(This column was first published in the Tallahassee Democrat on August 13, 2010)
Fifty things, in no particular order, that make Tallahassee Tallahassee.
Top of the capitol. There is no better view in the city than from the public observation deck on the 22nd floor of the capitol. Faraway buildings seem close; the city seems covered in trees, and every visit, you notice something new.
Old Capitol. Cool, quiet, filled with fascinating historical stuff. Hard to believe all of Florida government once fit into the three floors of this stately 1902 building.
Heat. 90 degrees with 90% humidity. That’s a Tallahassee summer, which lasts from May to October.
Rain. Tallahassee gets two kinds of rain: torrential or frequent. Both cause flooding and traffic snarls. But when we went three years without much rain (1998 to 2001), everybody freaked. There’s no pleasing people.
Hurricanes. California has earthquakes, Kansas has tornadoes, Florida has hurricanes — though Tallahassee hasn’t had a direct hit since 1985. Knock on wood.
Azaleas. They have no scent, but they provide a riot of color for two weeks every spring.
Live oaks. There is nothing as majestic as Tallahassee’s giant signature live oak trees. And nothing causes a bigger fight than anytime one is cut down.
St. George Island. The coast may be 25 miles south as the crow flies, but this white sandy beach island 70 miles southwest is where everyone goes — even if its once idyllic charms are being tempered by development.
Restaurants. Judging by their waistlines, all Americans love to eat. In Tallahassee, we prove it by thronging to every new restaurant for months — and then not going again until we hear it’s going out of business.
Beautiful women. Hollywood, Broadway, Tahiti. Doesn’t matter where you go, you won’t find more beautiful women than in Tallahassee. Sometimes the truth is not politically correct.
Florida State football. Surely, you’ve heard of the Seminoles. Used to win national championships. And you can bet 80,000 people still fill Doak Campbell Stadium in the fall.
Florida A&M football. Coach Jake Gaither hasn’t coached them in 40 years, but the Rattlers are still the epitome of Black college football.
Lake Jackson Indian mounds. Six ceremonial mounds used by Indians in 1200 to 1500 A.D. Very Zen, as is the jungly nature trail in the park.
Mission San Luis. This is where the Spanish and Apalachee Indians co-existed from 1656 to 1704. Filled with recreations of 17th century structures and costumed interpreters, it’s our own Williamsburg.
Capital Plaza. Big malls are struggling, but Tallahassee’s first shopping center (1957) remains bustling and charming: Take a blow on the long stone bench facing the hair salon.
Winter Festival. There is nothing cooler than a nighttime parade and 2,000 joggers wearing jingle bells.
Springtime Tallahassee. Floats, funnel cakes, music and costumed characters from yesteryear: The festival founded in 1968 to advertise our charms when legislators wanted to move the capital out of Tallahassee is still doing a heck of a job.
Old post office. Before it became a federal court, the somber building on Park Avenue was our main post office — and is still adorned inside with murals by Depression-era artists.
Seafood. Posey’s and Julia Mae’s are gone. Angelo’s lost some of its charm in a post-hurricane makeover. But fried seafood is still our haute cuisine.
Raw oysters. One of the rites of passage to become a North Floridian is summoning up the courage to eat your first raw oyster — and discovering you love them.
Boiled peanuts. The other rite of passage to North Floridian-dom is eating these salty goobers. They’re better-tasting than they sound.
Red Barber. Lots of famous people have lived in Tallahassee. One of the best was the late Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster who made our camellias famous during his weekly NPR radio appearances.
Cascade Park. It will be another two years before we finish the park on the site where once a waterfall helped land us the job as capital of Florida. But after 40 years of trying, it’s hard not to be wowed by the fact it’s finally being built.
Gaines Street. The eventual dream is a total makeover of this once-industrial street into a second downtown. Right now, it’s a good place to get a tattoo, buy vintage clothing and listen to music.
Railroad Square. A one-time industrial park near Gaines Street, taken over 20 years ago by artists, actors, foodies and craftspeople. This is Tallahassee’s heart of funk.
Kleman Plaza. A couple of condo towers, restaurants/bars, an IMAX theater and an art/science museum. Tallahassee’s not-too-shabby attempt at big-city digs.
Chain of Parks. Our favorite historical note about the lush strip of parks that runs seven blocks through downtown is this is where Tallahassee stores set up in shacks for two years after the fire of 1843. Maybe The Gap did the same thing after the San Francisco earthquake.
Canopy roads. Type A folks may complain they can’t drive fast enough on these two-laned roads (Meridian, Miccosukee, Old Bainbridge and Centerville) where the treetops form a shady canopy over the road. But they’re beautiful to those of us just moseying along.
Lake Jackson. Once a world-famous bass lake, the lake has finally rebounded from one of its every-couple-of-decades natural drainings. It’s the place to fish, water-ski and nature-watch.
Lake Ella. Ducks, sunbathers, walkers, lovers and bikers treading an endless loop around a downtown pond. As Yogi said, nobody goes here anymore because it’s too crowded.
Midtown. It didn’t even have a name a decade ago. Now this chunk of Tallahassee just north of downtown is a walkable delight of trendy restaurants, clubs and shops.
Cadillac trail. This winding, hilly bike trail between Tom Brown Park and Piney Z Lake can make you feel like you’re in the mountains.
St. Marks bike trail. A flat, scenic 16-mile paved trail to the coast that is great exercise — though a little tough on the return trip after a couple of beers in the town of St. Marks.
Leon Sinks. Into the 1980s, folks swam in a dozen water-filled sinkholes around the area. Then America went all litigious and the sinkholes were closed to the public swimming. But you can still look at Big Dismal and Little Dismal in this national forest preserve.
Wakulla Springs. Fifteen miles south of Tallahassee, the largest (4 acres) and deepest (185 feet) freshwater spring in the world. A half-dozen movies have filmed underwater scenes in the spring. It’s that clear — and they still allow you to swim in it.
Old City Cemetery. Lot of history here for those into the thanatopsis thing. But mainly, just a great place to wander and feel the vibe of the sleepy town Tallahassee used to be.
Level 8. The indoor-outdoor bar on the 8th floor of the recently remodeled Hotel Duval, overlooking western Tallahassee, is the greatest bar view since they closed the lounge at the top of the round Holiday Inn.
Adams Street Commons. The two-block heart of all our downtown festivals, this is where you want to people-watch during happy hour when the legislature is in town.
Statues. We’ve become a city of statues — FSU has probably two dozen — and my two favorites are the tribute to newspapers at Kleman Plaza and the Francis Eppes statue at Westcott Hall.
Museum of Florida History. An ever-charming sampling of Florida history from mastadons to steamboats to temporary exhibits about movies, architecture and Indians in Florida. We make out-of-town visitors think we’re just going for them.
Tallahasee Museum. Old-timers still call it the Junior Museum, but even seniors love checking out the panthers, alligators, black bears and pioneer buildings.
Floyd’s. Nobody older than 35 has been downstairs to this premier rock music club since it quit being an all-you-can-eat pasta place. But we look enviously at the lines stretching around the block.
The Moon. This concert hall in a former grocery store just celebrated its 25th anniversary of offering name-brand performers an intimate venue for great concerts.
Bradfordville Blues Club. Out in what used to be rural Leon County before the northeast housing explosion, this club on a dirt road brings in all the greatest musicians still working the backroads.
Truck route. That’s what anybody who’s been in Tallahassee forever calls Capital Circle, because that’s what it was called when it was a deserted two-lane loop around downtown. Now, you’ll just cuss it for being so crowded.
Armory. The big brick structure at Seventh and Monroe was Tallahassee’s National Guard Armory when it was built during the Depression. Later used for Leon High basketball games and children’s roller skating parties, it’s now the Tallahassee Senior Center.
Duval Street/Seventh Avenue. For a half-dozen blocks in Midtown, these two streets are divided by a median with big live oaks. The mini-park joins the nearby Los Robles arch/gateway as attractive remnants of Tallahassee’s participation in the 1920s Florida land boom.
Blair Stone Road. Oh, how the public moaned when the city extended an eastside road into a north-south connector from SouthWood to Capital Circle Northeast. Now the well-landscaped, smooth-flowing road is the most beautiful boulevard in town.
Lafayette Land Grant. Our coolest bit of history: In 1824, U.S. Congress gave the Marquis de Lafayette a six-mile-by-six-mile township in gratitude for his service during the Revolutionary War. That township encompassed most of today’s Tallahassee — though he and his heirs sold the land without ever visiting.
Tallahassee Democrat. We’ve got a name that everyone mocks and we’ve been around for 105 years — longer than any other business save Capital City Bank. How can you not think of us when you think of Tallahassee?
Gerald Ensley was a reporter and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat from 1980 until his retirement in 2015. He died in 2018 following a stroke. The Tallahassee Democrat is publishing columns capturing Tallahassee’s history from Ensley’s vast archives each Sunday through 2024 in the Opinion section as part of theTLH 200: Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project.
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