sadgator will remember Relish for next time. The transition on University from dive bars to quasi-urban upscale mixed use is quite interesting.
Much like the O’dome, some of it feels a litttle too posh and manufactured. As the real estate values have recovered and become more valuable, it has obviously driven some of the Mom and Pop souvenir and smaller places out of there. Gators Plus, for example, is all that is left of the Gator apparel stores in the strip, and it is a shell of what it once was in its heyday. UF’s bookstore and sport shop have killed it. There are a crap load of vacant storefronts just waiting for the conversion. The old Florida Bookstore will probably be one of the next.
There was always money in Gainesville, but it was hidden a bit better. Now it is more in your face. The comforts of available high end lifestyle services and amenities are everywhere from the new dorms, to the Union, to University Ave itself. It all seems a little too easy and the undergrads seem a bit too entitled now. It is palpable at the games.
Perhaps that is just the way of the world and that evolution is not limited to Gainesville. sadgator probably sounds like an old fart, but it does make him long for a simpler time when UF hadn’t “made it” yet and we were all climbing up the mountain together.
In any event, the chicks are still hot....and that is all that really matters.
