‘Weird Florida’ coming to Lake Worth Beach City Hall
Author Eliot Kleinberg will share strange but true Sunshine State tales at a free lecture Dec. 18 in the City Commission chambers
The guy who threw an alligator through a Royal Palm Beach drive-through window... The Broward County woman who saw the Virgin Mary on a slice of toast…
The Villages man busted for selling Viagra out of his car... The Tampa-area woman who tried to get Satan banned from town...
Want more weird Florida? Come and get it Dec. 18 at Lake Worth Beach City Hall.
From a microphone in front of the City Commission dais, author Eliot Kleinberg will offer a free lecture about the dozens upon dozens of Sunshine State doozies chronicled in his two books, the aptly-named “Weird Florida” and “Weird Florida II.”
Warning: Expect excessive laughter and audience participation.
“People ask me where I get all my material,’’ the proud Florida Native said. “I say it comes at me so fast and furious, I have to dodge it like a hockey goalie.’’
An award-winning Palm Beach Post reporter from 1987 to 2020, Kleinberg has written extensively about Florida and Sunshine State history, including 14 books. He takes pride in having visited not only all 50 states but also all 67 Florida counties.
His journalistic pursuits have put him in the crosshairs of newsmakers both serious and silly — from the September 11 hijackers to the suburban Lake Worth woman arrested for registering her pet poodle to vote.
“There are times I’d be sitting at my desk in the newsroom, I’d start reading a police report and I’d bust out laughing,’’ he said.
His first collection of anecdotes, “Weird Florida,” was published in 1998 (long before frozen iguanas started falling from palm trees). He knew the book was a hit when he heard commentator Paul Harvey plug it on his radio show as “a cry for help” for Florida.
But the weirdness kept coming, resulting in “Weird Florida II” in 2006.
Cows in the Intracoastal Waterway, haunted airliners, celebrity sex scandals, the president of a local Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter arrested for... (you guessed it). Kleinberg shares it all with comedic delivery, making “Weird Florida” the most sought-after of his book lectures from Jacksonville to Miami.
At one lecture 15 years ago in Hollywood, a man in the audience stood up and offered a challenge that Kleinberg accepted.
“He says, ‘I’m from southern California. Mile for mile, ounce for ounce, we are weirder than all of Florida,’’’ he recalled. “He says, ‘In southern California, we make our strippers have a college degree.’’’
Kleinberg said he looked the man in the face and said, “Is that really the best you can do?’’
Then he told the strange-but-true story of the Orlando-area strip club that was about to be shut down unless it proved it was a performing arts center. The strippers performed a play in the nude and the club stayed open.
“He said, “OK, you win,’’’ Kleinberg recalled through bursts of laughter.
Despite his talent for chronicling Florida’s weirdness, Kleinberg is an unabashed Sunshine State aficionado.
“I’m not making fun of Florida in a cruel way,’’ he said. “I’m laughing with Florida. It’s one of the things that makes it a fun place to live.’’
‘Weird Florida’
Free lecture by author Eliot Kleinberg
6:30 p.m. Dec. 18, 2025
City Hall, 7 N. Dixie Highway, Lake Worth Beach
Sponsored in partnership by Florida Humanities and Lake Worth Historical Society