jazz in Jacksonville

Crossing the Jacksonville Bridge into Downtown

this past weekend I finally went & left out from SC, and hit the road. I decided a week earlier to visit Jacksonville, which was the closest major city at around ~240 mi (Charlotte/Atlanta being the next at 210/310 respectively).

long story short, I had a blast. hit about 3 different places, and got some food [which regrettably wasn't that good]. first I caught some jazz at Jazzland on University Boulevard, and it was mostly an older folks venue, which is fine, but then one woman emerged from the crowd to sing 'My Funny Valentine' by Ella Fitzgerald. it was awesome. very catchy. also didn't have to pay cover which was nice. then I left from there and headed downtown. on a Saturday night, parking wasn't too hard to find, and I didn't feed the meter either. I was looking for a club named TCIS, which was supposedly the premier club in Jville. I walked down the street to see another club at the exact same address, named 'Element'. Turns out it was renamed about 6 months ago, making the yelp information old and obsolete. I went in, ordered a few drinks and just observed the game. there was this one chick who was cute as all get out. she reminded me a lot of Alicia, only taller and thinner, and a bigger fro. she was probably bi-racial too, I can just seemingly sense girls like this. some dude came up from her blindside and spit some game, she was enjoying herself but only from the standpoint of killing time until her friends arrived. it was great just to watch the game in action. this same guy was hitting on every chick in the place, I thought that was pretty funny.

after my couple of drinks I went to the dance floor where the entrance guy tried to gip me (forewarning of things to come--they overcharged my card by 100%). the bartender told me cover was $5, but he tried to charge me $10. the bastard. I paid my $5 and wandered to the back. there were two dance floors, one playing a slower version of techno and there were mostly guys there. the 2nd area was bigger and was playing pop/top40 mixes, that had the girls. there was one who looked like Monica Bellucci, I swore she was looking at me but then I rolled on to the next place.

next stop was Cuba Libre, being of course a Latin club. this place was awesome--the best venue of the night. they had a huge superbowl sized TV screen, and there were different cultures lip-syncing American pop hits. I chuckled when I saw a Latin dance squad singing one of our hits while dressed up as Indians with dots on their heads. anyway from here I stood and watched, it the energy was high and it was a fun atmosphere. after I left I went to sleep jazzed up. what a good night.

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