New Jax Witty: April 2023

Saturday, April 29

Finally, A Breasteraunt Near Me

I didn't even know the term "breasteraunt" existed, but now that I do, I'm excited that one of these fine establishments is coming to Kernan and Atlantic June of 2023. I suppose I should have guessed that Twin Peaks was more than just an outdoorsy sports bar but more of a Hooters-style gentlemen's club for the family.

I ventured to the Twin Peaks website to do a little recon, and I discovered that the waitresses wear black and red flannel "shirts" and Daisy Dukes. Unfortunately, the cooks and dishwashers don't get to wear those sweet threads. There's also a Man Card that I assume is for VIPs who spend their lunch breaks getting some twin peeks before heading back to work and then home to the ball and chain. Sign me up, I guess.

As far as the food goes, who really cares, right? But it's wings and burgers and lots of fried stuff that looks tasty enough. The only menu item that seems a bit titillating is the Twin Peaks Sundae that has side-by-side scoops of ice cream, each with a cherry on top. I suppose some drunk dad will motorboat it in front of the kids, but it's not like Mom has to order some inappropriately-named taco or clam dish. I didn't even see melons as a side dish, but I'm sure guys will try to create their own menu items for fun.

I'm sure the UNF girls who don't want to work an actual gentlemen's club or become a sugar baby for some CEO will flock to the opportunity to make Double-D-sized tips. The position is called a Twin Peaks Girl. Here's a description of the job from the Twin Peaks website:

The essence of the Twin Peaks Girl is based on female sex appeal, and encompasses her knowledge of sports, food, beverages, having a fun energetic personality, and her ability to meet and maintain the Twin Peaks Image & Costume Guidelines.

The wording of the job description confuses me a little. I guess for some guys sex appeal requires knowledge of sports, food, and beverages. I'm happy if my wife pretends to like sports a little bit and allows me to watch football instead of taking her shopping on Sundays. The description says she needs to be flirty and fill out the costume in all the right places. I assume these last two skills/natural endowment are more important than her knowledge of wing sauces or Weiss beers to her sex appeal, but you never know with these millennials and GenZers.

I suppose Twin Peaks should go on the bucket list of somewhat awkward things to do with my son or Bible study group. I hope it becomes a decent local Packer bar if nothing else because then I'd have an excuse to survey the landscape.

Friday, April 14

San Pablo Construction - Neighborly Thoughts

I haven't checked out my neighbor complaint app recently, so I decided to read one about the construction on San Pablo, just to see how neighborly everyone can be about the issue. Here's the initial post:

For everyone that complained to the city about the construction work being performed at night on San Pablo, thank you for making long traffic delays and problems while we’re trying to go to work and take our kids to school. All because you didn’t want a little bit of noise at night.

I lived through Zoo Interchange construction in Milwaukee, and I can tell you that some of it would have been impossible at night, but that's a major I-94 interchange as opposed to a road widening. Let's see how neighbors build each other up:

Lunch time this week San Pablo was at a slow crawl, one lane closed, I needed to make a left across San Pablo. I would say 30 cars wouldn’t let me make a left. I kept inching up and they would go around me to go nowhere. I was blocking their lane and they would still drive around me. So if you see a white jeep, yeah that’s me doing 25. Payback.

While a lot of commenters just agreed with the original post, the previous response added another element to neighbors not necessarily loving each other. The next guy probably always knows the local weather forecast if anyone wants to hear it:

I could never figure out why anyone would use San Pablo as a through road when Hodges is so much faster.

Others point out that Google sends people that way, but it might also have to do with two schools and lots of housing. Also tourists and new citizens. Basically, you've got A1A, San Pablo, Hodges, Kernan, St. Johns Bluff, and Southside. Take your pick, but it sucks to drive 2 miles out of your way in each direction to get where you're going.

People don’t think things through. That’s the nicest way I can put it

I guess no one wanted to defend the decision to abort overnight construction in order to turn this forum thread into a bloodbath. If I lived on San Pablo and had complained, I think I'd be happy to step back and watch the madness from a distance, too, especially if I had a work-from-home job.

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Thursday, April 13

I-95, US 1, and A1A

I was taking US 1 (Hwy 1 or Philips Hwy) to St. Augustine when someone asked if it went up and down the coast and whether it or I-95 went to the Keys and all sorts of questions I hadn't considered. So I decided to write about the general rules for our main north-south roads in the Jacksonville area.

US-1 does run the entire length of Florida, but it's kind of weird to start, coming through Georgia (Folkston) as 301 or 15, then turning into 23 or Rte1 or 15 at Callahan. And then it becomes Philips Highway after it cuts through Jacksonville. Also in Jacksonville is Alt1 (MLK Expressway and Hart Bridge), though I'm not sure where it hooks back up with US-1 south of the river. Since Hwy 1 follows New Kings road for a time, the route from Florida to Georgia probably follows generally the Kings Road that was built in the late 1700s that was supposed to diagonal from Macon through Cowford (Jacksonville) and down to St. Augustine and eventually New Smyrna. I believe the Old Dixie Highway is also part of this route. Anyhow, after Jacksonville when it veers towards the northwest, US-1 is a main thoroughfare that goes north-south along the Atlantic coast of Florida, staying west of the Intracoastal Waterway.

A1A is the road that goes up and down the coast that generally stays east of the Intracoastal. It's often the road next to the oceanfront properties. You can drive it right past Mar-a-Lago or the Kennedy Space Center. But A1A does get cut off by some inlets along the way from Amelia Island down to Miami, including the St. Johns River here in Jax, meaning you have to cross the Intracoastal and often use US-1 in order to pick A1A back up again. Therefore, a trip along the A1A along the entire Atlantic coast of Florida would be mind-numbingly long. If you could get lucky and average 35mph along the way, it would still be over 10 hours from Miami up to Fernandina Beach.

When you want to speed through Florida, then the I-95 is your road. Generally, it's further from the coast than the A1A or US-1. Around Miami, you also get the turnpike and I-75 going north-south alongside the 95. It's a dangerous road, and I think it's used by a lot of drug mules and people escaping from other states, but it's fast. Jax to Miami in about 5 hours.

Sunday, April 9

Trying to Understand Stand Your Ground

Two recent cases in Northeast Florida have me questioning the stand your ground law more than ever. One involves a bar fight and the other road rage, but both seem to allow more than you'd expect from a law meant to be used to protect responsible gun owners.

The St. Augustine bar fight went down like this: two guys get into a fight. One is losing the fight, so he pulls out his gun (which was banned in the bar) and kills his opponent. He's acquitted and only charged with a misdemeanor gun charge.

The other case is the local road rage story where occupants of two cars are getting into it. The passenger (wife) in one car throws a water bottle into the other car. The other driver shoots back with a gun. He's not charged because of stand your ground. The first driver retaliates with a gun instead of another water bottle. He is charged with attempted murder but will probably also use the stand your ground defense.

Do you see the problem here? The stand your ground law is encouraging people in non-lethal situations to retaliate with lethal force. The man losing the bar fight had no reason to assume he was going to be killed by getting his ass kicked. Most of us deserve an ass kicking once in a while. But he was a bitch and grabbed his gun, and I'd say if you bring your gun into a bar where no one is supposed to have one, you're planning on using it if you get into a bar fight. Just as importantly, the decision makes it nearly impossible for any male in his fightin years to NOT bring his gun everywhere he goes, since it's likely every other male also has a gun, and it's legal to kill anyone who might kick your ass.

Honestly, even at my age, I see a ton of people around Jacksonville whose asses I could pummel in a fight. But I guess that's not an option anymore, because the moment you win a fist fight, you're now the assailant and can be shot dead because of our rights to protect our property from British soldiers.

The other case is similar in that Lady MacBeth only tossed a water bottle at Dad 2. That's bad and should have led to an arrest, but it apparently created a justified shooting situation. Unless it was a 20-pound jug of water that crashed through the windshield, I'm thinking you still just call 911 and let the po-po handle it.

Yes, Dad 1, after he realized his daughter had been shot, should have pulled over to tend to her instead of firing on Dad 2 (shooting Daughter 2) in return, but the gun escalation had already begun, and you could argue that returning actual gunfire is much more standing your ground than bringing a gun to a water bottle fight.

I know, maybe the bar fight guy who got killed was a kickboxer who was himself a deadly weapon, and a pickup truck/ water bottle combo is probably a deadly weapon, but it just feels like every shooting where people are disagreeing will lead to the stand your ground defense. In a state with millions of guns and a new conceal carry law, I'd say that means none of us should ever have any disagreements with anyone ever.

A few months ago, I saw a sports dad (justifiably) yell at an athletic director who employs a very awful coach. The dad was fairly fit, and the athletic director is an old-ass man. Based on Florida law, I assume the athletic director could have shot the dad dead because he would have taken an ass-pounding in a fight. Instead, they both yelled and then eventually talked it out in the parking lot. Even if the dad had pushed or punched the athletic director, it should have then ended with some kind of assault charges and nothing more. The other parents would have broken up the fight. But our law allows and, in a way, encourages a similar situation to end in a shooting. Even if the old man had been the first to throw a punch or pull out some pepper spray, the shooter who responds seems to get a huge benefit of a bad law.

Thursday, April 6

What Does it Mean to Get San Pabloed or Hodged in Jacksonville?

The other day, I got San Pabloed. I've also been Hodged plenty of times. You can get San Pabloed or Hodged at San Pablo or Hodges, but the general principal likely exists in other places around Jacksonville as roads reach capacity. Getting San Pabloed or Hodged is what I call it when you get stuck while traveling in the right or left lane of Atlantic or Beach (east or west) because the turn lanes to San Pablo or Hodges have reached capacity. This usually occurs during the afternoon rush hours. It might be because two elementary schools brilliantly sit across from one another on San Pablo or because hundreds of middle managers are getting home to let the dogs out after work.

My usual method is to stay in the middle lane on Atlantic or Beach. The empty bus can kill you in the right lane, and the left and right turn lanes fill up and back up into traffic. A lot. In true Jacksonville style, I'm sure the answer will be to widen the roads, add longer turn lanes, and hope for the best. But that's still several years off. Maybe a few more inverted scissors intersections to mess with tourists.

So it's not going away. You will get San Pabloed or Hodged at some point in Jax. It's not as bad as getting Blandinged (which is just not going anywhere in any direction with 14 lanes), but it still sucks.

Saturday, April 1

What Happened to the Dames Point Bridge Lights?

I was excited when I heard that the Dames Point Bridge would benefit from some lighting at night. I figured it would look cool.

When the lights first came on, I was a little disappointed because it seemed that the lights could have been designed better or that a percentage of the lighting was still off. In fact, I think some nights the lights were only half on.

Then, after about a month, I thought the lights appeared to be pretty good: you could see it from all directions, at least. Or maybe I just got used to the semi-lit look. Anyhow, the Dames Point Bridge was lit, and it looked good. Good enough.

Then, after a couple of months of hearing positive comments about the pretty bridge, I noticed that the Dames Point was only half lit. One side only. Bridges don't look cool only half-lit, but we seemed to try it for a couple of weeks.

Eventually, however, the lights went off completely, and that's around the time of me writing about them. I haven't done the research as to why the lights went off. It doesn't really matter. I can tell you that tourists liked them when they were on, but I can't confirm those tourists spent any more money in the region or bothered to go downtown.

In the end, the lighting of the Dames Point Bridge may end up being a metaphor for Jacksonville: lots of potential, slow to get going, great for a while, sputtering, and then failure. As an outsider who has become an insider, I'd say that maintaining some attention to detail would be a positive improvement for a city that does not need to continually sputter and fail. Let's light the bridge and keep it lit. Let's start some projects and finish them. And then maintain what we finish. People notice.

[UPDATE]

A few days after I published this article, the lights came back on the Dames Point. However, several of the lights seemed to be out, while others were continuously flashing. Maybe we need to get an electrician on the bridge to see if the connections are good. If the light bulbs are flashing because they're going bad after a few months, that's going to be a long-term problem with whatever bulbs were purchased, and the bridge will look half-ass for years to come.

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I'm Gonna be a Homeschool Millionaire!

Florida is about to pass a voucher school bill that lets responsible parents like myself decide what's best for my kids. Because I know. And I also know that I can get $8,000 for each one of those little bastards I keep home to educate.

So let's see, four kids, fourteen years each...$448,000. Half a million, anyhow. I'll just set them right down in front of Fox News and they'll know all they need to know. Maybe some 700 Club for a little religion and Newsmax for some unbiased hard news. I can still work my other jobs as long as someone's home to make sure the kids are using some learning apps on their phones.

Since it's about mind and body, weekly fishing and shooting field trips will be necessary, as well as recess at the local park for as long as it takes to tire them out.

I guess it probably makes sense to get some book-learning curriculum, too, and since that only costs about $500 per year per kid, we'll still have plenty left over to put a down payment on my new RAM pickup.

Actually, it probably makes sense to find four other families at church that also want to homeschool so that I only have to watch kids once a week. Yep, I'll be a pretty good teacher, for sure, and I know what's best for my kids.