Camillo Sitte

Didn't get a chance to try the bill of fare before the owner was arrested for sexual battery...

Noticed last week that the OFS Barnie’s has closed. Another end to another era - so to speak.

Have been inside for a peek. Differing opinions of the newish aesthetics aside, the place looks like it will be a fairly 'meh' if not awful experience. Almost everything has a hard surface; the chairs are narrow and hard with little padding, there are fewer real tables and chairs, replaced with a lot of counter stools and table tops [ugh!], and the place echos quite a bit - not much to absorb the sound. With a room full of people the din is going to be headache-inducing. It looks and feels and sounds a lot more like an Applebee's or a Chili's than a mid to upper-mid-market casual Italian restaurant. It looks more like a place where you throw the peanut shells onto the floor as you order a round of sizzling bacon jalapeno poppers for the table than a place for a pleasant, casual, quiet, sit-down Italian dinner. The OG that is being replaced has been in need of a complete renovation for a decade or more, but with this new design it seems clear that Darden is trying to change the habits and behavior of their target demo if not outright trying to attract a new demo entirely. Less 'quiet family dinner-night out' and more 'meeting the guys after leaving the office for a few beers' fast-casual.

You can certainly choose a particular species of wood and arrange it in a particular pattern, but when you use natural wood as the formwork, the resulting impression is a functional byproduct of the material and it's arrangement. I read the post I quoted as a belief that the resulting aesthetic qualities of the concrete in the DT library was a kind of wonderful serendipity. If instead, that poster was trying to say something to the effect, "I really like the specific formwork choices the architect made for the DT library...", then I misread the post. In addition to the choice of grain pattern and orientation [verticle, horizontal, etc.], you can also control how much concrete is excreted between the boards and the size, placement, and pattern of the divots left behind by the formwork braces.

FYI - that isn't a result of some special process or effort to create that look, it's just a natural result of using wood planks for the formwork. The reason you don't see that effect very often on newer construction is because natural grain wood just isn't used much anymore to make formwork. It's much more likely to be plywood, aluminum, steel, fiberglass, foam, etc.

Just for the record - individuals simply choosing where to spend their own money based on their principles ≠ "boycott" or "protest".

Is anyone saying you can't or otherwise preventing you from doing so? This is America, where the president can grab fistfulls of pu$$y without asking because he is rich and famous and David Duke can be elected to public office. You can do pretty much anything you want to. Everyone is perfectly free to eat whatever and wherever their conscience, their principles, and their wallets allow. Of course it's impossible to vet every company, every business owner, every board of directors that one does business with in order to see if they comport with their personal values. But when a business tells you upfront what they do and don't believe in, then to continue to do business with that company is pretty much an implicit agreement with those values, isn't it? Several years ago Chick Fil A said that they would no longer contribute to groups that had anti-LGBT practices. Now it seems that they were lying about that. Supporting bigotry and lying to the public about it, a twofer! It seems that Chick Fil A believes that their customer base agrees with their values. Hey, it could be worse for Chick Fil A than a little anti-LGBT bigotry. Krispy Kreme and Panera now have an inherited Nazi party and slave labor death camp issue with which to contend. Eat where ever you want. No one's stopping you. [shrug][/shrug]

Argument to Moderation, False Compromise, or Middle Ground Fallacy: An informal logical fallacy which asserts that the truth must be found as a compromise between two opposite positions. False Balance, Balance Fallacy, or Bias Towards Fairness: An informal logical fallacy that holds that all opinions are valid and deserve equal weight and consideration and that the truth in everything lies somewhere in the middle. ***** Half the distance between the truth and a lie is still a lie.

Over-priced? A bit, yes. Bland? I suppose that's in the eye, or the palate, of the beholder. I prefer to call it "not spicy", which is precisely why I liked it. There was no heavy "signature" seasoning added to everything as with Chipotle, etc.

They stopped doing it a few years ago [because of complaints I assume], but from the time they opened and for several years, they always has Fox News playing on the two TVs. The "American taco platter" [two tacos, beans, and rice] was $6.99. A small soda was $2.30. A side of sour cream was $1.19, a total of $10.48 plus 6.5% sales tax for a grand total of $11.16, just like I said.

So supporting a little bigotry is OK so long as it isn't their primary focus? During the last major national protest of Chick Fil A a few years ago, there is no question that the anti-LGBT/pro-Chick Fil A group won the battle that day. Chick Fil A's sales went through the roof and national news outlets were reporting on and showing video of all of the idiots haranguing the poor drive-thru girl as if she was responsible for corporate policy. But, at least at the time, it appeared that at the end of the day, the anti-bigotry side won the war as, quietly, Chick Fil A announced that they were no longer going to be contributing to any groups with an anti-LGBT bias. Of course this wasn't just out of the goodness of their hearts. Chick Fil A at the time was making a big push to get onto university campuses all across the country and being viewed as anti-LGBT was going to prevent that from happening, in fact, any time they announced that they wanted to open on a particular campus, there was almost always a major protest and they would slink away. Low and behold, after their announcement that they had seen the light, they started opening outlets on campuses nation-wide and did so with very few protests. It will be interesting to see what response if any there is to the news of their recent tax filings. Which "chain" - Baja Burrito Kitchen or Baja Fresh? If you meant Burrito Kitchen, it wasn't a chain, just one location, locally owned. If you meant Baja Fresh, then unless you lived on the west coast and ate there before the acquisition by Wendy's in 2002, then you have actually never eaten at Baja Fresh.

Baja Burrito Kitchen in Colonial Plaza closed today after more than 20 years. I liked their food, quite a bit actually. It was the closest thing in Orlando to the real king of Cali-Mex, Baja Fresh, which the evil Wendy's bought [so that they could have their own "Mexican" brand to compete with McDonald's and Chipotle] and then destroyed. Today it's just a brand name owned by some investment group and bears no resemblance to the original Baja Fresh. May Wendy's burn in hell for all eternity. Baja Burrito Kitchen did things a bit differently though. For one, they used to have Fox News blaring on the TVs. Not that they should have had MSNBC on, but that seems like a really odd business decision, one that was bound to piss off at least half or more of their potential customer base. Why do it? Then there was the fact that they had pretty small portions, it was near impossible to get out of there for less than $10-12/person, and every thing, like sour cream, was an additional charge. Two tacos with a small side of beans and rice, a small drink, and a small side of sour cream was ~$12. No reasons have been given for the closure.

Back when College Park was, for the most part, just a slightly upper-middle class neighborhood, Edgewater was less about tony bistros and over-priced and under-built condos. It was just a nice, local neighborhood shopping district; grocery store, post office, churches, a hardware store - Gabriel's. There was also one of Orlando's longest-lived camera stores [1940-something to ~1985]. Frank's Photo Supply [nee Heim's Camera] was one of those great old camera stores that used to be in every neighborhood and shopping district, and at least one in every small town in the country.

Nope - not yet anyway. The 747-8 line is still open, still building unfulfilled orders, and is open for new orders. It is true though that while the 748F line [cargo freighters] will be taking and fulfilling orders for years to come, the 748i line [passenger version] will be lucky to see many more commercial passenger orders. But even as airlines continue to retire their 747-400s, which will still be around with British Airways and a few others until ~2026, Lufthansa, Korean Air, and Air China, etc. will still be flying their 747-8i passenger planes for the next ~20 years. As for new jumbo jets, Boeing is investing several billion dollars to develop the new 777x line [bigger than the 777] for which they have already taken nearly 400 orders.

Yep, minus the glazing and the metal scrim over the parking decks of course. Not sure why anyone is surprised that this is how it's going to look though.

Visit Florida airline grants specifically require that only routes that are "new, not restarted " and "must operate for at least three consecutive months" qualify. As this EL AL route is both a restarted route and will only operate once a week for two consecutive months [Jul-Aug], it would seem to be disqualified on both counts.

Actually it's a nonstop. It's only one weekly flight during the summer, but better than nothing. EL AL had been doing seasonal direct MCO- TLV flights for years via JFK. They would also have the occasional on-again, off-again nonstop, but all flights ended in 2001.

I doubt that their ~25,000 employees and their families share your ennui over their loss of employment.

You guys realize that's just rigid insul board, right?

The heck you say. OK, so yes, when Jim Henry pulled up stakes in '83-'84 and moved to John Young, everyone under 50 went with him and everyone who stayed behind was 60+ and...wait, 60+35=...but Jim Henry is back at Downtown now even though he is 81 and... OK, you may be right.

The Publix store is ~32,000 SF. The WD store is ~34,000 SF. Limiting the WD parking lot to just the part "directly in front" is absurd. The three businesses to the west, the Greek place, Gabriel's Subs, etc. use only ~10 spaces between them during peak times and Gabriel's closes at ~4PM. The businesses to the east mostly use the side lot facing Crystal Lake and the spots directly in front of the stores. The fact is that WD shoppers use ~90% of the parking spaces that front Curry Ford.

Someone should tell that to the Publix people before they try to do something dumb like put a full service store on the old Flagship Bank lot on Colonial.

Ha! They already "improved" that $#!thole by adding a 1$ store within a store, dontcha know. Just waiting for them to go full smoke/vap shop. The powers that be at WD have clearly decided to take that store even further down-market, as if what that corner was missing was a third $1 store. The last time I was there, as per my last post, one of the items we were looking for was leafy green lettuce. So I asked the person working the produce if they had any variety of leafy green lettuce; Boston, Butter, etc. She said "Yes, right over there" and pointed. I looked to where she was pointing and said I was just over there and didn't see any. She then walked over and pointed directly to the cellophane-wrapped balls of Iceberg. For a moment I though she was screwing with me but nope, completely serious. The best way to "improve" this store is to bulldoze it and put up a Publix, Aldi, Lidl, Walmart Market, pretty much anything actually.

Barnie's sold most of their locations to Starbucks in ~2006.

Went seven pages deep in topics and couldn't find a more appropriate thread so... The two-story Starbucks at Florida Mall has been closed. No great loss I suppose, particularly considering that there are still three more Starbucks inside the mall, but I would have thought they would close down one of the smaller stores before closing the signature location. This two-story store was by far the most interesting feature of the original Florida Mall food court, if not the entire mall, save the hotel. But just the idea of sitting in the second floor of a coffee shop and looking out over the inside of the mall seemed very urban and interesting for Orlando twenty-five years ago. It seemed very consonant with the various kinds of urban vignettes you would find inside the theme parks.