Tag Archives: Jacksonville

SHORT RIBS AND RANDOM THOUGHTS Aug 27 2018

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FAREWELL, JOHN McCAIN-  I never voted for him and I’m sure his politics weren’t consistent with mine,  but in this age of sleaze and compromise, I can’t help but respect his character.  Some folks are dissing him.  I doubt they are worth 1/100 of him.

THERE’S ALWAYS A LOCAL ANGLE-  I just got off the phone from trying to reach my brother,  who lives in Jacksonville.  I believe he’s in DC at the moment, which is a better place to be. I’ve been to the Landing a time or two but there wasn’t much to attract me.  My stepmother, when she was in her ‘eighties, asked  us several times  to go to the Hooters there.  I asked her why and she said she wanted to see the owls!  Prayers for those affected.

MORE LOCAL ANGLE-  The new hit movie Crazy Rich Asians,  was directed by a young fellow,  Jon Chu,  who was in my cousin’s kid’s scout troop in Palo Alto. His father,   Chef  Chu,  has had one of the most renowned Chinese restaurants, and my family’s favorite,  in Silicon Valley,  at the  corner of El Camino and San Antonio.  One of Chef Chu’s cooks,  a Mr Liu, emigrated north to Eureka and started  the well-beloved Liu’s Restaurant which only closed recently when he retired. So now you know.

THAT NEW BISTRO – an out-of -towner opined  recently on Yelp that Eurekans must be happy to have a bistro at last.  Actually we’e had several including Brick and Fire and the Humboldt Bay Bistro. I’m always suspicious of places that give themselves grandiose names.  Throw a little wine at a coffee shop and it’s a bistro. Anyway,  the DULCE bistro,   in the old HCAR building at 7th and E in Eureka is the real deal.  They don’t have a huge lunch menu but what they had was pleasing.  I had their vegetable galette which was tasty with a light and flaky crust.  I ordered their carrot soup on a hunch ( I normally won’t eat cooked carrots) and it was very, very good. My friend had a burger and a salad.  We were both impressed and ready to return.

Amazon AND Google AND Facebook- Do you get the idea that giant corporations are taking over your life?  You’re right.  I’ve mostly disconnected from Facebook except for I Remember In Eureka When and Sara Senger’s posts which always seem to pop up  ( I think she’s great.)  But anyone can minimize their time on Facebook, which I recommend. How do you get out from under Google? Each time something on the net “recommends” some purchase I know it’s the algorithms tracking what I bought recently or THOUGHT about buying;  that’s how creepy it’s getting. To make it worse,  I recently had a stellar experience with Amazon Prime and I am now a convert.  There’s nothing like a few months of hobbling around with a cane to show you the advantages of mail-order.  I’ve always bought local but these are desperate times.  If my life has to be run by a giant corporation,   I’ll line up behind Jeff Bezos.

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My Confederate Past

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I had ancestors on both sides of the Civil War.  The Confederate side was definitely the most interesting.  According to the 1840 South Carolina census, Clarendon County, my great-great-grandfather was a “farmer” who owned two slaves.  He was probably a sharecropper.  Thanks to some cousins who did the paperwork,  I am eligible to be a Child of the Confederacy AND a Daughter of the American Revolution.  My cousins joined the DAR but lost interest pretty fast.

My forbears had wandered from South Carolina down to Florida by the time my father and his brothers were growing up in Miami. My great-grandfather was a printer by trade and commuted to Cuba by boat for many years to print racing forms, returning on weekends. Somewhere along the line someone had joined the Klan.  One of my uncle Richard’s favorite stories was about playing up in the attic and finding all these neat costumes which turned out to be Klan robes. He always concluded, “When Grandma found out, she beat the shit out of us”, which I kind of doubt.

In recent years, my Dad lived in Jacksonville FL and my brother graduated from NB Forrest High School.  Forrest was perhaps the vilest of the Confederate generals. You can Google him. The high school was renamed Westside High several years ago. In a military town like Jax, that’s something.

I’m not real big on statues and the prospect of moving them to a location where they’re not bothering anyone is fine with me. I wonder if the Myrtle Grove cemetery, established in 1861, doesn’t have some Confederate statues? What are they going to do about Stone Mountain?

If my ancestors had left me a huge fortune, earned on the backs of slave labor,  I would have been condemned to a life of White Guilt, bigtime version. Since they didn’t, I only feel the generalized awareness that we all didn’t start out in the same place and that life has been pretty easy for me, and not so easy for others. I try never to forget that.  And I thank God I grew up in California.

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Entrepreneurship- Seeking the “One Spark” of creativity

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Redwood Coast businesses may not seem to have much in common with those in the sprawling megalopolis of Jacksonville FL, but take a closer look.  Both communities are port cities which need more business, both have downtowns which need revitalization, both have wealthy citizens who are willing to give back to the community, both have thriving art and music scenes, and both have avenues for those who are seeking funding for startup businesses. We have Economic Fuel, they have the new OneSpark.

OneSpark,  billed as “The World’s Crowdfunding Festival” took place over the  weekend of April 17-21 in the downtown area of Jax which was supposed to have received an economic boost from the Superbowl a few years ago, and didn’t. They chose to scatter the booths and exhibits throughout a “Creator Zone” and an “Entertainment District” stretching from Duval Street to the Jacksonville Landing on the river.  Even in the Florida heat- and in competition with the nonstop TV coverage of the Boston Marathon manhunt- the attendance over the five days reached 100,000 and there were exhibits or performances by over 900 Creators, 446 of which were officially entered in the Crowdfunding competition. Most of the rest were bands or graphic artists. Guests could vote or contribute ($5 minimum) for their favorite projects by Smartphone, by texting, by web or at a kiosk with the prize money allocated according to number of votes cast.  They could vote as many times as they wished, but only once for each project. Two stages were set up as “Pitch Decks” where creators could make a ten-minute pitch without even being registered at the Festival.

A major source of the prize money was Shad Khan, owner of the hapless Jacksonville Jaguars, who has stated he might be good for another million for specified projects. The Jax Cultural Council has already raised $180,000 towards keeping the ‘Spark District” a permanent force in the city, and will be awarding $60,000 in grants to artists who put their studios in a specified six-square-block area. The Downtown Investment Authority is seeking proposals in late May from group[s interested in putting on daily events in Hemming Plaza, a central but underutilized location.  It appears that OneSpark is more than a one-shot deal.

So who won?  Of the four categories – Music, Technology, Science and Art- Art received twice as many votes as the nearest competitor, Technology.  Among the proposals were everything from bands looking for money to record their first album and buy a van, to a massive plan called the Riverpool, a giant floating concrete dock adjacent to downtown including a marina for kayaks, restaurants, swimming pools and a public beach. On e project would transform a water tower on Jacksonville Beach into a colorful giant jellyfish. One woman is making furniture from recycled milk jugs.

But the winner by a large margin was “Rethreaded”, a company that works with women escaping the sex trade by training them to produce children’s clothing and other items from castoff T-shirts. The almost $7000 they won will fund their next four-month class.  The founder, Kristen Keen, had a similar company in India.  This has been just a quick once-over of a terrific event.  Maybe something we could try in Humboldt?