Tag Archives: Tommy Hazouri

Remembering Jacksonville Mayor Jake Godbold, who passed away 1/23/2020

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Nobody else ever brought Jacksonville together like Jake Godbold did. After Godbold died earlier today, 1/23/2020, the T-U quoted Mike Tolbert saying, “Jacksonville just lost its best friend.” Indeed. Not quite three years ago, I wrote this story about Jake’s days at Fred Cotten’s Barbecue. It made me quite happy that he read it and liked it.

New Story: Jacksonville Beach: New Trinity, Killing the Devil, and the Murder of Vera Gould

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After the three young people stabbed K.’s grandmother to death in her Jacksonville Beach home, newspapers quoted them calling her “Satan,” themselves “the New Trinity” and Lex Hester, one of the most prominent men in Jacksonville’s political history, “the Antichrist.”

 

 

How Mayor Hazouri Defeated Stink / History of the City’s Greatest Offender

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When Jacksonville’s air ranked most fatal, when parts of the documentary The Smell of Money aired nationally, when the city was best-known for its stink, Mayor Tommy Hazouri declared war on odor. The oldest chemical plant in the city still offends. It began more than a century ago. 

New Story: Farris and Company Slaughterhouse

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Built in 1921, the Farris and Company Slaughterhouse stands both cavernous and labyrinthine. We could easily lose ourselves inside.

Early Arabic business success in Jacksonville occurred in the face of vicious racism. City directories and census forms often recorded Syrian immigrants as “Negro” in the middle of the Jim Crow Era.

Reggie Bridges’s Shotgun House, WATG Radio, and the Unofficial Museum of Brooklyn

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For half a century, Reginald Bridges’s 544 square foot shotgun house has hummed with the magnetic density of Brooklyn’s long life. Most much larger houses have lived far less.

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Reggie and Harold operated WATG Radio from the back yard and transmitted via cable across Spruce Street to Brooklyn Park. The station might not have transmitted far, but the whole neighborhood listened.

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Now we’re looking together at a grainy photograph of a little boy in a suit standing on a Brooklyn sidewalk half a century ago. If you could photograph time, you’d have this very photograph.

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San Marco’s Politico Ghosts Still Lingering at The Towne Pump

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After the editor downed 27 shots of Wild Turkey, the Towne Pump hung a plaque on the wall in his honor.

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When the mayor’s press aide was arrested for Driving While Intoxicated after speeding away from the Towne Pump three sheets to the wind early one October afternoon in 1977, Tanzler held a press conference saying he’d ordered his staff to stop drinking on their lunch hours.

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The ghosts of politicos and newspapermen bleed through to our time. Sometimes we notice.