Camillo Sitte

There are several in metro Orlando under various subsidiary names. Kroger owns several large, clinical pharmacy brands. They provide things like HIV/AIDS drugs, specialty IV-based cancer drugs, etc., Serious and very specialized and compounded drugs and delivery methods that your local CVS just doesn't [and in some cases can't] carry.

On the way home tonight girlfriend insisted on stopping by this craphole Winn-Dixie for a few items for the dish she was planning on making for dinner. I suggested we backtrack to the Public on Conway but she insisted this would be faster. I knew better than to argue the point so I acquiesced. Bottom line is that they were out of everything she wanted, and upon querying the deli person, noticed that they were shutting it down at 5PM. The Deli manager said that the deli/bakery etc. would be closing early and until further notice and that a lot of items [such as the Uncle Ben's rice my girlfriend was looking for?] would not be on store shelves until Winn-Dixie found another warehouse and distributor for the area. Just put this store [and chain] out of its misery already.

I think that you are turning my post into something of a Rorschack test, that you are seeing what you want to see. The point of my post, and why I used quote marks, was simply to suggest, if humorously, that the stuffy old Orlando gentry of the University Club don't want to have to come in contact with groups of "homeless" who many people view as undesirables - addicts, bums, and the mentally ill, as opposed to the more palatable homeless such as that very bright teenage girl and her brother who lived in their father's car. Now, if one wants to critique my stereotyping of the old, white, conservative, University Club demographic, to that I plead guilty.

Homelessness is not a monolithic issue. I didn't say anything about sufferers of mental illness being "fake" homeless, but the nature of suffering from schizophrenia/bi-polar disease [paranoia, etc.] is that without being forcibly institutionalized, most choose to be on the street. No amount of jobs training and affordable housing initiatives is going to remove that component of the "homeless" from the streets. By "real" I mean those who have not in some way chosen to be homeless or who are homeless, economically, through no fault of their own.

No they do - they just don't want the homeless* standing next to them while they do it. *Not referring to the real homeless but the schizo/bi-polar, addicted, bums homeless.

Orange Ave. or Lee Road?

Speaking of "tacos downtown", anyone know if Tacos el Rancho will actually ever reopen after their "little kitchen fire" several months ago? They have [had?] by far the best Mexican food downtown. Wonder if this will be another Kobe-like situation; suspicious fire, promises to reopen, fifteen years later...

And just like that, California Tortilla on Church Street is no more... Signs on the doors from the landlord's attorney say they are being sued for breach of contract. Over-priced and mediocre. Good riddance.

Max's The brothers, sons of the owners - now the owners themselves - of Colonial Photo & Hobby, used to live in the apartment above the garage in the back.

Wonder how the new owners feel about Persians? I remember as a kid driving [well, being driven] past Lou's with their permanent "No Iranians Allowed" sign during the hostage crisis. Seemed awfully bigoted even then, even to a kid, even considering the context.

I hate to be that guy but I guess I'm going to be that guy. "Retail" isn't a count noun, thus "retails" isn't plural for x-number of retail spaces, outlets, etc.

I thought the point was 'if one is already in the FS area'. Yes, if you are at Lake Davis and want some Boston Market, SoDo is where you'd go. If you're downtown and want Popeye's, Central is where you'd go. If your are in the FS area and want to go to Boston Market, Popeye's, Best Buy, or want a good hot dog, then you have a few reasons to go east of FS on Colonial.

Best Buy, Hot Dog Heaven, Boston Market and the only Popeye's this side of Parramore all come to mind. The Mediterranean Grill has the best gyro and spanakopita in the metro ever since the Greek Flame Taverna closed. They have another in the Altamonte Mall as well.

Pretty sure that the current Target was purpose-built as a Target in the early 90's. Federated's Gold Triangle store [later a Service Merchandise] was where Burlington is now. There also used to be a Radio Shack at the west end of that strip.

There's a company in Tennessee, Missouri [?] somewhere that has started making a pretty wide variety of cassettes; hi-bias, CrO2, metal, etc. And TDK, the last major still making cassettes, has recently ramped up production. Cassettes are the preferred media for touring indie and garage bands to circulate their music to fans at clubs and other venues. I doubt however that we will ever see the variety that was available in the mid-to late 80s or that cassettes will see the significant renaissance that vinyl has. I seem to recall as a kid preferring Maxell and Denon, though Sony, Fuji or TDK would do in a pinch.

"Parenthood', Ron Howard, "Monster", Academy awards? Pfft. The undisputed king of filmed-in-Orlando movies has to be "Shakma!"

I've eaten in that Piccadilly more times than I will admit publicly or put my real name to but the place I miss the most is Wunderbar/Mr. Dunderbak's. Their pastrami was as good if not better than Ronnie's.

Naw, I think it's more counterintuitive than that. It's not that the loss of flavorless whitefish, pink carpeting, lack of table salt availability after 3PM, and the cacophony yet weirdly quiet clattering of dentures wasn't significant, but the downfall began with the elimination of the Burdines half-pipes.

Well, half a Target anyway. An almost-but-not-quite Super Target as it were. The grocery section is a joke. Their selection is little better than a 7-11, and they are always out of what little they do carry. That corner was a lot more interesting when it was pretty much just a Golden Triangle, Infinite Mushroom, Peaches, and a real, pre-Pepsico/Yum, dine-in Pizza Hut. Worse things could happen than for Target to build a real Super Target in the immediate area or for a Walmart neighborhood grocery store to go into the Orchard Supply space.

So, Seritage unceremoniously closed the region's second top performing Sears [effectively, by not renewing their lease] in order to replace it with Orchard and Tile & Floor. Damn, I hope there's a lot of padding in that Tile & Floor lease.

Not everyone. I’ve never reported anyone for anything. I mean, it’s the Internet. Still not sure how I got dragged into a warning because of comments I made about a dirty old grocery store making me the subject of someone else’s bizarre personal attacks but it’s not my board so I - we - play by the owner’s rules. Fair enough. I promise that I am not being snarky but I am not sure I understand the notice I received. Am I barred from making any future disparaging comments about the building at 2960 Curry Ford Road? I was reading it on my phone so perhaps it just wasn’t displaying properly.

I have no hatred, visceral or otherwise. I have made a few quips pointing out how old, and run down, and dirty that $#!thole of a store is, but that's it. Nothing I have posted comes close to matching your passionate defense of what is just so many square feet of old, dirty, commercial retail space in a nondescript strip mall. I must admit however, that I find it seriously weird the degree to which you are so emotionally triggered by anonymous criticism on the Internet of an old, rundown grocery store. Nothing you have posted explains why you take this so personally, why it is that in response to criticism of an old rundown grocery store your response is to start hurling personal attacks. I am reminded of that cartoon [from the New Yorker?] of a man, sitting at his computer and ignoring his wife's entreaties to come to bed because "someone is wrong on the Internet". I don't have a DSM-5 handy, but your obsession with criticism of this store is starting to sound like a very real pathology. Oh, and that Curry Ford Winn-Dixie is still a craphole.

Don't you have a strip mall photo safari to plan? Maybe throw in a few epic twitter slams when you're done. #thecurryfordwinndixieisheavenonearth Maybe start a 'Curry Ford Winn-Dixie enthusiast' subreddit.

I sure as hell can state as fact anything I see fit, and there really isn't anything you can do about it. That isn't at all what I am saying. If you prefer to get all warm and fuzzy in your nethers over a decrepit storefront in a old, nondescript strip mall, then have at it. It strikes me as weird, but hey, whatever does it for you. But why do you insist on making this so personal? "Scrounging free food because you were too poor to pay for it" - what is that about? Every time I make a comment about that run down Winn-Dixie store you respond by attacking me personally. Why is that? Are you really that insecure? Do you see my comments criticizing that $#!thole as some sort of threat to what you see as your safe space here? I understand that you believe that you can get away with things like that here because of a general lack of moderation in this forum and your sense of your own importance , but it's really odd . Frankly, you sound just like Trump on twitter; insecurity over petty and often imagined slights resulting in attempts to bully someone from the safety of the interwebs. Then again, maybe you see that as a compliment. And no, I am not going to go take photos of some craphole Winn-Dixie and post them here just so that you can have something else to argue about. I have far better things to do. I ask this out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, and it's not like you are obligated to answer honestly - or at all - but why is defending the honor of that one particular Winn-Dixie store - not the company mind you, not the people who work there, but the store itself - so important to you that you would take time out of your life to literally undertake a field trip to try to prove wrong someone else's opinion on the Internet? Dude, that's seriously...just wow.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that sentiment is really - I don't want to be overly hyperbolic here - but, that's really kinda strange. You sound like you are trying to protect the reputation of a person, not a dump that currently houses a Winn-Dixie, and make no mistake, that place is a dump. Objectively so. But the Curry Ford Winn-Dixie is just a volume of retail space in an old, nondescript strip mall. There is no heritage to it, no architectural significance. It has no purpose or value beyond its ability to [currently] serve as a supermarket, which IMO it does quite poorly. I have fond memories as a kid of hanging out at Downie's Sundreis, but those memories are tied to experiences with other people, Carrie Downie serving us at the counter and always carrying us for $.25 or $.30 when our allowance had run out, playing each other on this anachronism called a pinball machine because Carrrie didn't want to invest in an Asteroids machine, etc. But I couldn't care less about the shack her store was housed in. You can rip that hovel up and down here if you like, but that wouldn't in any way take away from my memories.