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spenser1058

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1 hour ago, spenser1058 said:

Save the palm trees for South Florida where at least they get ocean breezes. Inland, they provide zero shade, are not indigenous and are mostly a mess.

They tried using palm trees downtown on an Orange Avenue streetscape during the Langford era and they were a total failure.

By the time of Mayor Bill’s 1983 major streetscape upgrade, they had learned their lesson. No need to repeat the earlier failure.

Palm trees are cheap, low maintenance and require very little thought or imagination on the part of those who decide to use them.

I'm looking into who best to send my irate F.U. email to at city hall. 

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14 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

Popular request???? :dontknow:

As Zuck would say (no doubt with a faceful of sunscreen that Hawaii regulates but our benighted legislature doesn’t because they’d rather have dead coral reefs), “It’s complicated”.

Enquiring minds want to know: Is Winn-Dixie’s new tag line “Getting Deader All the Time?”

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https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2020/07/20/walt-disney-world-is-closing-attractions-and-canceling-others-which-could-benefit-universal-orlando
 

I do hope the headline is the work of some separate editor in a hurry and not Ken. Every year the fanboys tell us how Uni is blowing Disney away, and as the latest TEA/AECOM numbers show, the top five North American parks are still all Disney with Universal bringing up the rear. It really gets tiresome. Sure, Disney is slowing down but so is Universal and everyone else.

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9 hours ago, spenser1058 said:

Btw, by popular request I’ll no longer be posting outside the coffee house. I hope you’ll join me up here for a hodgepodge of topics!

Ugh... spenser, you can be such a martyr lol :rolleyes:

Every few months someone manages to ruffle your feathers over a minor tiff. Who is persecuting you this time?

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6 hours ago, nite owℓ said:

Ugh... spenser, you can be such a martyr lol :rolleyes:

Every few months someone manages to ruffle your feathers over a minor tiff. Who is persecuting you this time?

Over on Twitter, there’s a phrase often tossed about to those with a minority viewpoint, “Read the Room”. I took that to heart here at UP and recognized that challenging a particular belief system isn’t particularly welcome. Fair enough.

Most of the other social media (like Twitter) tend not to be local-oriented in the way UP is and, after all these years, I’m most comfortable with the user-friendly way that the system Neo has devised for us works.

So, like the crazy aunt consigned to the attic with her cats, here I am in the Coffee House  with my belief that the way forward for Orlando is based on its culture, past and sense of place rather than as some fourth-rate Manhattan. 

I must confess to have been particularly struck by someone who has been here a long time suggesting I had never laid out specifics for my thinking (in this case on downtown retail) when, in fact, over a period of years, I had laid out in excruciating detail over dozens of posts exactly what I felt needed to happen. 

Obviously, for the most part, when you. challenge the status quo, one is simply ignored or dismissed with the sobriquet “this is Orlando” rather than recognizing that the occupant of the “red chair” under the dome determines the path of what happens here.

It may be that because the last person to actively drive change in the city left office 28 years ago, most of our posters have no recollection of it. It did happen, however, and it can again.

So, up here in my small perch, folks can easily ignore any thinking they find contrary to what they believe. It also allows those who think only the topics they are interested in (especially tall buildings, no matter how unlikely they are to come to fruition) should be discussed.

Hopefully, it is an arrangement that will make most of our community happy.

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

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2 hours ago, spenser1058 said:

Over on Twitter, there’s a phrase often tossed about to those with a minority viewpoint, “Read the Room”. I took that to heart here at UP and recognized that challenging a particular belief system isn’t particularly welcome. Fair enough.

Most of the other social media (like Twitter) tend not to be local-oriented in the way UP is and, after all these years, I’m most comfortable with the user-friendly way that the system Neo has devised for us works.

So, like the crazy aunt consigned to the attic with her cats, here I am in the Coffee House  with my belief that the way forward for Orlando is based on its culture, past and sense of place rather than as some fourth-rate Manhattan. 

I must confess to have been particularly struck by someone who has been here a long time suggesting I had never laid out specifics for my thinking (in this case on downtown retail) when, in fact, over a period of years, I had laid out in excruciating detail over dozens of posts exactly what I felt needed to happen. 

Obviously, for the most part, when you. challenge the status quo, one is simply ignored or dismissed with the sobriquet “this is Orlando” rather than recognizing that the occupant of the “red chair” under the dome determines the path of what happens here.

It may be that because the last person to actively drive change in the city left office 28 years ago, most of our posters have no recollection of it. It did happen, however, and it can again.

So, up here in my small perch, folks can easily ignore any thinking they find contrary to what they believe. It also allows those who think only the topics they are interested in (especially tall buildings, no matter how unlikely they are to come to fruition) should be discussed.

Hopefully, it is an arrangement that will make most of our community happy.

So you expect people to remember every word of every post you've ever made on a given subject over the years?

And btw, you may feel free to refer to me by name when talking about me. I don't mind.

Anyway... no offense intended here, but I just don't hang on your every word or burn them into my memory the way you apparently think I'm supposed to have.

Look, nobody faults you for having opinions. Like everyone else, you have the right to yours and to express them as you see fit. But if you're going to just hammer and hammer and hammer relentlessly on the same agenda every chance you get, you should expect to occasionally be challenged on it.

You despise the ground Buddy Dyer walks on?

Fine.  That's your God given right and privilege. 

But I'm still interested in hearing your explanation of exactly what you'd have done differently than him and more importantly, how/why it would have improved retail, dining and entertainment downtown, taking into account all outside and extenuating economic factors that were in play during his tenure and which could have had an affect.

Merely tossing out some suggestions without explaining how and why they'd have improved things is not really addressing the issue.

My point being this.... there are very complex dynamics involved. One cannot realistically just say one would have done more of this and less of that or approached certain things differently without knowing and accounting for all the other intangibles and outside pressures and forces that might have influenced decision making at the time. 

And that is impossible to even know unless one was right there in the middle of it at the time and lived it or observed it first hand. I'm fairly certain that if you laid out your case and then Buddy Dyer were to log in here and tell his side of the story, it would be cast in a totally different light. You might still disagree with things he did, but at least you'd have a better idea of why they were done.

Monday morning quarterbacking and back seat driving is easy because there is no accountability. 

And again, no offense intended here.

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2 hours ago, spenser1058 said:

I didn’t realize until I saw this story in The Daily City that the First National Bank redo will only have the balconies on the north and east sides. Apparently to the south and west, things stay sort of status quo:

https://www.thedailycity.com/post/downtown-orlando-apartments-1

I do love a balcony. I like the in-set kind even better!

 

1 hour ago, spenser1058 said:

Over on Twitter, there’s a phrase often tossed about to those with a minority viewpoint, “Read the Room”. I took that to heart here at UP and recognized that challenging a particular belief system isn’t particularly welcome. Fair enough.

Most of the other social media (like Twitter) tend not to be local-oriented in the way UP is and, after all these years, I’m most comfortable with the user-friendly way that the system Neo has devised for us works.

So, like the crazy aunt consigned to the attic with her cats, here I am in the Coffee House  with my belief that the way forward for Orlando is based on its culture, past and sense of place rather than as some fourth-rate Manhattan. 

I must confess to have been particularly struck by someone who has been here a long time suggesting I had never laid out specifics for my thinking (in this case on downtown retail) when, in fact, over a period of years, I had laid out in excruciating detail over dozens of posts exactly what I felt needed to happen. 

Obviously, for the most part, when you. challenge the status quo, one is simply ignored or dismissed with the sobriquet “this is Orlando” rather than recognizing that the occupant of the “red chair” under the dome determines the path of what happens here.

It may be that because the last person to actively drive change in the city left office 28 years ago, most of our posters have no recollection of it. It did happen, however, and it can again.

So, up here in my small perch, folks can easily ignore any thinking they find contrary to what they believe. It also allows those who think only the topics they are interested in (especially tall buildings, no matter how unlikely they are to come to fruition) should be discussed.

Hopefully, it is an arrangement that will make most of our community happy.

 

Sometimes I think you find a perceived slight that is often not there... can't speak to your recent incident however. Sometimes a differing opinion is just that? Sometimes I pose an argument to you to provide a little perspective, but nothing personal here.

Regardless, in the grand scheme of things going on in the world especially now... just learn to let it roll off your shoulders like water off a duck's back. As Kourtney Kardashian once famously said:

tempsnip2.jpg

 

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An important look at Link 8, Lynx’ most popular route (it carries twice as many passengers as the route that comes in second).

It’s vital to note that, although SunRail was an important consolation prize, it doesn’t offer the service light rail would have (thanks, Clarence Hoenstine!) from downtown to the tourist corridor like Link 8 does.

https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/news/2020/07/22/what-lynx-popular-says-about-transit-needs.html

From OBJ

 

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WE’RE GONNA DIE! 
 

Or not (you know Terrifying Tom Terry can’t wait to say that...) Anyway, Isaias is expected to become a Tropical Storm today and it’s currently in the Florida come of concern.

Soooo... if you haven’t already hoarded for COVID, hurry on down to Publix and empty the shelves again for the BIG (or little) one.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/weather/hurricane/os-ne-tropical-storm-isaias-wednesday-july-29-20200729-b4w26ckjrnbwdhaglsxrjwhnf4-story.html
 

From the Sentinel 

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It’s not unusual as a Floridian to know about Henry Flagler. The Brightline is going to run on the tracks he laid from Jacksonville to Key West, building resort hotels at each stop and putting places like Palm Beach and Miami on the map.

However, it’s the other Henry, Henry Plant, who had a more direct impact on Central Floridians. SunRail runs on what were  once his tracks and Plant St. in Winter Garden is named for him.

Here’s a great look at OUR Henry in The Jaxson:

https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/henry-b-plant-the-king-of-florida

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Let’s go back and see what it was like to turn Orlando into an ersatz St. Louis back when we fancied ourselves “Hollywood East”. Who better to bring Orlando in for our closeup but Opie himself, filmmaker Ron Howard:

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1989-08-04-8908032186-story.html
 

From The Sentinel 

https://youtu.be/RgrbuRNc-AQ

Ron Howard seemed to like Central Florida, as he also made Apollo 13 (and, in a demographic tour de force that reminds me of the Orlando Mayor and City Council, ) Cocoon  over in St. Pete.

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