Mixin’ ice cream with pleasure
When an ordinary ice cream cone isn’t enough, head over to the Marble Slab Creamery. Here, they turn ice-cream cones into an art form, whipping up a dozen flavors of premium ice cream daily in small batches to ensure freshness. Choose your scoop from tubs of coconut, double-dark chocolate, Key lime and more. Then pick…
Seasoned Italian
From the outside, Cafe Trastevere seems a little too perfect. It’s almost as if a grand, old Italian villa fell out of the sky and landed on Magnolia Avenue, across the street from the First Union office tower. Yet when we stepped inside this new “Roman Italian kitchen” – the sister establishment of Trastevere Ristorante…
A cool idea for Al French
For months people have puzzled over what land speculator Al French will do with the property he’s acquired on downtown Orlando’s west side. There’s still no answer, but this weekend artist Dan Erminger plans to transform one of French’s vacant lots into an appliance-store version of Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument erected around 1500 B.C. in…
Putting some fizz in city affairs
The Volusia County Council may have postponed a vote last week on whether to name Coca-Cola its official soft drink — providing a $4 million windfall in exchange for granting Coke exclusive rights to market its products at Volusia’s public parks, beaches and offices for five years — but the issue isn’t dead in the…
The naked truth about advertising
Today Spaceship Hightower takes you into the bizarre world of Madison Avenue, that shimmering galaxy where advertising agencies dwell. Here, they are constantly trying to probe deeply into the psyches of consumers so they can produce more silly ads that deal with us superficially. Oh how they long for the good ol’ days, when they…
And you thought it was just mindless fun
Chumbawamba, House of Blues, March 31, 1998 Chumbawamba’s Alice Nutter deems the career choices for the average rebellious working-class kid in the U.K. as relatively limited. “The two things you want to be is either a footballer or in a band,” says the percussionist and vocalist for the Leeds, England, collective. Exhibit No. 1 for…
Trans Am revs rock’s engines
Trans Am, with Seely, Go Lounge, March 31, 1998 Trans Am has no trouble shifting gears between the prefixes attached to rock. Kraut, arena, progressive, space, electro and noise-rock influences can all be found in their highly charged instrumental music. With hints of the early robotics of Kraftwerk and the cock-rock posturing of Led Zeppelin…
Trouble in mind
Kenny Wayne Shepherd, House of Blues, March 26, 1998 You’re young, you’re white, you play electric guitar like nobody’s business and you have a bit of Texas-fried soul incorporated into your sound. One way or another, you’re going to have to deal with the inevitable Stevie Ray Vaughan comparisons. Most young blues-rock guitarists, from teen…
A real mother of an invention
This is one of those moments where, if I could pace up and down in front of you wearing a white suit, intoning, resonating and gesturing like Atticus Finch, I would. Since I can’t, just regard that as stage direction while I say this: Discrimination, my friends, is an ugly thing. Like those window decals…
Grass-roots effort
The scene could have been lifted straight out of a Carl Hiassen yarn about a Florida-grown struggle between the powerless and the system, perhaps with a Southern oddball or two borrowed from Harry Crews’ dark comic fiction. The cast of characters protesting on Thursday, March 19, in front of U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum’s office next…
School for killers; jail for grandma
‘Do you think putting a 63-year-old grandmother in jail is going to make the streets safer?’ Rita Lucey is not a typical career criminal. At 63, “I’ve never even had a traffic ticket,” she says. But this week Lucey reported to prison. Her crime? Trespassing. Such crimes don’t usually bring prison, but Lucey broke a…
A banner year for Gay Pride
The 15-month display of banners plugging Disney World’s 25th anniversary elicited lots of grumbling, causing Orlando’s Downtown Development Board to rethink its policy for affixing lightpoles with promotional flags. From now on, only city-sponsored events will be heralded with colorful banners draped throughout downtown — with one exception. Look for about 375 light standards to…
