Grand Opening: Cholo Dogs Mexican Street Dogs

Posted on by Thor

Co-owner Chris Delahoz invited me to the Grand Opening of Cholo Dogs which is the newest resident in the Mills 50 District. They officially opened at Wally’s Mills Avenue Liquor on September 26 from 7:30pm – 11pm. A sizable crowd showed up to celebrate the fun food-filled fiesta. Cholo Dogs offers all beef, veggie, and vegan Mexican themed hotdogs.

Menu: 

• El Borracho: Nathan’s All Beef (or Veg), Elote (Mexican Corn), Cotija Cheese, Tajin, and Cilantro.
• La Pelirroja: Nathan’s All Beef (or Veg), Avocado Sauce, Crema, Tajin, Red Onions.

• El Chicano: Nathan’s All Beef (or Veg), Pickle Slice, Crema, Cotija Cheese, Tajin.

• Cholo Dog: Nathan’s All Beef (or Veg), BBQ Sauce, Ancho Chipotle Sauce, Jalapeños, Tajin.

As the crowd waited for their hot dogs, I sat “back stage” behind the cart to watch the hectic action. A bell would ring as soon as a dog was ready. Franco Furtero manned the grill with a small army of assistants at the opening. Orders were coming fast and furious. As an added bonus we heard there would be a Mariachi band to add to the festivities. My fear was that they might set up right in front of me and block my view, so I sketched quickly.

Pam tried the Borracho and I tried the La Pelirrojo. Mine came smothered in avocado and crema, which made it difficult to eat while sketching, but it was delicious. I managed to keep the sauces off the sketch for the most part. I actually liked Pam’s hot dog better, so I ordered a second with the elote and cotija cheese. I never would have thought to order corn on a hot dog but it tasted great. Pam then tried the El Chicano which had a pickle on top. I didn’t taste it, but she said that from now on any hot dog she is served must come with a pickle on top.

I didn’t realize until I was half way through the sketch that a photographer was set up beside me. He was offering Polaroid photos of families and kids for $25 or so. Several boys posed wearing Mexican wrestling masks. He tried to convince another family to pose but they balked at the price. The response was, “But that is more than a hot dog!” Dear god, I live in a town that values art less than the price of a hot dog. Well these were some mighty fine hot dogs, I have to admit. They bumped up the culinary art of street food a notch in Mills 50.

The Mariachi band was late and there was concern that they would never show, so Pam and I headed out after the sketch was done and we had downed the hot dogs. We saw a video later that night of the band performing. Oh well, another sketch another day. Besides Wally’s Mills Avenue Liquor, the Cholo Dog Cart has been spotted at at  Ivanhoe Park Brewing Company, The Veranda at Thornton Park. Check the Cholo Dog FB page to see where they might pop up next. A marriage made in heaven of American hot dogs and Mexican toppings. Grab a loaded dog!

History in a glass.

Posted on by Thor

The first History in a Glass took place on June 22 at the Orange County Regional History Center, 65 E Central Blvd, Orlando, FL 32801. History in a Glass pairs fun and fascinating historical collection
artifacts with delicious hand-crafted cocktails. Three bar districts –
Downtown, Mills/50 District, and Winter Park – battle for the championship to see
who can win people’s choice in designing the
best custom cocktail based on a story from the history of Central
Florida. Three ace mixologists from each district will go head to head
with their colleagues, the winner advancing to the series finale in
December.

In the first competition mixologists from three popular downtown Orlando establishments – Hanson’s Shoe Repair, The Woods, and The Courtesy Bar – received a brief biography of Billy Bluebeard, Orlando’s first swan to create their drink from. Billy was brought to Orlando in 1910 by Charles Lord and placed at Lake Lucerne with his mate Sally. They were a rather romantic pair and Billy took quite an interest in their domestic affairs. Sally would sit on their eggs, but each day Billy would come by to relieve her so that she might swim about the Lake and stretch her legs.  One day, Billy was running a bit behind and Sally decided to take off before his arrival.  Their eggs grew cold, Lord knowing they would be dead, removed them from the nest. Upon finding an empty nest, Billy was furious. He swam out to Sally in the middle of the lake, grabbed her by the throat, and held her head under until she died.

Billy was given a new mate, Mary, who was quite a bit younger than he. Billy grew ill and was taken to a veterinarian. Once he was better, he returned home to find Mary with another swan! Unfortunately Billy wasn’t quite the fighting swan he once was, and the new, younger Charlie wasn’t having any of Billy’s attitude. Lord made the decision to remove Billy to another lake where he eventually passed away.  Some say it was old age, others say Billy died of a homesick broken heart.

In 1933, the proprietor of W.H. Swan Company had Billy stuffed and placed in the foyer of his department store where he stood until becoming one of the very first donations to the History Center.

Mark your calendar! The next History in a Glass, “Hog Wild” Edition is Thursday, August 24 at 6 PM – 9 PM. Not far from the present-day History Center’s
door, razorbacks once rubbed their backs on the steps of Orange County’s
wooden courthouse in the 1870s,
when Florida was a wild frontier. Florida still has an estimated one
million feral pigs on the loose. Just recently in the news, wild hogs
are still running amok in Brevard County! Come cheer on your favorite bartender from the Mills 50 District in a competition to create the best history-inspired beverage. The winner will advance to the series finale in December.

Admission tickets include great music with a DJ, three hand-crafted cocktails, and tasty cuisine
from a local restaurant. Member tickets are $20, general admission $25. This event is for guests 21 and older. For details, call 407-836-7035. Doors open at 6 p.m., cocktail competition and drink service start at 6:30.

Public Art is destroyed in Orlando.

Posted on by Thor

I first noticed the ancient light box as I drove to the Orlando International Fringe Festival this year. It was on Mills Avenue just north of the East West Expressway. I must have driven past it hundreds of times before but never noticed it since it blended into the desolate urban landscape on this barren stretch of road. The decades old abandoned light pole was something everyone ignored. But this day was different. It was exotic and beautiful, with porcelain birds perched all over it. Artist Brendan O’Connor had used social media to ask for donations of birds to be added to the sculpture. About 12 people plus the kids at misty forest donated birds. I felt a certain civic pride knowing this was such a community effort. I watched is blossom and grow each day I drove by.

The project titled “Put a Bird on It” was initiated by the Mills 50 District. The next day I spotted Brendan on site in the intense Florida sun with his large straw hat offering come protection as he was adding more tiles to the piece. I desperately wanted to stop and sketch but I had promised to sketch a Fringe show and was running late.

I did get back to the site, but unfortunately Brendan was gone. This sculpture is like a totem to creativity and freedom of expression. Many of the tiles still needed grouting and some pieces were taped in place waiting to be secured. After this sketch was done many colorful plastic flowers were also added to the sculpture. Brendan completed the piece on June 10th and the next day the city destroyed the sculpture under the pretext that it was too close to the street. It had been to close to the street for many decades. They claim to be looking for a new site for the sculpture, but many of the birds were shattered when the pole was felled. Mills 50 had an agreement with the City of Orlando and the Florida Department of Transportation to do whatever they wanted with the light. Some bureaucrat must have felt that the result was too playful and colorful to remain standing. Brendan invested $300 of his own money and volunteered 18 hours of his time over three weeks to create the sculpture that stood for one day before ending up as a pile of crumbs on the sidewalk. The FDOT removed the light box which was put into storage and the ceramic covered pole was left like a body on a battlefield where it fell. Roadside memorials featuring stuffed animals, and flowers ofter remain on Florida roadsides for years, yet this colorful explosion of creativity was considered a threat.

It is far easier to destroy art than to create it. Some people in power are threatened by creativity. As the Nazi party took power, artists, poets and academics were ushered to camps. Free thinking individuals can question policy. Thousands of paintings and sculptures were seized and destroyed because the party didn’t understand them. Works of expressionism were considered deviant. Recently ISIS video taped themselves destroying art to prove that they were a force to be reckoned with. The war against art rages on, but now in our own backyard.

All too often I am documenting art in Orlando that is painted over or destroyed. Murals going up all around Orlando seem to be making city officials uncomfortable. They want to edit and veto creativity. A committee was formed to address the problem allowing officials to take down and remove whatever they don’t like. The first amendment grants us freedom of speech and we all should be upset when creativity is crushed. I’m beginning to think I need to find a more progressive city to sketch and report about. Orlando seems intent on going back to the dark ages.

The Mills 50 District heralds the Mills 50 Community Market.

Posted on by Thor

Every Tuesday from 5:00 pm until 9:00pm the Mills 50 Community Market (between Will’s Pub and Track Shack) brings together a variety of artisans and local vendors to share food, ideas and community resources. Our vision is to foster weekly community engagement and to provide support for local businesses in the Mills 50 District and all of Central Florida. By providing this open platform, we hope to empower local residents with a more resilient, sustainable and healthy place to live.

I went right after work one night to sketch. On the side wall of Will’s Pub was the controversial mural by Dolla Short. It depicts a drunk satyr floating in a noxious cloud. The detail that a few local residents have an issue with is that the cloud is implied to have come from a fart symbolized by a word balloon and a skull and cross bones. Because of this, the city is trying to come up with a way to censor future murals. They want to create an ordinance that re-defines murals as signage which suffer strict jurisdiction. Murals keep popping up in the neighborhood like mushrooms.

The Market is a small affair with local goods. The closest vendor had meat on a stick and I was offered a sample which was pretty good. Doughn’t Be Cruel was directly across from me. Senior Baker and Artist David McWhertor was at the helm. He pointed out that we had exhibited our work together at the Falcon Bar‘s “Porn” show. David’s painting was of a nude man with a unique way of hanging his jacket. For that show, I did a sketch of 2 actors in an intimate embrace. At the opening, I sketched a guy hitting on a girl for several hours in front of my sketch. David offered me a sample of one of his doughnuts, placing it in a paper bag. The bag sat on my kitchen counter for the night and in the morning it had been engulfed in a grease stain. I couldn’t bring myself to open the bag. Perhaps if bacon was packaged in paper bags, I could give that up as well.

ReThinking the City: Main Streets and Town Halls

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ReThinking the City is a monthly symposium on new ideas and updates in urban ism held at Urban ReThink ( 625 E. Central Ave, Orlando, Florida). The June 25th meeting featured a remote presentation by Hesse McGraw, curator of the innovative Carver Bank Town Hall Project in Omaha Nebraska, which seeks to create a space for public participation and creativity. Also presenting was Pauline Eaton, curator of Orlando’s Main Street USA program, on how the program is developing and helping local communities. Eliza Harris tried to get the Skype hook up working but there were several tech issues that kept us from connecting to Omaha.

Pauline Eaton stepped in and told us about the Main street USA program while folks struggled with the computer. Founded in 1980, there are now 2000 Main Street programs nation wide.  There are about 5 different neighborhoods that are a part of the Main Street USA Program, like, Ivanhoe Village, Mills 50 District etc. The Milk District is spearheading its own neighborhood initiatives, learning from the developments in other neighborhoods. The point of the program is to improve the urban feel of the neighborhoods. It can be as simple as adding a bike rack to painting utility boxes pretty colors. The “BAT Team” is the mayor’s better assistance team. The dream of pie in the sky ideal initiatives and then settle for what can be done with the present politics. Pauline joked that the “R&D” department, (Rip off and Duplicate) will take ideas that work in other cities and hope to duplicate them in Orlando. Orlando is a urban area designed for keeping automobiles moving quickly. The primary concerns are usually automotive sight lines. There was some lamenting that sometimes the only way to make improvements is to wait for incumbent politicians to die or leave office. Scottie Campbell who works for Ivanhoe Village was surprised to find that there are Main Street groupies who admire the work that is done. He felt like a rock star for the night.

The computer link to Omaha started working and Hesse McGraw showed us a slide show of the renovation to the first African American Bank in Omaha. Volunteer labor was leveraged to bring the building back as an active creative community hub. Old high school gym flooring was used to cover all the floorboards.. Slate from chalk boards was also used throughout the 100,000 square foot space. The building now offers residencies for artists. There are 15,000 applicants a year for 35 spots. The residency challenges artists to think of how their work effects and engages the community. Lamont Hamilton took 75 photo portraits of living artists he considers iconic. There is a sandwich shop inside and a mix of gallery and office space. I couldn’t help but think of how similar the place sounds to the Urban ReThink ideal. Eliza spoke to me about her hope that someday local artist’s work would welcome people arriving to Orlando in the airport. It would be awesome to get work in front of so many new fresh eyes. Now the work starts researching how to make that vision a reality.

4 x 4 Fringe Pub Crawl

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The 4 x 4 Fringe Pub Crawl on May 13th was in the Mills 50 District and in Ivanhoe Village. There were drink specials at Wally’s, Will’s Pub, BART and The Peacock Room in Mills 50 and The Matador, Hideaway, Hammered Lamb and Savoy in Ivanhoe Village. O-Cartz (included with the $10 wristband) transported patrons between bars.  There was a rumor that Andy Matchett would pay $20 to anyone who literally crawled from BART to the Peacock Room a block or two further up Mills Avenue.

I decided to go to BART, an arcade and bar on Mills Avenue that I have never been to before. Chan Sterling was checking his portable microphone and speaker. It was tinny but would have to do. Lead by Ruby Darling, Skill Focus Burlesque Dancers arrived and sat in the cushy lounge seating.  The entire cast of Jet Backpack and the Battle at the End of the Universe arrived all at once. They were all in their intergalactic costumes. There were photo opportunities of Jett and his crew playing video games.

Earth Girls are Easy was on the wide screen TV but music drowned the sound track. Paintings by Parker Sketch had just been hung earlier in the day. Parker arrived with a few friends and he let me know that several of the smaller pieces had already sold. A woman asked me if I was the Painter, Sketcher who was on the poster. I didn’t know what she meant at first, but finally realized she was referring to Parker Sketch.

Suddenly a gaggle of screaming women entered the bar. Two of them climbed onto the bar, dancing and making out. One girl had a long pink penis shaped water pistol filled with vodka and she was offering shots to all the men. I couldn’t bring myself to purse my lips in front of the phallic dispenser. One woman had penis shaped antenna and she was the one to go up to the mic to promote the Bachelorette show. I was given a business card with a tiny plastic bag of white powder stapled to the back, I did a detective wet finger taste test. It wasn’t cocaine but powdered sugar, then again, I have no idea what cocaine tastes like. The Bachelorettes vanished as suddenly as the arrived, probably off to the next bar. Suddenly the bar was relatively quiet again.

John Bateman took to the microphone and sang David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity” with lyrics that had been altered to the Jett Backpack theme. Kevin Sigman as the sinister Doctor Saurian also stepped up to the mic.  Matt McGrath shouldered up to the bar with model Sierra Missed. She had an angular futuristic hair style that made her appear like an exotic futuristic replicant from Blade Runner. I had sketched her just last month at the RAW event at the Abbey. I didn’t recognize her at first since she was all green when I sketched her, but she recognized me. Matt pointed out that I’m probably the only person in town who can get away with scrutinizing someone for several hours without appearing creepy. With my sketch done, I contemplated wandering off to another bar on the crawl, but decided one sketch was enough for the night.

I’m curious about that Bachelorette show now.

Remaining Show Times are:

5/18 at 7PM

5/19 at 4:20PM

5/22 at 9:30PM

5/24 at 11:15PM

5/25 at 9:15PM

Where: Gold Venue at Theater Downtown, Princeton and Orange

Tickets: $10 plus a Fringe Button