What if Jacksonville suddenly woke up?

[Ocklawaha]

LET'S UPDATE THIS WITH A SMALL EDIT:

We won't be naming any more schools after local heroes who might turn out to have made unforgivable errors in their lives, so to prevent future embarrassment we've decided that our schools will henceforth be numbered; PS-1 PS-2 etc... Romantic isn't it?

The John Archibald Wheeler, wing of the local university will have to wait until we have more local universities, or a lot more wings of the few we already have. 

Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, music is available for download throughout the city. 

A statue of Ray Charles with a suitcase in his hands to remind us he moved to Seattle, picking the city because it; 'was as far away as he could get from where he was.' will never be built. 

There is museum of Black Film called; NORMAN FILM LABORATORY.

Sweet Pete's is about as good as it gets for local business while I hear Sally Industries is building robotic people to tour their plant.

Jake Godbold still should have a cookbook.

Ed Ball's trust continues to fund the Nemours foundation.

When does Jacksonville have a Film Festival?

Mandarin would have a trolley tour but the 'trolley's' are rotting on a back lot at JTA.

People who know who Zora Neal Hurston was, built the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts, in Eatonville.

There would be tours of the old city monuments that were moved to the back of the local museum for political correctness.

People are patriotic about Maxwell House, they buy it at Winn-Dixie.

Jacksonville Tars and the Negro League's Jacksonville Redcap's throwback jerseys, are available online.

John Peyton will be president of the Chamber of Commerce and Alvin Brown will be in Congress, when a large portion of our population moves to Angola.

There was a Maritime Museum on the riverfront which closed, leaving the Florida Maritime Museum in Cortez as the only game around.

The story of James Weldon Johnson, is found online.

The historic Jewish Center in Springfield burned in 2011, "It's a terrible shame they were never able to do something productive with it," said Claude Moulton, president of the Springfield Preservation and Revitalization council.

There is not a Jazz Club on the Riverwalk but Dukes Place over by the Greyhound Station features Jazz concerts.

There was a history tour that went in to Marabanong but they are reportedly missing in the rum-runner tunnels and never reemerged.

Everyone knows where the Trout River is.

San Marco is back tanks in no small part to Doug Skiles.

There is a National Monument where French Huguenots first settled, and you can buy well-researched books about their history there.

Clipper ships on the Ortega? Me thinks someone has been into the rum!

There is a museum called The Ritz Theater on the Great Black Way which has a gift shop.

We now have two goofy jogger statues on the Riverwalk instead of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bill Pickett (the famous black cowboy from Norman Studios in Arlington), Tom Mix and Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy).

There is a big Barbecue festival in Fernandina Beach in June.

Common Core has shoved 'Florida History' into a 4Th Grade module.

The architecture won't be studied from old post cards as most of the buildings are not only demolished the cards are out of print.

Restrictive city policy's have guaranteed that Jacksonville would punish businesses and stunt growth costing us the status of the premier city in Florida if not the southeast.

The sports venues have required us to wipe out Metropolitan Park, The Children's Space and keep 'The Shipyards' available.

We  have an iconic courthouse and a bustling government district.

The surrounding neighborhoods are being connected with buses, some of which have special paint to make them um, 'special.'

Visitors to the city have a multitude of parking facilities to choose from.

Most of Joe La Rose's shoe designs are being manufactured in China.

Downtown would be full of Times-Union Paparazzi fighting to keep the dinosaur alive.

Hopefully the late great Lee Harvey, won't be making any speaking engagements anytime soon.

But we have those things.

They are 'low class', too 'black' and 'southern', but they're ours.

We have consultants telling us how to appear more like Indianapolis or Louisville.

If we wanted to be Indianapolis or some other place...

But we are DUVAL! We are JACKSONVILLE!

My apologies to Stephendare.

[Adam White]

There's a difference between naming a school after a local guy and then finding out he did something bad and intentionally naming a school after the non-local founder of the KKK as a big "fuck you" to Brown v Topeka.

[Ocklawaha]

Don't worry Adam, from here on out it's 1, 2, 3, 4...

[Adam White]

Don't worry Adam, from here on out it's 1, 2, 3, 4...

Then what are we fighting for?

[Tacachale]

Ock, I'd say it's regrettable that we won't be naming schools after actual local heroes anymore (and haven't for years), but Nathan Bedford Forrest was *not* a local, let alone a hero. He was an extremely controversial figure from Tennessee, and the only reason the school was named for him was a swipe at the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Pro-segregation white interests slapped his name on an illegally segregated white school as their little way of saying they wouldn't listen to federal orders telling them what to do. I'll take "Westside High School" over that any day.

[Ocklawaha]

And beyond our schools what about?

The John Archibald Wheeler, wing of the local university will have to wait until we have more local universities, or a lot more wings of the few we already have. 

Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, music is available for download throughout the city. 

A statue of Ray Charles with a suitcase in his hands to remind us he moved to Seattle, picking the city because it; 'was as far away as he could get from where he was.' will never be built. 

There is museum of Black Film called; NORMAN FILM LABORATORY.

Sweet Pete's is about as good as it gets for local business while I hear Sally Industries is building robotic people to tour their plant.

Jake Godbold still should have a cookbook.

Ed Ball's trust continues to fund the Nemours foundation.

When does Jacksonville have a Film Festival?

Mandarin would have a trolley tour but the 'trolley's' are rotting on a back lot at JTA.

People who know who Zora Neal Hurston was, built the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts, in Eatonville.

There would be tours of the old city monuments that were moved to the back of the local museum for political correctness.

People are patriotic about Maxwell House, they buy it at Winn-Dixie.

Jacksonville Tars and the Negro League's Jacksonville Redcap's throwback jerseys, are available online.

John Peyton will be president of the Chamber of Commerce and Alvin Brown will be in Congress, when a large portion of our population moves to Angola.

There was a Maritime Museum on the riverfront which closed, leaving the Florida Maritime Museum in Cortez as the only game around.

The story of James Weldon Johnson, is found online.

The historic Jewish Center in Springfield burned in 2011, "It's a terrible shame they were never able to do something productive with it," said Claude Moulton, president of the Springfield Preservation and Revitalization council.

There is not a Jazz Club on the Riverwalk but Dukes Place over by the Greyhound Station features Jazz concerts.

There was a history tour that went in to Marabanong but they are reportedly missing in the rum-runner tunnels and never reemerged.

Everyone knows where the Trout River is.

San Marco is back tanks in no small part to Doug Skiles.

There is a National Monument where French Huguenots first settled, and you can buy well-researched books about their history there.

Clipper ships on the Ortega? Me thinks someone has been into the rum!

There is a museum called The Ritz Theater on the Great Black Way which has a gift shop.

We now have two goofy jogger statues on the Riverwalk instead of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bill Pickett (the famous black cowboy from Norman Studios in Arlington), Tom Mix and Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy).

There is a big Barbecue festival in Fernandina Beach in June.

Common Core has shoved 'Florida History' into a 4Th Grade module.

The architecture won't be studied from old post cards as most of the buildings are not only demolished the cards are out of print.

Restrictive city policy's have guaranteed that Jacksonville would punish businesses and stunt growth costing us the status of the premier city in Florida if not the southeast.

The sports venues have required us to wipe out Metropolitan Park, The Children's Space and keep 'The Shipyards' available.

We  have an iconic courthouse and a bustling government district.

The surrounding neighborhoods are being connected with buses, some of which have special paint to make them um, 'special.'

Visitors to the city have a multitude of parking facilities to choose from.

Most of Joe La Rose's shoe designs are being manufactured in China.

Downtown would be full of Times-Union Paparazzi fighting to keep the dinosaur alive.

Hopefully the late great Lee Harvey, won't be making any speaking engagements anytime soon.

But we have those things.

They are 'low class', too 'black' and 'southern', but they're ours.

We have consultants telling us how to appear more like Indianapolis or Louisville.

If we wanted to be Indianapolis or some other place...

But we are DUVAL! We are JACKSONVILLE!

My apologies to Stephendare.