90-year-old woman goes skydiving in Fla.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 1 (UPI) — A 90-year-old woman who recently went skydiving in Florida says she’s “ready to do it again.”
Mary Ann Barnett told her family on her 90th birthday in July that she wanted to go skydiving soon, The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union reported Saturday.
In January, the woman’s granddaughter, Tiffany Barnett, proposed the two take the jump together.
On March 17, two days after Tiffany Barnett’s 30th birthday, the pair went to Skydive Jacksonville, based near Herlong Airport.
“I did it. I enjoyed it. And I’m ready to do it again,” Mary Ann Barnett said.
Tiffany Barnett said she was a little worried for her grandmother going into the jump, but was happy they went. “She would be the icon that I think every grandmother should be,” Barnett said. “There’s not enough words to explain how great of a woman she is.”
The skydiving company said the 90-year-old was their oldest skydiver at their Jacksonville location, but they had a 92-year-old jump at their Titusville location.
“Maybe I’ll jump out then, too. Maybe I’ll jump out at 104,” she said.
Oldest cabbie in NYC, 92, still driving
NEW YORK, April 1 (UPI) — New York City’s oldest cab driver, 92-year-old Johnnie “Spider” Footman, says he has no plans to retire and his current license doesn’t expire until 2014.
Footman, who has been driving cabs since 1945, is a legend among the city’s cab drivers, Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky told the New York Post.
“The history he’s seen from behind the wheel of a New York City cab is the equal of any great archive,” he said.
Footman spends two days a week driving a taxicab and another two days listening to tax engines for signs of trouble at 55 Stan taxi company in Long Island City, Queens.
“I’m more comfortable with him than a lot of other drivers,” said depot co-owner Jerry Nazari. “He has a good, calm personality, good knowledge of the city, and he enjoys what he does.”
Footman said when he first started, his base fare cost 20 cents and his passengers liked to get frisky in the back seat.
“They had sex in the back in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” he told the Post. “The cabs were a lot bigger then.”
And despite this, he said, the “customers were good early on,” in his taxi-driving years.
“Now, the cabdriver is like a tool, a wrench. You use it when you feel like it, and then you throw it back in the box when you get tired of it,” he said.
Teen caught ‘blue-handed’ stealing
MJOLBY, Sweden, March 31 (UPI) — A Swedish teenager was caught stealing money from his job when police added an invisible powder to the cash that turns fingers blue.
A few days after the trap was laid, one of the teen’s co-workers noticed him walking around the company with blue hands, The Local reported.
“It was a successful outcome for both the employer and perhaps also the culprit. It was good that it was discovered. When this type of theft occurs at a company, there are many people who suffer from it,” said Goran Karlsson of the Mjolby police.
The teenager was charged Thursday to the theft of $3,323 between August and October last year.
Minneapolis man says naked swim was art
MINNEAPOLIS, March 31 (UPI) — A jury must decide whether a Minneapolis man’s nude swim at a city beach was performance art or a misdemeanor, officials say.
Patrick Scully, 58, a locally known performance artist who founded Patrick’s Cabaret, says he’s fighting the ticket he received July 10 at Sweeney Beach on Twin Lake because he thinks society is too repressive. Police say he just broke the law requiring proper attire in city parks, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Saturday. A six-person Hennepin County jury will take up the case May 30.
“I believe that you have to be the change that you want to see in the world,” said Scully, a 6-foot-7 dancer known to perform naked on stage and who also is a gay rights activist. “I’d like to live in a world in which our relationship to our bodies is much more relaxed and much less fearful.”
Scully, who also teaches English as a second language at the University of Minnesota, said he was careful to pick a location where he was unlikely to offend anyone. Sweeney Beach is known as a gathering spot for gays, and he said the only comments he heard were from other men advising him it would be risky to drop his bathing suit.
“I replied that it was riskier to live one’s life in fear of what the police might do,” Scully said.
A city spokesman declined comment, noting the case is still pending.
