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AndyPok1

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Posts posted by AndyPok1

  1. 6 hours ago, sunshine said:

    Winter Garden and Park Ave is doing fine without bars. Now I can add Lake Nona town center.

    Do people live on Park Ave?  Do people spend time in Park Ave in the evening?  No.  These places are dead after dinner.

    The only reason I go to Winter Garden is either for the bike trail (daytime activity), a show at the garden theatre, or the brewery. 

    If doing fine == the 2020s version of a suburban mall that shuts down at 9PM, then yes lots of places are doing fine.

    4 minutes ago, JFW657 said:

    The girls in the video below look like they were probably out walking around or hanging around in parking lots drinking out of a brown paper bag....

     

    A) the first video you posted happened on a Sunday.  And yes, it was a fight at a bar.  No one is saying these things don't happen.  Security jumped in immediately.

    B ) the second video you posted is from 2012.  The scene downtown is nothing like it was a decade ago.

    But regardless, you're missing the entire point.  People can get drunk and then go wherever they want.  It's a pretty common occurrence to be at a BBQ or pool or whatever drinking all day on a Saturday before changing and heading DT.  They can be drunk without being served a drop of alcohol in DTO.  You may not even want to drink anymore, but you don't want to go to sleep yet and you want to hang out with your friends.  So you go out.

    • Like 1
  2. 36 minutes ago, spenser1058 said:

    The Sentinel seems to concur with Commissioner Gray:

    ”City officials said the proposals on Monday’s agenda were designed to limit the festival-like atmosphere on downtown streets on weekend nights when crowds of more than 15,000 fill more than 100 bars and spill out into the streets of the Entertainment Area. ”

    I think that sentence says everything we need it to.  There's more than 15,000 coming to our downtown on a weekend night when most Central Business Districts are deader than a doornail after 6PM, let alone on weekends.  It's part of what makes Orlando attractive to the 20-40 year old crowd.  You can Live. Work. Play.

    No one here is saying we shouldn't add more retail.  But that's perpetually going to be a struggle with or without the bars.  And as far as "entertainment", we already have an amazing performing arts center, an arena that is considered a standard for modern arenas, a movie theatre, an improv comedy venue, a full time karaoke bar (as bad as the sound levels are), and numerous music venues.  What entertainment that occurs after dinner would you like to see downtown that we don't have?  Maybe I'm a simpleton, but I legitimately don't know what the other forms of entertainment are.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  3. 5 hours ago, spenser1058 said:

    So let’s keep downtown just as it is. Gosh, it’s perfect. Everyone’s flocking to it!

    It's not perfect.  But a vast majority of those bars have been around 5-10 years.  They are successful businesses.  I know people don't want to accept this, but bars are the primary driving factor of activity from 8P-2A.  Happy Hours and Dinners are done.  Events have started.  The only reason people are out and about are because of bars.  And that's true virtually everywhere.  It's good that we have it downtown.  It's what makes lots of people want to live downtown.  It's what increases urbanism.  There will always be bad actors. 

    • Like 3
  4. 3 hours ago, AmIReal said:

    Tap and Grind is no more

    Ann Teagues Lamp Supply

    I think this is called Bellhop...?

    I saw a sign that said "The Corner"

    Maybe Com Gray would like to point out which specific bars he would like closed down.

    Thanks for the assist.  I could have looked on Google, but it was more of a challenge to myself to see how well I could do off the dome.

  5. 5 hours ago, spenser1058 said:

    As Commissioner Jim Gray points out, there are simply too many bars downtown. He has estimated more than 100. Until that’s dialed back, it’s all just lipstick on a pig.

    ... wut.  Jim Gray clearly does not frequent downtown bars.  Unless he's including Parramore, Thornton, and every restaurant with a liquor license his estimate is off.

    Top of my head brings us to 72, and at least 20-25 are food/venues (and I'm being generous), largely separated by street...  Also, may of these are all "one" bar that I'm counting separately (Chillers, Cahoots, Latitudes; Fuel, Stokes, Swiggs are all just one big bar that happens to have different names for different areas.

    Harry Buff
    AC Sky Bar
    Cheyenne
    Marys
    The place that replaced Lions Pub
    Latitudes
    Cahoots
    Chillers
    23 Church whatever it is
    The other side of 23 Church
     
    Basement
    Attic
    Treehouse
    Shots
    Aloha Beautiful
    Mathers
    Robinson
    Crow
    Shakai
    Bullitt
    Hansons
    Mai Thai
    Corona
    Tanquerays
    Hallows and Screams
    The alley bar behind 55W
    The concert venue thing across from 7Eleven
     
    Stagger
    Swiggs
    Stokes
    Fuel
    Caseys
    Ono
    The thing that used to be Bar B
    The Beer Bar across from the fire station
    Ember
     
    Celine
    Harp
    Celt
    The Bar with the lamps
    Corner Pizza
     
    Cantina
    Other Bar (Its Irish now)
    Waitiki
    Monkey Bar
    Hooch
    Shine
    Tiny bar with bras on the ceiling
    New cocktail place that replaced Subway
     
    WXYZ Bar
    Sidebar
    The one Club
    The other club that’s also Hookah
    Dapper Duck
    Pourhouse
    Underground
    Office
    Thrive
    Beachem
    Whatever Finns became
    Lizzys (closing)
    Lodge
    Woods
    Aero
    I Bar (closed?)
    64 North
    Sly Fox
    Saddle
    Elixir
    Neon Beach
    Motorworks
    Pups Pub
     
    3 hours ago, codypet said:

    Its the kind of bars too.  The Ivanhoe kind of bars downtown wouldn't be an issue.  Except there's so many trashy bars downtown that the middle aged crowd would rather go to Ivanhoe or the Milk.

    Unless you want to make your city massively unappealing for young adults, there's always going an area of "the kind of bars".  I've seen a few articles referencing that Gen Z doesn't drink as much as Millennials.  At least with the older Gen Z, I haven't noticed this trend.  Perhaps as we go into the younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that will be the case.

    • Like 1
  6. On 8/3/2022 at 1:42 PM, spenser1058 said:

    When the “flagship” Gooding’s opened in Dr. Phillips it had carpet and I pitied the poor stockboys dispatched to “cleanup on Aisle 4.” Publix, known for its unique terrazzo floors, avoided that menace.

    My mother even did it in the first house I lived in, carpeting over the beautiful hardwood floors. With three kids in the house, you can imagine how that went.

    When I initially moved down here for my internship I went into the Goodings in LBV and noticed it was partially carpeted which was my first red flag.  I then saw the prices were ridiculously overpriced for tourists.  I walked out and never went back in again.

    • Like 2
  7. 46 minutes ago, spenser1058 said:

    Again, you may be right, but it seems worth noting that neither the NFL or FBS football collapsed under the weight of COVID but the XFL did. It seems to have the same weakness as the others - weak underpinnings.

    [...]

    Football also has the same problem professional wrestling once did (it ruled television early on) - it fell out of favor as too dangerous. That’s starting to happen with football - increasingly, upscale demographics are beginning to walk away from it just as they did from smoking, especially for their children. The lawsuits for endangering players are increasing (they will eventually reach critical mass just as surely as the suits against Big Tobacco did). The NFL has even been financing flag football leagues to attempt an alternative. It’s not happening tomorrow, but I suspect we may be reaching “peak football” in the not too distant future.

    The NFL and FBS have been around for 100 years.  Those are some DEEP roots compared to 6 months of XFL.  There's no way to prove it, but I believe that had the XFL had some slightly more mature roots (3-5 years maybe?) it wouldn't have declared bankruptcy.  We shall see this go-around.  I think a once-a century global pandemic resulting in an economic situation deserves to be considered an outlier for failure, but you do you.

    And yes, there are challenges to football.  To be clear, I don't care about the XFL.  I'll probably go to some games since its in town and I like supporting local things, but probably won't watch.  I don't watch NFL, I'm not gonna watch a second-rate version.

    But your analogy to professional wrestling is actually the issue.  Yes, it fell out of favor.  HOWEVER, even though it isn't nearly as big as it was in the 80s, let alone its mainstream run in the late 90s, it's massively profitable right now, FOR THE SAME REASON AS XFL... Live TV rights.

    WWE's 3 big contracts right now:

    • 200 million a year - FOX - Smackdown (2 hours every Friday)
    • 260 million a year - USA - Raw (3 hours every Monday)
    • 200 million a year - Peacock - "PPV" / Streaming Catalog (Special Event ~4 hours every month)

    We are in the era of content.  How long will this era last?  Who knows!  I've said for 5 years that eventually we will all pay $30 to Netflix and $30 to Disney every month because eventually they will gobble up everyone.  But as of now, there's still 8+ competing (Netflix, Disney, HBO, Amazon, Apple, Youtube, Paramount, Peacock).  And until this settles out, which I don't think will be happening for at least another 5 if not more years, producing live TV, especially sports, is going to have big tech and content backing up brinks trucks to your doors.

    • Like 1
  8. Not disputing those things, and it may not succeed in Orlando specifically.  But, at least for now, its an entirely different ballgame than any of those former ones you list.  Live sports broadcasts are basically the only things that make money anymore.  It's the content era, and the XFL can probably come close to subsisting on TV rights alone.

  9. I think 3am is a good compromise.

    Everywhere outside of FL I've been, alcohol sales end at 2AM but that means the people shutting the place down get their last drink then, but they don't kick people out until ~230.  Orlando tends to do last call at like 140-145 and pretty much shuts down at 2.  If you're a regular, you can get 210ish.  This leads to the mass exodus of everyone leaving at once as opposed to people slowly trickling out over a 40 minute period.

    3 both will be a happy medium and also a differentiator to attract more people.  Win-win.  (Though those days are behind me ha)

    • Haha 1
  10. On 7/25/2022 at 11:05 AM, spenser1058 said:

    A fair point, but in the US these second-tier leagues seem unable to make it financially

    The second edition of the XFL in 2020 was successful until Covid hit.  I don't think its unreasonable it can be again in 2023.  I don't think about first-year sports league could have succeeded with Covid.  At least not in a fiscally responsible way.

  11. I had a short work trip (Tues night-Fri) this week and "had" to park in Term C rather than my usual Terminal Top.  Great alternative.  It's sub-ideal for me coming from the north and being an AA loyalist so literally couldn't be any further away, but better than having to end up in any of the park and rides.  Only downside I experienced is that when I got back late at night, they were only running 1 of the 2 trams, so it meant an 8 minute wait instead of 4.

    The way they tacked it onto the corner of the high-gates was creative, and works decently well for now.  Though once more traffic starts coming through there and especially once phase 2 gets activated, I think they're going to need to reconfigure the 60-120 B TSA exit, because there will be a chokepoint right there.

  12. On 7/19/2022 at 1:33 PM, spenser1058 said:

    The important thing to remember is that we have a grid downtown and there are multiple ways to get where you need to go. It’s quite different from the cul-de-sacs in the ‘burbs that all open on to one main racetrack.

    You're not wrong... but how often are you exiting downtown during evenings?  There really often isn't multiple ways to go depending on your starting point and how backed up traffic is and what roads are blocked off (which I support).   Getting to SoDo at 10PM from downtown on a Friday when Orange is closed and there's an event at DPAC and Amway and the one-way of Pine is backed up to Rosalind... Basically the only option is going down Robinson to Summerlin.

    (To be clear, will still be perfectly viable on a road diet.  And I'm one of the few people here that are pro-one way streets.  But it can make getting home troublesome at best.  I'm able-bodied so I tend to just walk to rosalind and have an uber pick me up and drive around the park, but most people don't do that).

    • Like 1
  13. 12 hours ago, Jernigan said:

    Speaking of which, wish the city would signalize Orange at Harding and Crystal Lake.

    Define signalize?  Like an actual traffic signal?  That would be awful.  That would be 5 out of 9 intersections signalized in a half mile span.

    I'm all for a pedestrian beacon or something there like was supposed to be part of the redo and got ripped out.

    • Thanks 1
  14. On 6/16/2022 at 10:31 PM, spenser1058 said:

    In any event, the scale of football stadia are all wrong for walkable communities. You can make a case for arenas, baseball fields and soccer stadia but anything larger is out of scale. Let’s figure out how to fix something that’s been going in the wrong direction for decades (read about the problem with the upper deck that goes all the way back to the ‘70’s). This thing outlived its usefulness almost fifty years ago.

    [...]

    Parking is also a nightmare, traffic from I-Drive along I4 is a mess whenever there’s a game or event with lots of out of towners and even the teams stay in the tourist zone now.

    I'm late here, but this is true for literally every football stadium.  It's one of the reasons attendance is down at NFL games.  The experience isn't as good as being at home, and sitting in traffic for hours to get home is miserable.  At the end of the day, moving 60,000+ people out of one location at one time is going to be a nightmare for roads.

    Regarding walkable communities, that's what makes it PERFECT being where it is.  It's a little over a mile from downtown, there are buses that shuttle you from Amway to CWS.  We get the benefits without ruining walkability, while still being close enough to walk if you dont want to drive or wait for the shuttle.

  15. 43 minutes ago, codypet said:

    Its Ave in the County and St in the City, I spot checked a number of intersections and looked at the sign, but @AndyPok1 correctly points out, the interchanges is 100% in the city limits.  But evidently this was incorrect on the old I-4 as well.

    image.png.6a5b800e1fffc30aabc789a438821d39.png

    Yes, but I didn't expect them to change it before the reconstruction.  However when you're MAKING ALL NEW SIGNS AND CONSTITUENTS BROUGHT IT TO YOUR ATTENTION

  16. You named a handful of outliers.  There is literally nothing confusing about Kaley St and the location of the I-4 Interchange.  In fact, numerous of the new signs were CORRECTLY signed Kaley St, and they went back and changed them to the INCORRECT Kaley Ave.

    https://library.municode.com/fl/orlando/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TITIICICO_CH65OFBOPR_PT4OTAPPR_4ISTNA_S65.537GERE

    Quote

     

    9. Street Type: The part of the name that follows the primary name shall be determined as follows:

    a. Roadways with an east/west alignment should be named "Street".

     

    image.thumb.png.4cb8a63dd79498a751ac7b29dfb58ceb.png

  17. On 6/16/2022 at 3:07 PM, spenser1058 said:

    Let’s stop in at SoDough Square with Scott J:

    https://www.scottjosephorlando.com/reviews/67-pizza/6085-sodough-square
     

    I went Memorial Day weekend.  I highly recommend it. I'm not sure if they finished their soft opening, which they were only doing a hundred pizzas a day and only doing four slice pizzas. And it's expensive as Scott mentioned ($15 for 4 slices). But it was super good.  I intended on only eating one piece and then putting the rest in the fridge, but then I ate the entire thing because it was so good.

    • Like 2
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