As the happy hour crowd at Fort Lauderdale's legendary Wreck Bar heats up on Friday afternoons, patrons at this vintage venue focus their attention on windows that look into the adjoining pool. In the water, smiling glamour gals do somersaults. They wave. They blow kisses. With their long flowing hair and fluttering fishtails, they glide gracefully into the limelight.

No, you haven't had one too many. These mermaids are the show Friday nights at the Sheraton Yankee Clipper hangout, which has been featured in films from Where the Boys Are to Analyze This.

The mermaids are part of the kitschy, retro appeal of the Wreck Bar, designed to look like a shipwrecked boat, but you may only have a few more weeks to catch the show. The mermaids will be here Friday nights through the end of May, but the hotel is closing for renovations and there are no guarantees they'll be back once it reopens, says Marina, the Fire Eating Mermaid and top fish here.

She'd like to preserve what she refers to as ``mid-century Floridiana.''

''I like the kitsch. That's what makes it special,'' Marina says, explaining that the mermaids were luring fans to the bar in the '50s.

Marina launched her own weekly gig at the oceanside hotel bar about three years ago as part of her passion for retro entertainment and Polynesian pop culture. Her shows sometimes include others from the pod of mermaids she recruits and trains.

The mermaids are usually in the water for about 20 to 40 minutes. ''When we're swimming, the bar is completely packed,'' Marina says. The mermaids, outfitted in scallop shell tops, flashy tails and bold blossoms in their hair, happily pose for pictures and occasionally allow bystanders to accompany them in the water.

One of those guest swimmers, a 6-year old girl named Brooke, had so much fun she became an unofficial regular feature. Marina made the girl her own sparkly pink fishtail.

Like Brooke, Marina was a little girl when she fell in love with fancy swimming. As a youngster in the Caribbean, she'd free dive and work on ways to make her movements pretty and graceful. Like a dolphin -- or a mermaid.

When she's off mermaid duty, she's Marina Anderson, a wife and mom with a 6-year-old son who dubs herself a ''retro-trainer'' performing Polynesian dances and stunts like fire eating and dancing on broken plates.

But she clearly is hooked on being a mermaid and the Wreck Bar has been the perfect setting for her unique style of entertainment. ``How could you not want to see a mermaid through the portholes of the bar?''

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