"UP THE CREEK"- A Few Stories from Gainesville's Rattlesnake Creek Neighborhood

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                                                        UP THE CREEK

An Occasional  Neighborhood Newsletter- July, '23

   Everyone's hiding from the heat this summer. I'm doing my best to poke around to see what's going on. The biggest news is the opening of Denise's barber shop.

    While the outside looks a bit funky the inside is clean and pleasant. Here I am posing with,"Larry", the gentlemen who

keeps the place lookin' good. 

    Its gotten great reviews online  One says, "Denise has a pretty face and she knows how to cut hair". I'm sure its worth a trip to Melrose.

HOUSING continues to be a major problem in every American city.  It's the homeless, unaffordable rent and home prices, and

so much more.  Looking for answers, "Gainesville Neighborhood Voices" has formed a group to comes up with solutions.  We had our first roundtable discussion last month. We'll have another in a few weeks.

  

Isn't RING PARK special? Our creeks, like the one there, are one of our city's greatest assets. The Alachua Conservation Trust has a subcommittee working to preserve all of our city's greenways (the flood zone land next our creeks). Much of it is forested land on private property. We are trying to get the City to use the $8 million in its tree mitigation fund to purchase land next to the creeks. This will preserve these properties for future generations.

 Want PRETTY PLANTS?  We love our front porch coleus's because they're bright as flowers all the time. The cuttings  grow easily. 

 Its time to trim them back. If you want any let us know.

LONELY?  Get a dog.  I was driving by the county's dog pound and decided to stop last week.  I checked out the homeless pooches.  70% are pit bulls and most of them seem,mmm, quite angry. For $50 you can get a pit or, one of these sweethearts.

When you pass by the sad-eyed orphans you wants to take them all home.  

I did see one, "Freddy", get adopted by a happy couple. I took a picture of them getting their picture taken.

Freddy and his new family had much to celebrate, including this month's Big Event,

 

the FOURTH OF JULY. It rolled by without too much fanfair in Gainesville. It had the usual "Let's Roast in the

Sun Concert" on campus, followed by fireworks.

 Micanopy had its charming parade (why doesn't G'ville have one too?).

    After the parades are over what do you do on a

HOT DAY IN GAINESVILLE ?

    You can sit in the shade by Rattlesnake Creek. If you'd like to cool off and get a skin disease you can lay down in its cool, flowing water produced by street run off.  

 

If you'd like your water clean you can take a dip one of our springs, or, in the new pool at Westside Park.  It cost just four bucks (half that if you're hair has lost its color).

 

Drinking cold beer and listening to live music at Satchel's Pizza works for me.  When I visited last Saturday night Satch himself was holding court. 

 We discussed one of his long-time projects, the restaurant's  "Faces of Man" mosaic. 

 

He made it all, including the tile pieces, himself. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Like Satchels, our many museums are also air-conditioned. 

    We go to the Harn Art Museum on Thursday nights because it has an incredible collection, it often has live music, and, (did I already mention this?) it is air-conditioned.

    They also have "The Camelia Cafe" on the lower level.  We had dinner there. Its a simple soup, sandwich, & salad kind of place

with a view of the sculpture garden outside.

 

    

 

 The museum's current exhibits include an outstanding grouping of Jerry Uelsmann's photography and their latest show, 

"Under the Spell of the Palm Tree", the Rice Collection of Cuban Art.

 

One could spend many Thursday nights there taking it all in.

 One of my favorite pieces is sculpture parked out front, "Everyone Wanted to Fly".

    This is a new kind of hybrid, a 1953 Chrysler New Yorker with a 326 c.i. Spitfire Straight 8 under the hood paired with four GE B-47 turbojets suspended under the wings.

    Unfortunately no one is allowed to fly it or even sit inside.

     Satchel's has its own airplane. Its not a hybrid but at least they let you sit in the cockpit to enjoy dinner. 

     

Neighbors Tina and Ward drove their Big White Guppy camper van to New England to escape the heat.

 While Ward flew off to Taiwan to do one of his architectural performance pieces, "The Islands",

The Islands

 

 

Tina traveled to Vermont to try to talk her friend, Bernie, into running for President again.

Tina meeting Bernie at a Fourth event

 

    

 

 

 

  It amazes me that terrific events come to town that few people know about.  In the old days, when we had real newspapers and people reading them, this would be less likely to happen.

      

       Five days ago a dramatic performance, "Black Like He", was staged at the Phillips Center.  Eight men acted out different vignettes that flowed together incorporating dialog with music,  dance and song. Each part related to the challenges of being a black man in America. 

The cast and crew after the show

 

 

My wife and I both thought, "This is an amazing show. We're so lucky to be among the few who knew about it.  Sponsored by the UF Arts in Medicine program, admission was free. On top of all that, the entire building was air-conditioned!

  In this loony world, where we are bombarded with dorky commercials, it can be hard to learn about the good stuff.

   Bats are good. They fertilize plants, eat insects, and inspire certain super heroes to do great things. But it is hard to hear them.

For moment we forgot it was hot.

    That all changed when our friend, Phil, came to visit Sunday night. He had a bat chirp amplification device. After the sun went down (and the temp dipped below 90) we ventured outside to watch bats take over the Gainesville sky. 

 Gradually, when it was almost dark, we not only saw them but heard their clicks as the flitted madly about.

After a few minutes someone noticed that our yard was not air-conditioned.  "Yikes!" we exclaimed as we scurried back inside to bright lights and artificial cool.

    If you made it this far, thanks.  Quite a slog wasn't it?  If you're in G'ville July 27th, come meet us at Art Night at the Harn. There will be great art, live music, and most important of all, air-conditioning!

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