Orlando as the Eternal Circus

Orlando is not a cool city, but, hear me out: Orlando is kinda a cool city. 

Let me start by addressing your relevant and real concerns: Orlando is, objectively, not cool. It is an overgrown circus town. People move here, but don’t stay here long. It’s not near a beach. It’s corny. Disney. I-4. There’s a lot to hate and criticize here, and those criticisms are valid. 

So, maybe it’s simply a cool city to me mostly because it’s the first real city I ever saw with my own eyes. I went to a few baseball games in Miami as a kid, but we mostly drove in and drove out down there. Orlando was its own adventure. 

Back in the ‘90s Orlando was surrounded by orange groves. I can remember traveling up Florida’s Turnpike, crossing over row after row of orange trees. I can still remember the way the rows twisted and bent as we sped by. I can remember the smell of the orange blossoms, which my mom used to always say “could knock ya out.” The aroma was truly intoxicating. 

My earliest memories of Orlando all involve going to Walt Disney World or Universal Studios Florida. I was a little kid growing up on the Treasure Coast and my mom would march me and my friend Chris up there with his mom, Debbie, once a year to take advantage of the Florida resident discounts at the parks. Sometimes we bought secondhand tickets from the hotels in Kissimmee. The parks were different then, before technology and perks and other passes took over. My mom loved going to Disney and she still does, which is why I’m here in a Homewood Suites room pecking out my thoughts on this strange place. 

Which brings me to another thing I saw for the first time in Orlando – marketing. I can remember racks and racks of brochures – everything from Disney to Gatorland – all free for the taking. I used to collect them. I remember the hotel TVs advertising new rides and attractions at the park, as well as Church Street Station, the downtown entertainment district (for the grownups). Years later when I got into the marketing business I found it pretty easy – I just copied what I had seen Disney do all over Orlando when I was a kid. Big billboards, info brochures, TV commercials. It was second nature. 

Anyway, I can remember sitting in the back seat with Chris and listening to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie soundtrack with our Walkman. I can remember the 3D billboards for the Jaws and Kongfrontation rides at Universal. 

A year or two later and back up to Orlando. This time I can remember listening to the radio – Magic 107.7 – and hearing “Up, Up and Away” by the Fifth Dimension as International Drive passed by outside the window. We drove by the upside-down WonderWorks building. We went to outlet malls packed with Tommy Hilfiger clothing. I can remember buying the George Strait CD Carrying Your Love With Me at a weird little CD store in Kissimmee. It was all so exciting and there was so much to discover. 

And, of course, the theme parks. As weird as it is, this is the first place I thought about what it would be like to live in a “walkable” city. We snaked through the queue line at Kongfrontation – which was designed to look like a ‘70s New York subway station, and I imagined myself as a cool city kid. Outside it’s designed to look like a New York street. I’m enthralled by the fantasy. 

Epcot – my earliest idea of what technology and world travel even meant. My mom and I used to joke that we didn’t need to see the world because we’d been to Epcot. 

One more Walkman memory – a little bit older this time. I’m maybe 11 years old, and I’m sneaking my radio dial over to the Howard Stern Show, where the Smashing Pumpkins are being interviewed – they are the coolest, weirdest band on the planet and I have only seen short glimpses of them on TV before my parents changed the channel. I hear them play “Tonight, Tonight.” Or maybe Fred Norris just plays it coming back from the commercial break. Either way, I am transformed. I am, officially, an alternative kid. 

The next year, 1997 or maybe 1998 – we’re getting ready to move to Texas and we go to Orlando one last time. Downtown Disney – now called Disney Springs – has just opened and I can remember so many details from that visit. I can remember the House of Blues gift shop – I still have stickers I bought that day with Jake and Elwood Blues on them. I’m just starting to play guitar, so we went into Guitar Gallery, which is full of expensive and rare guitars, some signed by rock stars. I dream of buying one. Next door is the Virgin Megastore. I can remember the video for “Blue Boy” by John Fogerty playing on the big video screen. Back home I bought the album, Blue Moon Swamp, and listened to it over and over. 

We moved away, but came back to Orlando in 1999. My aunt, Lisa, is working there as a traveling nurse. She lives in an apartment, which seems incredibly cool and urban to me and she even has one of those little table fountains you could buy at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Her apartment is basically a spa retreat. I remember wanting to buy Dr. Dre’s 2001 in the Sam Goody at the Florida Mall, but knowing I couldn’t get away with buying a parental advisory-labeled CD. Outside the mall in her car Lisa plays 1999 by Prince and talks about how much she loves his music.

At night I listen to the Drew Garabo Show on Real Radio 104.1 FM. He talks about the Dr. Dre CD and mentions his favorite band is Sonic Youth and that he wants to see them on Late Night with Conan O’Brien when he goes to New York. I take mental notes and quickly become a fan of both Conan and Sonic Youth. We go to Universal, which at 14 still feels pretty cool. 

I didn’t make it back to Orlando until sometime in the 2010s, when me and my friends stop by on our way through to Miami Beach.

We eat at Cask & Larder in Winter Park with my friend Patrick’s uncle. It’s a wild night and I remember ordering whole fish. 

Another time I took my mom to Rifle Paper Co., where the girls in their oversized hats looked at us like we were shoplifters. We walked by Barnie’s Coffee and reminisced about how they used to be all over Florida. Now this is the only one. 

There are other memories – eating at Café Tu Tu Tango on International Drive. Getting advice from the bartender at Castle Hotel to check out Wekiwa Springs. Meeting my friends Chad and Sean after their convention and tearing up the town. Seeing Lucy Dacus at the Beacham. 

There are other memories that involve lost loves and times past that I don’t feel like going deep into, but they are there, too. But I remember discovering the movie Miami Connection when I lived in Texas and finding out it was filmed in Orlando in the ‘80s. That was cool. 

But Orlando, as I still know it and feel it in my own soul – the idea of the place that resides in me – is rooted deeply in the ‘90s.

It is not a city. It is a pair or wraparound Oakley sunglasses – cobalt blue with the orange polarized lenses. It is a No Fear t-shirt. It’s bands like the Nature Kids and Matchbox 20. It’s a Lil’ Penny Nike commercial and Shaquille O’Neal dunking with two hands.

And, as I write it all down, I can see it. It’s not that cool. Or, at least it’s not cool in the way Lou Reed is cool or Berlin is cool. It’s brash, cheap and a little trashy. It’s DayGlo. It’s a little volatile. It is a circus and a circus town. It’s a place for people with common sensibilities. But, well, that’s kinda me, I guess. 

But, on the other hand, today’s common sensibilities are tomorrow’s high art, and I have spent a lot of time and attention appreciating what’s right in front of me. The thing about Orlando is it all hits you at once, and, from a sensory perspective, that’s a lot to take in. 

Like a lot of Florida, though, it’s a place where the entire world comes to you, which is something I think we as Floridians either underrate or loathe, which I understand. But I can remember Eastern Europeans filling the theme parks after the Soviet Union fell. They wanted to see Disney. I can remember all the creative people who got jobs working in and around the theme parks. For better or worse, Orlando was always about the new – especially in the booming ‘90s. 

These days the shine is definitely off Orlando a bit. International Drive is worn-out and can be a bit dangerous. Disney has seen better days and needs both a refresh and a recommitment to its original theme. The region has lived through negative media attention ranging from Trayvon Martin to Casey Anthony, all while more and more people move into new developments and apartments. It is no longer a pair of Air Bakin sneakers in a Nike outlet store. Drew Garabo has been off the air here for 20 years. It’s a different vibe.The University of Central Florida is one of the biggest schools in the country. TV personalities like David Bromstad call it home.

But typing this out in a hotel suite a few miles from the Magic Kingdom, I can’t help but feel all those kid and teenage feelings about the place. I cannot help but love all of these cities deemed unlovable by the cognoscenti. All of its colorful strip malls and repurposed Ponderosa Steakhouses are my natural habitat. I am a child of these here (manmade) hills. 

I’d love to give you some historic context for Orlando. I’d love to tell you about what happened here in the 19th century, but it’s one of the few places in Florida where I know little about any of that. Orlando as an idea began when Walt Disney announced his Florida Project would come together here. 

Well, I do know a few things about it. I know that the lakes and creeks that dot the region are the headwaters of the Everglades. I know that continuous development here directly affects the rest of the Florida ecosystem. I know that I read an interview with Floridian country music singer John Anderson where he said his family used to hunt turkeys on the land that we now know as Disney. In a sense, I know that underneath all of this brash fantasy there is still old, weird Florida lurking, with its early morning fog and snakes and palmettos and dew. 

But as long as I’ve been alive that Florida has been trod upon for this other dream, and I have learned to accept it. It could be worse. 

Those thoughts trigger another memory – us visiting an Air Force buddy of my dad’s who came down here to build Disney World after they both got out in the early ‘70s. I can remember him smoking cigarettes in the dark of his garage and talking about how they used to run the fireworks show. I knew he and dad were around the same age, but even then he seemed like an old, old man. He was maybe 45. So there were people that built this dream, and I would imagine a few of them are still smoking cigarettes out in their garage and cursing about I-4 under their breath. 

So, Orlando may not be cool, but it’s cool to me because it is where I met the world. I would not be who I am without its weird little influence on my life – a 12-year-old’s idea of cool, which is an important stop on the path to self-discovery. 

I have this one main theory about branding – and it is that you have to own and accept what you are and who you are.

You have to know what made you and lean into that. And, to me, as much as Orlando would like to be known as anything other than the big, wild circus town that it is – as the home of chichi Winter Park or “The City Beautiful” – it is and should remain the big, wild circus town that it is. All the pieces go together. 

Because once you accept and embrace the weirdness you can actually begin to channel it into forward moment and growth and even change. It’s why “rebranding” pretty much never works. You are what you are and you are what people think about you. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I would argue that circuses are pretty fun and America needs at least one good circus town that everyone can enjoy (not Las Vegas). 

So, excuse me while I pop on my Oakleys and hop on this monorail. See ya real soon.