Jacksonville

Jacksonville: the Worst Coast

Don Russell, Philadelphia Daily News: Philadelphians headed for this town are excused if they confuse it for home. Not because of the landscape, of course; this place lacks anything approaching charm. You know your city has a bad rep when someone from Philadelphia calls it charmless. It's like being a singer booed off the stage by Ashlee Simpson. Now that Workbench has begun to attract random abuse about Jacksonville, I'm feeling some civic responsibility to defend the Bold New City of the ... (read more)

Linger, Oh Linger, Heffelfinger

The highlight of attending NFL Experience, the Super Bowl event near Jacksonville's Alltel Stadium, was seeing Hall of Fame exhibits on loan from Canton. Until I saw the Birth of Pro Football display, I didn't know the first pro player had the Dickensian name of Pudge Heffelfinger. A standout at Yale, in 1892, Heffelfinger earned $500 ($10,200 in today's dollars) to play one game as a ringer for the Allegheny Athletic Association, a cheat that wasn't confirmed until 70 years later. He was the ... (read more)

Tony Kornheiser vs. Jacksonville

Tony Kornheiser wrote a column in the Washington Post ripping Jacksonville as a Hooters-loving, foul-smelling, remote city of doublewides that only got the Super Bowl because Tuscaloosa was booked: Jacksonville is where Pat Boone was born (sometime around the Martin Van Buren presidency), and where the Southern hair band .38 Special got together. Somehow it doesn't sound like hip-hop. It's more like I-Hop. As a seven-year resident, I'm more offended by Kornheiser's laziness than anything he ... (read more)