The Yates Building Garage is the preferred parking facility of the Florida Theatre. The Yates garage is visible across the Forsyth and Newnan Streets intersection from the Florida Theatre, but the garage entrance is behind the building at 200 East Adams Street. (Drive past the theatre on your right, across Newnan Street, past the Yates Building on your left, make a left on North Market Street and a left on Adams Street.) The Yates Garage is well lighted, staffed, monitored by security cameras, and is just $5 per car.

John Drum is a visual artist. His primary occupation is a project manager in an architectural firm specializing in residential design and historic renovation. Drum has taught pottery and sculpture as well as designing, co-owning, and operating a healthy takeaway bistro celebrating local farms, bakeries, and producers. One could also argue that he is a landscape photographer based on the diverse portfolio of images from his travels. To Drum, life is a collage of overlapping interests; where a passion and respect for nature is at the core, buttressed by grand wilderness adventures, documenting the ever-changing light of environments, and setting these travels to music and poetry; quite literally a road trip of curiosities in good company set to a good mixed tape.

Rance Adams currently hosts local lifestyle show River City Live, which airs Monday through Friday on Ch. 4, which focuses on showcasing all that Jacksonville has to offer. Rance loves meeting people and sharing stories. He makes an effort to expand the perspective in every segment he produces, shoots, writes, or edits to hopefully resonate with a broader audience than initially planned for. He believes everyone has a story to tell. And someone can tell that story, but no one tells their story like he will...so will he be able to tell his own?

Damon Thomas is a sixth-generation Floridian who grew up on the banks of the Suwannee in rural Dixie County, FL. Here he experienced a “Southernness” that included sea monsters, swamp cabbage, and makeshift graves. Damon has released 27 Spoken Word albums and nine books on how the bookish might pass time in a Southern Gothic setting

Helena Acosta is a Venezuelan art curator, holding a BA in Art History and an MA in Exhibition Project Management. With research experience across Japan, Spain, Colombia, and Venezuela, she focuses on new media art and photography and its

connections to social dynamics. She has resided in Jacksonville for the past five years.

Born in Kharkiv, Julia Ivanisova always saw the world through an artist’s lens. Though earning a master's in electrical engineering, her heart belonged to creating art. The war changed everything. In 2022, when she was forced to flee Ukraine, Julia and her husband, Roman, left behind not only their home but her entire body of work. Arriving in America with almost nothing, she took on any work she could find while refusing to let go of her artistic vision. Now based in Jacksonville, she balances her life as an artist with her work. As an integral part of BABS’LAB, she continues to use art as a means of storytelling, resilience, and connection.

Anna Jacobson has been a teacher for 27 years and, therefore, a storyteller for 27 years. She has received a Reynolds Journalism Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award, the Jacksonville Journal's Innovative Educator Award, and written curriculum with the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the National Scholastic Press Association. That said, she considers her wins in BABS’LAB Story Slams and Grand Slams some of the greatest honors a storyteller could hope for.