TRANSCRIPT: For years

Starting Tuesday January 9th, Tasty Takeover moves to the smaller lot and go from from 13 to 10 trucks and a new event called “Tuesday Food Trucks” run by Berio Enterprises LLC will take over the larger lot with an as-yet-undisclosed number of trucks. The lots are next door to each other and both events will run every Tuesday 6-10pm.

The addition of “Tuesday Food Trucks” will give The Milk District two food truck nights running on the same day of the week at the same time of day.

Also, just one mile away are two other food truck events at Orlando Fashion Square Mall: The Daily City’s Food Truck Bazaar has 10-15 trucks once a month on 2nd Sundays 6-9pm and Kona Food Truck Luau has 10-15 trucks once a month on 3rd Saturdays  6-9pm.

All 4 food truck events take place within a mile of each other so The Daily City is calling this area the Street Food District.

Honestly, I’ve heard attendance has dwindled lately at Tasty Takeover as it also has at Food Truck Bazaar. Maybe the days of food truck events are numbered. We are sure to find out in 2018. Perhaps the area is over-saturated. We’ll find out in 2018…

According to Wall Street Journal, NPD Group says tacos are one of the top five foods ordered at restaurants in the US. The owners of KASA must have been paying attendtion because they’re kicking their KASA concept out and replacing with… a taco restaurant! The name is Chela Tequila and Tacos and will launch the newall-Mexican menu January 23rd.

KASA isn’t the only restaurant heeding the call of the taco. The over abundance of taco restaurants made Orlando Weekly’s “Top 10 Orlando Food Trends We Hope Stay Behind” for 2018. The writer of that piece said,”Restaurateurs responded to Orlandoans’ cries for “better Mexican food!” with approximately 15,000 new Mexican restaurants…” Here’s one more!

Crate and Barrel is closing inside Mall at Millenia. I didn’t care either right? Cuz I’m a man and the only reason I’d ever need a $350 Le Crousset sauce pan is to slap my dick slide my nuts all over it because thats what men you you pussy fucks!!! Well apparently people do care about the closing of Crate and Barrel because we taped a tongue in cheek sad video walk thru of the 99% empty store and people’s comments were… sad!. Some locals really like this store and are sad to see it leave. Also, a couple employees said the closing was announced to them a week before Christmas. Now that is some sad shit right there we never thought about. We were too busy dick slappin’ water goblets in the tableware section to care. Watch the video on our Facebook page at facebook slash the daily city.

The U.S. Department of Justice awarded Orange County $3,125,000 to hire 25 full-time, sworn, career law enforcement officers over the three-year grant period ending October 31, 2020. The county must match that award with $3,409,749 coming from the Orange County Sheriffs Office.

The 25 officers will be assigned to three departments:

1. Problem Oriented Policing Squad (“a proactive enforcement plan promoting change in the community’s view of police response”)

2. SWAT

3. And Homeland Security.

This grant can be used for the following: (1) hire new officers, (2) rehire officers who have been laid off, or (3) are scheduled to be laid off on a specific future date, as a result of local budget reductions.

The maximum reimbursement for each officer’s salary and fringe benefits is $125,000.

And finally, get your hankies ready. On the blog I shared the top 10 clicked-on stories of 2017 and also shared my thoughts on the year and the history of The Daily City. I am going to read that now.

I am grateful for every click readers choose to give me. Bringing back this blog from the dead was a slow and steady, be happy with every click you get, write about what you want, write when you want effort. Getting back into the routine of being 100% responsible for 100% of the content took a year. 2017 was a year of getting back on the horse.

The Daily City grew slowly in popularity 2007-2012. It won all the blog awards, I was invited to City of Orlando brainstorms and I was putting on special events like Orlando’s first pop up shop, pop up dinner, recurring U-Haul art show, Cardboard Art Festival, Taco Truck Taste Test and eventually the gigantically successful Food Truck Bazaar. I loved what I and many many others had created: this little brand that could do a blog and events.

And then I caused its downfall (1) I turned my attention to Food Truck Bazaar which by 2012 had turned into a legit real business and (2) I fired my writer. Bazaar started as a one-night event but I turned it into a 8-15 night a MONTH event. While the decision to focus on Bazaar was the adult thing to do (I was a poor and old-ish), it took my attention away from the blog which was my passion and how everything got started. My passion was the blog… and yet I screwed that up by firing the one person who was creating content for it.

Bazaar flourished and The Daily City died.

In February 2016 I announced I was closing the blog after 9 years in business. Orlando Sentinel wrote about the closing which shocked me because I felt it’d been dead a long time. At that point in 2016, The Daily City had just no relevance anymore. It was gone.

Then in 2017 I told myself to screw my 5-posts-a-day requirement and (1) write when I felt like it and (2) write about what I personally was interested in and (3) celebrate any clicks I got ever. If I got 50 clicks I would make myself say “Awesome!” These three things brought me back to life slowly over 2017.

I am so proud of myself for completing 714 posts on my own this year and I want to thank you for reading the site in 2017. I appreciate your readership.

Welcome back to Orlando Opinions. I’m Mark Baratelli. I’ve got a passion for Orlando and a bod for sin.. Let’s get started!

Back in May we introduced you to The Hourglass District, a mass of older buildings purchased by National Real Estate for the purpose of turning them all into shops and restaurants, really turning a dead corner into a hot spot where people want to be so the developer can build buildings around it and rent them out. Back then the developers told The Daily City that one of the old structures, a dead 3/4 acre car wash structure at 416 Curry Ford Road, would be transformed into a farmers market with gathering spaces and a lounging area.

Those plans have changed according to a rendering we found credited to Interstruct. In that rendering, the dead car wash structure is shown as a food truck park! In the rendering one can see the trucks parked underneath the car wash roof, Adirondack chairs, wooden planters acting as space dividers, lighting, greenery wall, patio covering and what looks like an orange sculpture. You can check out the rending on thedailycity.com.

A 1925 building across the street from the soccer stadium  617 W. Central Ave got approved by the City for a major overhaul of its facade including giant wood and metal walls covering the front of the building, indoor and outdoor bars, a bocce court and ornamental fencing. The name was to be… Tubbs Brewing. This was in 2016. Sine then, no work has been done to execute that facade overhaul. They did however get permits to turn an empty corner space into a food truck and lot beer handout on game days. So there was that.

Now the owners have returned to the City with a new facade plan, this one being MUCH LESS ambitious. Essentially, they’re proposing to preserve the original design of the 90-year old façade, open the previously boarded up window areas, and add a new contemporary storefront design and glazing. The name is to be… Big Squeeze.

Maudlin trucking company is turning the Merita Bread Company building into a 77,600 sq. ft. truck dealership and service center. They’re placing a new 54-ft sign facing I-4 so they can enjoy the same advertising-to-I4 benefit that the Merita sign enjoyed. Since the new I-4 will be signifigantly higher when completed, they need this taller sign. The appearance review board says ok. Now it has to go to City Council. Reember the neon charm of the older Merita bread sign? This new sign will be nothing like it. It’ll be two empty cubes stacked on top of eachother with their brand name (sans serif people, SANS SERIF) on the top. It’s got the charm of an office park cafeteria 6 months before it closes.

The artwork of famed street artist Shepard Fairey/Obey Giant has begun to pop up around Orlando on billboards owned by Outfront Media. Fairey is best known for his Obama “Hope” poster. There are 5 billboards so far. Each signs’ design and message are completely based on prior works by Fairey including a  globe installation inside the Eiffel Tower, an 8-story musal in England and an art show that recently closed in Los Angeles. We called for a press release but they didn’t have one prepared yet. Losers.

And finally, The squealy-boxed Orange County Bar Association turning off their squealy boxes is not the only positive change coming to the North Quarter. Church Street Entertainment, owner of Ember, Latitudes, Cahoots, Chillers, Irish Shannon’s, 180 Skytop Lounge and Crafted, is bringing their brand of FUN to the district. They’re turning the North Quarter Tavern into a “neighborhood focused local pub” and Bar Room into a “modern interpretation of a classic cocktail lounge.”

The two spaces are owned by Craig Ustler, who developed the two original concepts. Ustler has announced he is hanging up his restaurant developing pumps after 17 years to focus on developing Creative Village and Florida Hospital Health Village. Who’s gonna hire the waiters Mister Downtown???? This will be his second and third restaurant handover with the first being handing over the Citrus Restaurant space to Reyes Mezcaleria.

North Quarter is a sleepy suburb made up of over a thousand apartments. The retail is nil, the restaurants are few, and most buildings don’t even feature ground floor retail. These folks bringing a potential shot girls, hot bod contests, three-for-one tequila nights vibe may be just the thing to get North Quarter residents out of their suburb and into the street to get so drunk they can’t push the buttons on their elevator to get back home.