What I love about Jacksonville

[Cliffs_Daughter]

I love...

The smell of roasting coffee beans when Maxwell House fires up in the morning
The sound of P-3s flying overhead
Many of the parks around the city
Budweiser brewery tours (free! Gotta love that!)
The Riverwalk
The Fountain
Walking across the Main Street Bridge just because I can
Metro Park concerts
ANYTHING they get scheduled in the TU Moran Theater
The Florida Theatre... it's one of the few movie palaces left, isn't it?

[Jason]

Mmmmmm morning coffe roasting downtown...  Definitely a top on the list!

[Wacca Pilatka]

What do I love about Jacksonville? In no particular order:

>The Florida Life building (I dream of living on the top floor of the restored building)

Greatest.  Skyscraper.  Ever.  If I lived in Jax I'd say you'd have to fight me for that opportunity 

[Miss Fixit]

And wasn't she lovely?



We should all start a fan club - or maybe work together to come up with a restoration plan!

[duvaldude08]

I can not list would I love about Jacksonville because it would be too long. But i just love everything. People just down us because were not a tourist destination like very other Major city in Florida. In my opinion that what makes us unique. We have the opportunity to create our own indentity. To me Jacksonville is just somehwere nice to live. PERIOD. We complain and complain, but there are city in worse shape than we (Detroit as an example). Hater's can say what they may, but we are still the most populous city in the state of Florida.

The only negative about the city is the generations of misguided leadership. If we can elect a mayor and city council that has a vision and a plan, this city would take off. The Mayoral elections next year are very crucial.

[AmyLynne]

I'll play that one a little more seriously... what I miss?

Wooden bridges where Blanding crosses McGirts Creek!
Peterson's 5 and 10 in 5-points
Milligan Burger (local chain)
Bluff Landing in the woods on the Ortega River where it is rumored that 1/3 of Jacksonville was conceived (God knows I did my part!)
The old Prison East of imeson
NAS JAX, Fields (Arlington), Edgewood (Murray Hill) Hobby shops, and a long ago downtown hobby shop.
Acosta Bridge (which they promised to save part of in a city park... LIARS!)
The old ships rotting at Pottsburg Creek and the Intercoastal Waterway
Jacksonville Terminal when it would have put JIA and OIA to shame in a day.
Imeson Airport, wouldn't you think they could have saved the terminal?
Air ships, the Navy Patrol Blimps that would float over our skies.
Sears Downtown and the fresh roasted nuts dept that scented the whole store
Dizzyland Amusement Park on beach - (The orange dinosaur is all that's left)
Kiddyland on Blanding, (see Dizzyland but a tad smaller)
Storybook Land, it was in town and like the one in Tampa but I'll be damned if I remember where (it might have been called "Miss Muffet Land."
Oriental Gardens, San Jose
Propeller driven fighters at NAS, Cecil, Mayport, etc... (God what a sound in the early AM warm ups)
Iveys, Furchgotts, Rosenblooms, Cohen Brothers, Morrison's...  ALL DOWNTOWN!
The streetcar barn and powerhouse, Skyway facility and TU sites today.
Dad's fricking huge wooden power boat with the inboard Chrysler V-8 in it! (like a private PT boat)
Singing Dixie - no matter the race or color, anywhere!
Shipyards on both banks of downtown
Those cool old Havana Car Ferries that rotted away on the Southbank (near the present School board)
Hemming Plaza, when it was HEMMING PARK
Ortega Village and Fairfax when they had that 5-points vibe going on...
The bakery in Venetia Village
Long lost childhood friend MATT SKEINS, and the cool HOUSE OF BARGAINS STORES his dad owned.
Beach Midway
Green Cove Springs NAVAL STATION and LEE FIELD
Kingsley and Strickland Beaches (Clay County)
Yukon, Bayard, Springfield, Marietta, South Jacksonville, etc... railroad depots
Also railroad towers at Myrtle, Grand Crossing, Beaver Street, etc...
Florida life when we were "THE CITY and THE OLD MONEY".
LaVilla
Fairfield
Brooklyn
........................hell

J A C K S O N V I L L E  !


OCKLAWAHA

Is "story book land" where all the streets are named after kiddie books? If so, then you are thinking of Cedar Hills. Theres a section over there thatss named like that.

When Dizzyland and Kiddyland become Gooney Golf?

[blizz01]

Hmm - there was a run of neighborhoods in the Wesconnett area that had (sometimes) unusual "themes" - The only ones that I can remember by name are Confederate Point (Battles) & English Estates (Authors) - that tied into yet another that utilized all car makes ("Toyota", "Renault", "Triumph", "Volvo", etc.).  As far as the Fairy Tales go, I remember "Boy Blue", "Bo Peep", "Tinkerbell","Miss Muffet", "Jack Horner", etc.....Could make for yet another interesting history lesson - or, zzzzzzzzzzzz.

[cayohueso]

Ah yes, English Estates. This was the neighborhood where the "English Estates Posse" originated. These were the wonderful bunch of teenage adventure seekers that decided it would be great fun to drop chunks of concrete on cars travelling on 295 in the early 90's.

[Ocklawaha]

Is "story book land" where all the streets are named after kiddie books? If so, then you are thinking of Cedar Hills. Theres a section over there thatss named like that.

When Dizzyland and Kiddyland become Gooney Golf?

Good guess AmyLynne, but this was a real honest to gosh amusement park of the 1940-50's era.  The highlight of the park was a concrete playhouse built like a giant shoe.  I also remember giant toadstools, a "house of sticks", etc...  When I knew it, it was already old, seems like the place was in some state of decay, but still VERY popular with the younger set.  Myself, I was too young to recall how we got there or what part of town it was in, but it was local and for some reason the Willow Branch-Boone Park area's seem right to me. I think it also might have had a little steam train ride ?? but I'm not sure (Yeah, I know WEIRD!) But the train at Kiddyland on Blanding, is said to have come from Miss Muffet Land, then again, perhaps it wasn't from the local one??

Hmm - there was a run of neighborhoods in the Wesconnett area that had (sometimes) unusual "themes" - The only ones that I can remember by name are Confederate Point (Battles) & English Estates (Authors) - that tied into yet another that utilized all car makes ("Toyota", "Renault", "Triumph", "Volvo", etc.).  As far as the Fairy Tales go, I remember "Boy Blue", "Bo Peep", "Tinkerbell","Miss Muffet", "Jack Horner", etc.....Could make for yet another interesting history lesson - or, zzzzzzzzzzzz.

My first hands-on the Live Steam Hobby, was on Miss Muffet Lane.  A friend there owned a complete outdoor railroad, and sold my dad a couple of small pieces of equipment to forever pollute my mind with filthy thoughts,
thoughts like being covered from head to toe in coal dust!  Pretty filthy eh?

I would like to hear from LAKE and our other urbanists on this, but these neighborhoods were named CORRECTLY!  There is nothing worse then a random bunch of meaningless names in a strange town. Most towns have a system of 1St Street, 2Nd Street, 3Rd Street etc...  but we seem to have either lost the art or surrendered to the self promoting developers any sense of the cross streets. Proper naming from the CENTER of town or a development would be (for example)  SOUTH - Ash, Birch, Cedar, Dogwood, Elm, etc...  NORTH - Archerfish, Barracuda, Catfish, Dolphin, Eel, etc...

Ah yes, English Estates. This was the neighborhood where the "English Estates Posse" originated. These were the wonderful bunch of teenage adventure seekers that decided it would be great fun to drop chunks of concrete on cars travelling on 295 in the early 90's.

Easy there mate, us boyz from N.B. Forrest are a creative lot! Hee Hee!


OCKLAWAHA

[fieldafm]

My uncle used to live in English Estates. 

I vividly remember the English Estates Posse.  JSO stopped me once crossing over one of the I 295 overpasses during the 'rock days'.  We were traveling on bikes from a friends house to an Ed White football game and we had to prove to JSO that we weren't the thugs from EEP.  I think my tshirt 'Westside:  The Bestside!!' probably had something to do with it, hahaha.

[fieldafm]

Milligan Burger (local chain)

Nice referance Ock.  Everytime we go to Harpoon Louie's, my dad will tell a story about the old Penny Burgers.

Dad's fricking huge wooden power boat with the inboard Chrysler V-8 in it! (like a private PT boat)

Don't know if you knew, but Huckins built a few PT boats for the Navy.  They were of very high quality.  I actually have some of the original literature Huckins had for the Pentagon brass in charge of procurement of the boats. 

Imeson Airport, wouldn't you think they could have saved the terminal?

Used to live off Heckshire and while the airport had closed long before... two of my best memories growing up were going to the drag races at the old airstrip at Imeson.  And also going to the old Sears outlet store and buying a Commodore 64.  What a breathtaking machine that was at the time, lol.  Still have it to this day!

[Burn to Shine]

San Marco Theatre is the BEST!  Welcome.

[Bostech]

What I love about Jax?
Hmm,that blonde girl riding a horse down Beach/Atlantic blvd.

[buckethead]

What I love about Jax?
Hmm,that blonde girl riding a horse down Beach/Atlantic blvd.

Racist.

[Bewler]

The micro brewed beer. We got Bold City supplying a huge portion of the town, along with the two Gordon Biersch restaurants Seven Bridges and Ragtime.

And some people have already pointed out that we generally have low traffic problems, but I also wanna mention our lanes. Whenever I visit my birth city of Louisville KY, I seriously long for Jax roads when I’m driving around. Everywhere you go there, the lanes there are so freaking narrow it feels like you’re navigating a bus down the sidewalk.