miss Arda and what is Passarella? And it's so odd to me because it's been around since 1966. Passard A actually stands for Playground Area Square and Round Dance Association. Also, it stands. Yeah, it's an acronym. You know, we live in a military town. We've gotta have acronyms. Yeah, but we have been actually square dancing in Fort Walton Beach since the early 19 forties. Yeah, it's been a long time I looked, Teoh. I don't know. We've been square. Well, course square dancing been around for a long time. Yeah, they say is the only American form of dance that was truly developed in the United States and nobody else had a hand in it that must have been laughing in the rain. I guess that sounds like a lot of fun, though. I've been to see square dances when I was a kid. I have not been into very many square dancers is an adult. Well, I know, I think When we danced his Children, we all danced in school and that kind of gave us a bad feeling about it because who wanted to touch a boy back there who wanted to touch a girl? That forces. But it's kind of changed over the years, and now we don't really do all that old boom check music were do really, really popular music. And it's not all country. Somebody said to me the other day Oh, I don't like to discredit because this country and that's not really what kind of Oh, my gosh, I just just Bruno Mars. Uh oh, yeah, Lady Gaga. I mean, you name it. I'll do it. Coordinates in the Lady Garden. Exactly like see? Well, come on out. But now Passard A. Is not just a screening. It's Hall anymore. Passarella. We dio We have over 20 classes every single week in in Passard a hall, and it ranges from Zumba dance Fitness to ballroom tap dancing. The Center for Lifelong Learning uses our hall. I mean, there's just all sorts of classes that go on there. So it pretty much any kind of dancing. You want to learn to get familiar with the matter. So do you have very many people coming? I do a lot of wedding ceremonies and receptions. Do you have very many couples? Come in and go. I just want to learn how to do a certain type of dance for my first dance of my wedding. Absolutely real. I get phone calls all the time, saying, Hey, can you teach us how to do? Or can you come and teach the all of the ladies to do a certain dance? You know how they like to do that at the reception way, doing line dances, line dances or let Gloria weigh. Do we teach line dancing, absolute beginner all the way on up to more advanced stuff. I'm curious. So what is the most popular line dance people want to wear? I hate to say this because it's been around forever. The electric slide I'm selling year the electric slide This week I had Somebody approached me and said, Would you please do just how to do that? We're going to a They're going to an event this weekend and we want to know how to do it. Everybody there. Mama knew how to do that. Dance it, really, It really is. But the reason I'm here today, Dan, is to kind of get the public aware of First of all, who we are, where we are and that were dancing and also let them know that we are running a risk of losing our hall. We built the hall over. I guess it's been the early early seventies around 75 76 way actually built the hall. We lease our property from the city of Fort Walton Beach, and they have been so good to us over the years. But they have decided that any leased properties that come available in the Fort Walton Beach area. They're going to put on the market, put a for lease sign in front of the building, and they're going to try to lease the buildings at what they call fair market value. Um, and what that means is simply we're a non profit organization. You know, we do all this dance, teaching and dance instruction. We charge very, very, very little at the door for these these classes. And we do that just simply to cover our instruction instructor costs. And, you know, just the paying the electric bill. And how, exactly? Just to make sure that we're being able to go. Um, but if we wound up paying fair market value, it would put us out of business. Oh, yeah. So, um, and there's a lot of organizations around town that are like that stage crafters, arts and designs aside. I mean, you know, lots of folks who rent from nonprofits who rent from the city, and they're going to be faced with the exact same thing that we're going through right now. In the past, the nonprofits had a little we did. We had a lower lease rate with them, and it's over. The years. It's been negotiated up and up and up, you know? So we try to paste something that's fair and equitable. Ah, but we do provide a service to the community of Fort Walton Beach. And it's not just a small group of people who dance. It's Ah, whole bunch of people that we draw from outside of our community. We draw international folks. We draw national folks on people from around the state. We have all sorts of dances and benefits and things where people are coming into town and renting hotel rooms and eating in the restaurants and spending money at Walmart. Exactly. Exactly. You do have an event coming up. Pretty soon, we're talking way. You take a commercial break and we'll be back with Miriam and day and we'll be talking about this event over. It's gonna be held at your location, obviously venue. So we'll talk about that in just a minute. Hang on. Thank you.