Urban Jacksonville

Crust punk and potluck? I think I just threw up a little.

The Condo blog is obviously a PR stunt, but sometimes I think all the Urban Core is doing is just PR.

Really downtown is a ghost town most of the time. And the homeless are quite scary. I get accosted every time I go downtown.

My mother would never set foot downtown mainly because she’s scared. I don’t think until the homeless problem is addressed will the urban core be anything but a lost cause.

there are so many reasons not to live downtown. until those reasons are addressed I can’t imagine someone paying 200K for a tiny condo compared to a nice size house with a backyard in Murray Hill. With little or no crime. with a two car garage even?

I also wonder if times the blogs that blog about the Urban Core are not getting paid to do so by the developers.

Am I the only one who thinks it’s maybe just some PR stunt by everyone to sell property or is there really something going on. I mean it’s been twenty some years since it all started. Don’t you think it should be a little more evolved than it is?

What do we need another twenty years? At least we have good retirement homes here. I feel like I’m going to need it waiting for my city to turn back into a city. In the meantime the suburbs are looking a bit more comfortable.

a,

To address you point on bloggers getting paid to post, that’s not the case 95% of the time in this blogging community. I agree with you that the Jacksonville Condo Blog is a PR stunt. They probably won’t be around in 3 months. Ask the other 50 similar blogs. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work.

My blog, and I will speak for Tony’s blog too (The Urban Core), does it for the love of the game. Monetary rewards for what we do are few and far between. Sure we promote our projects knowing our blogs reach thousands of people a day, but we always put the blog before the cart with the money in it. Not the other way around.

Thanks for your insight!

This tidbit tells me all I need to know about our friends devoted to the *condo lifestyle*

“The temptation for some is to mar their opinion with all the local politically problematic minutia.”

seriously?

What insulting
pedantic
white elitist real estate pablum.

stucco spewing scum.

They have already destroyed my beloved beach with these escapist yupee enclaves in the sky.

Now they are coming for your neighborhood.

If the market doesn’t completely collapse of course.

Wouldn’t that be just terrible.

I pray for hurricanes.
big fuckers too.

I disagree about the viabilty of the “blog” however.
Its more than a PR stunt.

Its a well polished execution of a new marketing technique.

they are already big players…deep pockets.
they will wait for the market to turn and use the “blog” to sell shit.
Should be with us for quite some time.
might need to find another way to drive traffic though, most net savvy consumers wont be interested in reading real estate pamphlets online. well maybe not…Yankees seem to have a historical weakness for Florida real esate pamphlets.

there was nothing going on in sarasota 15 years ago and a committee got together to figure out how to make sarasota known for something, anything. they decided they would be known for art. they put the word out that sarasota is an art town. they told their friends and their friends told their friends and soon sarasota became known as a big art town. have you been there? still there is not much. Ringling of course is there and that is good and there is “one” good gallery maybe………….sides that, they are still saying it and people are still thinking it, but i do not see evidence. PR works. People will think what they are told.

Its going to take a big shiny pile of PR to mask our community’s reputatuion. A reputation largely deserved that stems from “politically problematic minutia.”

“People will think what they are told.”
not bloggers.

skink, you sound like a wonderful positive person. I am glad you live at the Beaches and not here in the City. We dont need your negativity here.

Atlanta went through the same growing pains that jacksonville is going through as they developed. Their cultural fabric that you see today, 10 years ago looked more like Jacksonville does today.
I think there are bloggers in Atlanta.

Steve,

That’s really exciting to hear that Jacksonville is similar to Atlanta ten years ago. I am unaware of Atlanta and how it has grown for some reason. It is an amazing city now. I really was amazed when I went a month ago. If that’s the case then lets get started. PR or not. What do we want to be known for? What legacy do we want for the PR word? If little old Sarasota can be known as an Arts town then why can’t we? I wonder if there is someone in Sarasota we could contact to understand the PR machine that gave Sarasota a good reputation. Maybe all we need here is a good reputation and then the rest will happen.

What came first the chicken or the egg scenario? So yeah, blog on. If blogging is the only free machine that we have at our disposal to make positive change in this city I’m all for it.

Noice one Travis. See ya tonight…

PR blogs? GROSS! I think I just threw up a little..

Everyone here is blog-pushin’ things they think are cool or involved in, right? Bands on tour playing in, lets not fool ourselves, a parking lot – I guess Joey sees something cool in that. I sure as hell do, but I’m pretty sure less people read my blog, but more people who are stoked on the show for sure.

Thanks for the repost Joey.

what’s up with everyone throwing up these days?

didn’t you just PR blog your show Josh?

is it legitimate to think of the blog as a tool for drastic change?

maybe it’s not? we should investigate that is all I was saying.

if other cities have done it successfully.

At least Sarasota made an attempt. While I applaud our semi-rapid development in building skyscrapers and planning civic events, I have to agree that its all just a mish mash of “stuff”. Yes, we do need a main thing that we’re known for and “Where Florida Begins” isn’t going to cut it. If we can master that, then by all means everything else will fall in to place.

I guess the question is, who’s going to take the initiative to make that happen?

Who cares about the logistic of PR blogging, hell PR in general. Let’s just start talking and people will catch on.

Atlanta was decades ahead of Jacksonvile when I lived there in the early 90′s.
And Jax has yet to reach that basic level several years later.

then again…they do count the African American votes in Atlanta…

Positivity is a refuge. It is an ill informed approach to an outrageous situation.

Civic development wont be found in “The Secret”

Although I am sure the that “universal attractive priniciple” or whatever hoohaw sure helps sell condos to marks.

Sorry Lee but your stuck with me. I’m right smack dab in the middle of the 904.The only thing I have left at the beach is two generations of matriarch ashes swirling in the Atlantic.

Skink, Do you have a blog? Negative, shmegative, I think your take is pretty right on.

very soon PB. thank you
once it is churning you should find it tagsurfing.

I did not comment hoping to start a flame session. Blogging is great because it can be many things to many people.
like the book says…”Were All Journalist Now”

I appreciate it especially because of the potential to level the communications playing field.

Gore says in “Assault on Reason” that new media could establish a new American idea meritocracy based on dynamic interaction of citizen stakeholders.

As a citizen with an economic, cultural, and ideological interest in the discourse I felt it appropriate to point out the “minutia” expression that I found particulalry specious.

If selling stucco is the best they can think to do with the new media….thats the best they can do. I damn sure dont plan on letting them do it without examination.

10 years ago, Atlanta’s visual art scene was a lot like jacksonville’s is now. I disagree and knew it well. A good friend of mine at the time Xenia Zed (the editor of Art Papers magazine) took me on a behind the scenes tour of the city with history of where it came from. intimate details of the people who mattered there and how they had become “important”. They did have a “gallery system” which we do not have here now. We can have it, it just means all of us working together.

I think it is important to say that 10 years ago EVERYONE talked about how bad Jacksonville was for art. Now i am only seeming to hear it here. I am sorry for that! I see it growing, changing, improving. I think all of you are amazing with the blogging. PR and blogging, maybe you confused what i was saying. PR has a place and blogging has its place. If they intersect, who cares. Any PR is good PR. what you are doing or saying here might inspire a writer, or someone looking at jacksonville to move here, maybe a visual artist who finds the city ripe to become an important art town. All of us working together, we can become greater than Atlanta, in regard to our visual art scene.

10 years ago, Jacksonville did not even make the chart of nationally important art towns. Through the efforts of many in the arts, it now ranks 25th in the nation. in 10 more years maybe it could be #1.

Instructive…these the divergent pardigms we are using to analyze this silly real estate blog.

skink: Sometimes pessimistic people have a special insight into a given topic and their attitude is justified. But, more often I have found negative people to simply be failures who are attempting to use a faux sophistication to mask their own failures.

What about sophisticated failures whose attitude is justified?

Maybe i am biased because i am a 6 foot plus male, but if you are scared to go downtown, you are a pussy. If you are scared to go downtown because you are afraid of the homeless, you are a double pussy.

Nice condo blog. I give it a week. Same guess I gave flog.

I work in brick. Maybe some concrete. Not stucco. Not never. I do get excited about my projects and if I pump up something my family is going to benefit from getting your family’s money, I try to disclose it, and try to make it worth that value or more or whatever.. I can tell you that except for the $1 PBRs it doesn’t work anyway. Sorry condo blog. (ps- please list 1951 market. oversight I’m sure.)

I’m still putting everything I have into the core.

I usually agree with skink. And we definitely have problems.

Thats a mantra from my big three in case you care. Don’t tell anyone there aren’t problems. Don’t give money to panhandlers. Don’t waste time trying to change peoples mind. (may add, walk like your six foot plus).

Can’t wait for the skink blog. Maybe you can dethrone me because until folio does another best of… I AM STILL THE KING.

best blogger alive
commentless since 2005

I lived in Atlanta 10 years ago. What I remember was that I-285 was suppose to be the extent of the suburbs, but weirdly enough they just kept growing and growing until everyone was sitting in traffic, pissed off. And now there’s a permanent haze of pollution that hangs over the region.

I really don’t want everything to be like Atlanta. It’s why we eventually moved.

And I’d have to second Fawn. Nothing scary about the homeless. Just gently refuse the polite ones and point out the nearest shelter, and tell the rude ones to f-off or you’ll gut them.