Beaches

At the intersection of Atlantic and 1st, right down near the One Ocean Pavilion and a handful of other beach haunts, there is literally a Starbucks on either side of the road. Of course, this is along the Jacksonville pilgrimage route to the beach; Atlantic Boulevard used to be the only road running out here, which is why the founded-in-1939 historic Beach Road Chicken restaurant is on this road instead of the now-parallel-running Beach Blvd. This is how people used to get from the rivers and the center of commerce, over the Intracoastal Waterway, to the beach, and this is the way I have decided to ride today.

Getting out to the beach via Atlantic is a hard 18 miles of box stores and fighting with cars, even though every mile contains a few of the diamond-shaped yellow signs that show a happy bicycle on the street with the words "SHARE THE ROAD" beneath it. Today, this bicycle is feeling dichotomous: happy to be free and off to exciting places, annoyed as I pass another of these signs and a motorist honks at me in chastisement for taking up three feet on the rightmost of three lanes. Yarg.

Getting to the beach, though, is a sort of haven. Suddenly the environment shifts in a bunch of ways. Obviously the cars can't keep going East--there's an ocean in front of them--so they peel off down A1A to Ponte Vedra or Mayport and I hop two blocks deeper into the beachy pink and yellow color scheme to 1st Street, one block from the water, nestled among beach houses, with plenty of palm-tree roadblocks to stop cars and keep the street open for walkers and cyclists like me. After feeling I had to suck in my stomach to make room for these cars, here I can ride with no handlebars.

The beach also has a change in populous. After seeing relatively few young people in Jacksonville proper, young folks simply walk around at the beach. Couples walking and tanning at the same time (no one bothers to wear a shirt), a beefy terrier on a leach pulling his owner behind on a skateboard, etc. And everyone, everyone is in beach shape.

But back to Starbucks. Why one on either side of the road? Why one stand-alone, ostentatious drive-thru store looking across the divide to a little one in the mini strip-mall, the signs in the window and the words "Starbucks Coffee" overhead the only proclamations of its true purpose from its diminutive, cookie-cutter strip-mall frame?

I am feasting upon words; excuse me. Suffice to say, I've filmed in front of this stand-alone Starbucks before, spent hours here, and had no clue this other one was across the street. It reminded me of an African watering hole: all of these animals migrating across the Serenhgetti when the rains shift elsewhere, all stopping at the few watering holes available between points A and B. This leads not only to dangerous cross-sections of the animal kingdom--with lions and elephants and stuff drinking at the same bar--but also leads to a few packed tourist establishments along the way. I can't believe that the giant oases we see on Planet Earth are the only ones along the way, and can only picture the local lemurs, standing by their own lemur-sized Starbucks with teacups in their hands, looking out at the crowded commotion across the street and tsk-tsking as one of them squeaks; that is to say, as one of them says in the bemused language of their kind: "Tourists".

these animals migrate across the plain when the seasons change, because water dries up in one place and pours down in another. But in order to get there, they have to cross vast spaces, finding whatever water they can along the way, which leads for dangerous combinations of animals in one place. Lions and elephants and such crowd into one Starbucks, while you know the locals, the meerkats, or something, have this tiny waterhole all of their own that nobody seems to notice, and just laugh, in their meerkat way