King Street District

For those who haven’t heard, is a daylong celebration of Jacksonville’s literary community. Participating local writers will share their work at more than a dozen venues citywide. “It’s about introducing Jacksonville to Jacksonville. It’s about bringing together the city’s writers of every kind into one stage, that stage being the streets and shops of the city itself.” The descriptor is courtesy of , the founder of the event and author who has penned volumes on the characters and stories that shaped the city’s history. JaxbyJax is held Nov 18 at such participating venues as Il Desco, Beer:30, Cool Moose Coffee …

Hope McMath, a leader in the Jacksonville arts community, has moved on from her post as director at the , to run a new endeavor–Yellow House. Inside Yellow House, just across from the , at first glance, it looks like a gallery, albeit one with storage issues–besides art, the first room of the gallery features pallets of water, cereal boxes and other sundries, ready to go to communities in need. When hurricane Irma hit, mobilized as quickly as possible, getting much needed supplies to those living in Jacksonville, especially in the Washington Heights area, which was flooded. She had specific …

The founders of believe that if you build it, they will come. It’s a hybrid warehouse in the newly-proclaimed Arts District of Jacksonville that combines technology with the arts. “Without art, technology fails,” says , co-founder of SPACE 42. Through his extensive background in technology consulting, Kevin has found that most tech geniuses work like artists. “In turn, without technology, art fails.” Together with business partners James and Charity Higbe, Kevin and Michelle Calloway have excavated the 22,000 square foot warehouse on Phyllis Street behind CoRK Arts District. Properly marrying art and technology to create an innovation center requires an …

BY SHANNON BLANKINSHIP, Outreach Director, St. Johns Riverkeeper There’s nothing like a hurricane to demonstrate that our creeks, rivers and ocean suffer significantly from our waste. Whether it is litter, debris or just items from our back yard, if it wasn’t tied down or tightly secured, it may have ended up in the river. While Hurricane Matthew was an extreme example of this regular phenomenon, it happens during even normal rainfall events. Our creeks, especially in our urban neighborhoods, continue to be depositories for everything that can be carried by wind or water from yards, driveways, and roads. The young …

Cast iron is a building material with weight, distinguishing itself from more flimsy alloys and plastics that are common today. Behind that weight is the 8,000 year history of human experiments with smelting and metallurgy to develop crafted metal tools. To behold a cast iron object is to feel the weight of history resting in your hands. Designers commonly employ cast iron for structure or ornamentation to achieve an authentic industrial or Victorian motif. The material gained popularity during England’s industrial revolution when in the early 1700s, Abraham Darby developed a blast furnace fired by coke, a high-carbon, low-impurity fuel …

Every tree product from seed to sawdust is a candidate for reuse in the woodshop.  For Eco Relics fabricator , “using salvaged materials gives purpose to something that still has value. It’s a good reflection on a business to see they are doing their part to keep these materials out of landfills, and they have a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture with a story behind it for their trouble.” Working with salvage is a transformative experience that turns trash into treasure, and trash had better turn into something because the world is running out of places to put it. More than …

You know the old saying, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” It might as well be the Code of Hammurabi at . If it can be reused, recycled, or repurposed, it’s not trash! The crew takes great pride in the length of time between visits from the dumpster truck. By the time they put something in the dumpster, its potential usefulness has been thoroughly evaluated by some of Jacksonville’s most creative reusers. As an experienced dumpster diver, let me tell you, it’s slim pickin’s. Who would keep a small mountain (it’s Florida; I’m calling it a mountain) of broken …

Brace yourself for the most shocking thing I have to say about the : it’s not about the sauces. The map of Texas on the wall was my first clue as to why. Here in J-town, the sauce is generally the first thing we talk about. There’s a ton of Carolina and Kansas-inspired cue here in our fair city, so a lot of what we have tends to be about the sauce. While there are many kinds of sauces in Texas, Texas-style barbecue doesn’t rely on sauces. They expect their stuff to stand up without one, so sauce is an …

A sweet success story aptly describes this unique and wonderful bakery in historic Riverside. In November 2012, founders Katie and Eric Riehm set out to serve a purpose. Together with general manager Rachel Robertson, principal gluten free baker Amber Verastegui, and other friends, they launched a concept that rocked the Riverside community. “We wanted to create an everyone bakery,” says Robertson. “We set out to serve anybody, people with food allergies, which is a growing share of the population, vegans, vegetarians, gluten free guests, people with dietary restrictions; everybody! We wanted to give them the best healthy options Katie, Eric, …