After graduating from Mounds View High School, Shoreview native Lara Dallman-Weiss was fully prepared to go to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire on a running scholarship. She put down a deposit for school and even had a roommate lined up before having a change of heart.

“I had this gut feeling that I was doing myself a disservice if I didn’t do the scary thing,” Dallman-Weiss said. “I called my dad and he told me I could do it as long as I fixed the situation myself.”

That’s exactly what Dallman-Weiss did. She made the necessary phone calls, packed her belongings and moved away from home.

All to pursue her passion for sailing at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“My coach was stoked when I told him I was coming,” Dallman-Weiss said. “That’s where I got really competitive with it.”

That competitiveness has landed her back at the highest level. After qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Dallman-Weiss is back for more at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. She will start competition in mixed dinghy at approximately 5:05 a.m. CT Friday.

Not bad for a kid who got her start in sailing as a 6-year-old at White Bear Yacht Club. She still has fond memories of traveling around the Twin Cities for races after her dad taught her how to sail. Maybe a little surprising considering she wasn’t the biggest fan of the sport at first.

“I didn’t like being in the boat alone,” Dallman-Weiss said with a laugh. “Eventually they learned that I actually liked it when I was in the boat with other people.”

As much as she started to enjoy sailing, Dallman-Weiss gravitated to other sports in her youth, and it wasn’t until she got to Eckerd College that she started to see a future for herself in sailing. Now she’s a two-time Olympian, readying herself to compete in the mixed dinghy alongside Stu McNay, a five-time Olympian himself.

“I have a different confidence now,” Dallman-Weiss said. “It’s about us leaning on each other and enjoying it as much as possible and seeing where we end up.”

Asked last week about her goals, Dallman-Weiss tried her best to keep things in perspective. As much as she would love to be standing on the podium in the end, she also plans to soak in the moment while her hair is blowing in the wind.

“I’ve reached the pinnacle of the sport,” she said. “I can be really proud of myself and enjoy every bit of it.”

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A music festival this weekend in St. Paul aims to provide people across generations the opportunity to care for their mental and physical health by getting outside, line dancing and spending time with others in the community.

The Twin Cities Music and Movement festival is hosted by musician Patricia Lacy-Aiken and Walter “Q Bear” Banks Jr. of the Twin Cities Black-run radio station KMOJ.

“It’s mainly to get us all out together to move our bodies and listen to some good music,” festival producer Kevin J. Johnson said.

The event is free and open to the public from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Western Sculpture Park, 387 Marion St. in the Rondo neighborhood. Performers include the Maxx Band, Ray Covington, Gwen Matthew and more.

Barbeque soul food, a cookie cart, Cajun and Jamaican food trucks, double Dutch, a bouncy house, games for the family, art vendors and most importantly, music from R&B to jazz to salsa, is scheduled for the lively day in the park.

“This is our third time we’re able to give it to the community and see the community come out,” Johnson said. “I’m excited about that piece, that we’re able to do it again.”

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Spirit Airlines’ passengers are in for a surprise: The discount South Florida-based carrier announced Tuesday it intends to move into the upscale travel market with a new menu of premium seating designed to help the airline return to profitability.

Starting next month, the company, which is headquartered in Dania Beach and is the leading airline in passengers carried at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, said it will roll out a four-part fare schedule that in many instances will wrap free snacks, free checked bags and even free Wi-Fi into the ticket price. The new program effectively ends the airline’s exclusive reliance on a rock-bottom fare scheme that forced passengers to buy ancillary services a la carte, although the bare-bones ticket option will remain as one of the fare categories.

“We listened to our Guests and are excited to deliver what they want: choices for an elevated experience and provide unparalleled value,” CEO and president Ted Christie said in a statement issued by Spirit early Tuesday.

The effort comes after a federal judge earlier this year blocked Spirit’s proposed $3.8 billion acquisition by JetBlue Airways on antitrust grounds. Now faced with a future as an independent carrier, Spirit is struggling to reverse a run of financial losses while it renegotiates its debt, works through a series of aircraft engine recalls and faces heavier competition from rivals that are encroaching on Spirit’s traditional markets such as Florida.

Late next month, Spirit’s recalibrated fare structure will look this way:

“Go Big” will include an option focused on the airline’s so-called Big Front Seats, a series of roomier seats that have occupied the front of its Airbus jetliners for several years. Previously, the airline has charged for solely booking the seat. Now the proposition will include free Wi-Fi, a checked bag, one piece of onboard luggage, and “unlimited” snacks and drinks including those with alcohol.
“Go Comfy”  will offer a standard seat with a vacant middle seat next to it to provide passengers with extra space. The offer includes earlier boarding, a snack, a nonalcoholic beverage, and checked baggage and a carry-on.
“Go Savvy” tickets will allow customers either a checked bag or a carry-on.
“Go” largely will be Spirit’s original standard bare-bones ticket, where travelers buy their seat but pay additional fees for checked bags, seat selection, Wi-Fi and snacks.

All passengers will be allowed free booking changes.

Passengers can start booking tickets under the new program Aug.16 for flights Aug. 27 and beyond. On the day customers start flying under the new menu, Spirit will offer a dedicated, priority check-in line for its “Go Big” fliers, as well as for the carrier’s Free Spirit Gold members, or Free Spirit World Elite Mastercard holders at 20 airports.

The airline also said it will continue its practice of allowing for cancellations and flight changes at no charge. while increasing the weight limit for checked bags to 50 pounds from the previous allowance of 40 pounds.

It will also extend the expiration time period for future travel vouchers to full year.

Fighting back

Henry Harteveldt, a San Francisco-based travel industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group, said he “commends” Spirit for the move and predicted the airline may draw customers from bigger airlines including United, Delta, American and Southwest. They are the so-called industry “big four” that JetBlue and Spirit assailed as the two carriers unsuccessfully sought to make their case in federal court to combine forces through the proposed takeover.

“United is attacking Spirit in particular, being very aggressive with its use of basic economy fares to steal brand-new flyers,” Harteveldt said. “Spirit is saying, ‘we’ll give the big airlines a taste of their own medicine.’”

“It will be interesting to see how consumers respond,” he added.

“These changes will convince some travelers who are unhappy with what [bigger] airlines offer,” Harteveldt said. “If they like it maybe they will return and become more loyal to Spirit, especially with the ‘Go Comfy’ and ‘Go Big’ products.”

“I know everyone likes to make fun of Spirit,” he said. “The truth is, Spirit is a reliable airline. It has very dedicated employees.”

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But inflation has been taking its toll on lower-income consumers who seek out discount fares, with some flying less than they did when the COVID-19 pandemic receded. Some aren’t flying at all, which is a bad sign for airlines that rely on bargain-hunting travelers.

Only time will tell whether Spirit’s initiative pays dividends.

Its announcement came two days before a scheduled financial conference call with industry analysts on Thursday, when management discloses second-quarter financial results.

In a regulatory filing two weeks ago, the airline warned it expects an adjusted operating loss of $160 million to $173 million, which is wider than an earlier forecast of $121 million to $145 million. Revenues were expected to come in at $1.28 billion, a decline from its previous forecast of $1.32 billion to $1.34 billion.

By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer

PARIS (AP) — As a gay youth growing up in central France, Hugo Bardin never felt he lived in a world that represented who he was — a world in which he had a place.

And that is why Bardin, who performs as the drag queen Paloma, felt it was meaningful and important to be part of a Paris Olympics opening ceremony that presented a multifaceted, multiethnic France with people of different ethnicities and orientations.

“It was a really important moment for the French people and the representation of France around the world,” says Paloma, who took part in a single scene that has drawn some furious criticism — including from presidential candidate Donald Trump in the United States, who called it “a disgrace.”

FILE – Drag queens prepare to perform on the Debilly Bridge in Paris, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. A storm of outrage about the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony took a legal turn Tuesday July 30, 2024, with a DJ who performed at the show saying her lawyer is filing complaints over a torrent of threats and other abuse that the LGBTQ+ icon has suffered online in the ceremony’s wake. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, File)

Although the ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, and other participants have repeatedly said the scene wasn’t inspired by “The Last Supper,” critics interpreted that part of the show as a mockery of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Paloma, best known for winning “Drag Race France,” appeared with other drag artists and dancers alongside Barbara Butch, a popular DJ who wore a silver headdress that looked like a halo. Butch has now filed a complaint alleging online abuse and harassment, and Paris police have launched an investigation.

Paloma is not, at this point, planning to take legal action over online harassment, and would prefer to focus on the many “loving messages” that have been pouring in. The performer been getting thousands of messages daily, she told The Associated Press, most of them positive but some that he described as “violent” and even “from the Middle Ages.”

Hugo Bardin, who performs as the drag queen Paloma, speaks, during an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, France, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Still, there are no misgivings, despite the backlash. Paloma said she was proud to have been part of a show that did not rely on a series of French cliches — for example, “the Parisian with a baguette under their arm.”

“It could have been a postcard from 1930,” she said of the ceremony. “But instead, it was a photograph of France in 2024.”

Many agreed, and praised the ceremony for its creativity, style and showmanship.

But French Catholic bishops and others were among those who said Christians had been offended, though Paris Olympics organizers have said there was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group” but rather to “celebrate community tolerance.”

Hugo Bardin, who performs as the drag queen Paloma, speaks, during an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, France, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Trump was asked on Fox News what he thought of the so-called “Last Supper” scene. “I’m very open-minded,” the former president and current Republican nominee told host Laura Ingraham, “but I thought what they did was a disgrace.”

Of Trump’s comments, Paloma said: “My first reaction is to say that if Donald Trump is not reacting, then we have not done our job.”

The criticism, she said, has been fueled by hate. “Where is the Catholicism, the Christianity in that? It is very hypocritical that their message is not about religion or kindness, it’s about hate towards Jews, fat people, queer people and trans people.”

“We have been accused of trying to impose our vision on the world,” Bardin said. “We are not. … We just want to let people know that we have a place in the world, and we are claiming that place.”

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Paloma spoke to the AP in a phone interview and later at her Paris workshop, a studio devoted to her drag performance. Bardin debuted the drag queen persona some five years ago, the Spanish name inspired by the films of Pedro Almodóvar.

Asked if she had any regrets, Paloma replied: “My only regrets is people’s reactions. I’m sorry if people are offended but we did not try to parody, to mock ‘The Last Supper.’ It was not the point. So I can’t regret what I did. I’m sorry for people to only see things in a bad way.”

She added: “Maybe change the perspective. Change the point of view. Try to see the beauty in what we did. Because it was just beauty. It was just only about beauty and reunion, and reparation.”

AP journalists Nicolas Garriga and Amira Borders contributed to this report.