Official Roils Political Waters in Role as Nude Mermaid

SAN FRANCISCO — They say politics is life in a fishbowl. But Richmond City Councilwoman Donna Powers’ nude dips as a moonlighting mermaid in a nightclub aquarium have some constituents grumbling that she’s a fish out of water.

Powers, who was “Dolphina” at San Francisco’s venerable Bimbo’s 365 Club long before she tested the political waters, isn’t about to abandon her bowl.

Powers doesn’t actually get into a bowl. She reclines on a black velvet couch in a room below the bar. Mirrors project her image, reduced to about eight inches high, into the real-life aquarium. Patrons see what appears to be a miniature woman swimming among the goldfish.

The problem, as Richmond resident Kwasi Harris sees it, is that Dolphina’s act doesn’t include clothes.

But Powers, 42, counters that at less than a foot tall, she’s not really flashing a lot of flesh.

Powers, who started the swimming act in 1969, said the glass of the aquarium walls is forgiving.

“I guarantee you any woman would look like a knockout in a fishbowl.”