Article: 'Jax: from cultural wasteland to wonderland.'

[coredumped]

Cool article on Jacksonville from Baltimore Style magazine. Nice to see an outsiders perspective.

When my dad moved to Jacksonville, Fla., in 1999, to take a job, my stepmother and younger sisters in tow, it was like many other port cities at that time—a place with a great location on the water but past its prime. The downtown did look impressive with its skyscraper skyline. And yet, it was totally dead on evenings and weekends. No one lived, shopped or ate downtown. There were hardly even any places for office workers to buy lunch

...

But the overall impression was: Meh.

...

This new Jacksonville is an exciting place, indeed.

Perhaps it is small wonder then that on a recent episode of "Ash vs. Evil Dead" on Starz, when Ash meditates on his "happy place" to ward off bad spirits, that place turns out to be a familiar one.

"Jacksonville," he says, eyes closed, expression beatific. "The place so nice they named it... Jacksonville."

I didn't want to paste the whole article so check out this link for the full text:
http://baltimorestyle.com/18527/jax-to-the-max/

[IrvAdams]

Excellent. It's true that things have improved dramatically since 2000, it's just that when you're close to it all the time you don't think about how it looks to visitors. We had some relatives in from out of town (Colorado) and she said her company had a business trip to Jax and went to Clark's Fish Camp and loved it; they'd never seen anything like it.