Even when Georgia’s the “home” team, it’s the Florida-Georgia game

Posted on October 30, 2010 by newzgrrl

Thousands of people have converged on Downtown Jacksonville. Many are wearing their best orange and blue, while others prefer to show off red and black. It is Halloween weekend, which means another meeting of the Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs at EverBank Field.

The event formerly known as the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is great for bringing locals and out-of-town visitors into Downtown. Tonight, the City of Jacksonville’s Office of Special Events has a Gridiron Get Down at EverBank Field’s Pepsi Plaza. Concerts featuring Jacksonville’s own Fusebox Funk, Uncle Kracker, Jake Owen and Drummer vs. DJ are free. (You could hear the music across the river without trouble.)

Tomorrow will be event-filled, well before kickoff at 3:30. Festivities continue outside the stadium, plus there’s RV City. I’ve never been to RV City so I’m looking forward to my first visit. Tailgating can be found all over Talleyrand and East Jacksonville, though.

And if you didn’t know, the Skyway will be running until 3 am Friday and Saturday nights. I may well take a midnight train going anywhere and pretend Jacksonville has real and well-planned mass transit. Remember, it’s 50 cents per ride. Too bad the route doesn’t extend to the Sports Complex.

If you’re young and daring, you might visit the Landing after the game. Just be smart and don’t drink too much. Some unfortunate events have happened in the past out there. At the end of the day, it’s football and a party. Let’s keep it classy, Jacksonville.

The saddest thing about Florida-Georgia weekend? That EverBank Field will be at capacity (88,000 seats) and thousands more people will be Downtown — and not for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

An important question has been nagging at me tonight: What do I wear tomorrow? To put it politely, I despise the Gators and I’m not a Bulldogs fan. Perhaps I’ll wear teal to support my team, the Jaguars. To remind folks of who the real home team is.

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Take the A Train

Posted on October 29, 2010 by newzgrrl

(This post was never published, thanks to some computer and connection issues. It was to have been the first post for BNC5.)

Today is a great day. I’m Downtown and using public transportation (the Skyway) and I had a fantastic lunch at a new (to me) place with an incredible view, Skyline Cafe.

I’m composing from the main branch library, in the Grand Reading Room. This desk is where I normally sit, because if I look over my right shoulder, I have a nice view of the central tower of the Saint James building. Both buildings overlook Hemming Park, and are within earshot of the tone of Big Jim and his four daily whistle-blows.

But perhaps I should take a step back, and make a proper introduction.

My name is Beth, and I love Downtown Jax. I don’t currently live in the core — I live in an in-town neighborhood called Saint Nicholas that is across the Saint Johns River from the football stadium — but I plan to live in the core in a few years, when a group of historic buildings  is redeveloped.

My love of Jacksonville goes back to my childhood. I grew up in Lawtey, Florida, home of the sweetest strawberries this side of heaven and about an hour outside of Jacksonville. Lawtey is a great place to grow up, as it’s a rural town heavy on agriculture, but I was always a big city girl at heart. My grandparents moved from Jax to Lawtey when I was small but took the daily newspaper for as long as they lived there, so I was always reading about Jax. I moved here for college at the University of North Florida and haven’t looked back.

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Magic in the air

Posted on October 12, 2010 by newzgrrl

There’s something about Downtown at night. It’s quieter, sure, but on an early fall evening a little before midnight, the air holds magic. I’m composing from Dive Bar and Michael Jackson is playing. Don’t stop ’till you get enough: perfect words of motivation from the King of Pop. By the way, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra will perform the music of MJ this Saturday, preceded on Thursday by the American Fusion concert.

Back to the wonder of Downtown at night. I wanted to visit the Haydon Burns Library to see the original mural that inspired my newest art acquisition. And since I was already at Ocean and Adams, why not visit Laura between Adams and Forsyth? See, the Carling faces the Florida Life Building. At night, a sign in red atop the Carling is on, and it gives the Florida Life’s tan bricks a warm glow.

What was that thing in the air that made the temperature perfect skirt weather? That same thing had a way of carrying the light… Winter air, cold air, lends a crispness to the scene, obvious in daytime photos of stillness. But fall air isn’t like that, nor is it like summer air, damp and heavy with humidity. Maybe it’s the same thing that carries the smell of freshly cut football fields beyond the boundaries of sidelines and endzones.

The buildings and night sky kept giving inspiration. Each time I thought I’d seen all the possible shots for an angle, I found another. Too bad the only camera on hand was the ever-handy point-and-shoot, and not a film camera. Certainly there’s good reason to come back. As if one was needed…

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A cloudless fall morning on the river

Posted on October 6, 2010 by newzgrrl

For a midmorning respite, and because it was nearby, I stopped into the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.

The Art of War exhibit was fascinating. Posters as big as me promoted war bonds, labor committees, and women in industry. One poster showed a woman happy to find her best-fit job; she was perfectly pretty and made up in her machinist jumpsuit. The images brought a swell of conflicting emotions: pride in how the country came together, distaste for the use of propaganda.

Now I’m in the Italian Garden soaking up the sun. There’s a pleine air artist near the river capturing the museum building and the mighty Cummer Oak. This week is Paint the Region, an event to promote the North Florida Land Trust. Painters are all over Downtown, Riverside and Springfield, creating images of this beautiful place. I look forward to the gala event this weekend. There’s also a quick-paint competition, tonight I believe, at the central gallery at the Landing.

And let’s not forget the premiere monthly event that showcases Downtown, Art Walk. That starts tonight at 5 PM. I will visit an exhibit called The Metropolitan and Yvonne Lozano’s new studio space at 229 N. Hogan, as well as regular haunts on Hemming Park and the ultra-modern nullspace on E. Adams.
Art has overtaken the Bold New City, and there’s no reason not to enjoy it.

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