9. Field Trip # 5 – Urban Fort Myers

• What were your impressions of the downtown area?

    Being from Fort Lauderdale, it was very easy for me to start feeling at home there when I first moved here: it's a VERY small downtown area, and it doesn't have any big buildings, but it has a few places with that "tucked away" feeling, where you can go hang out for a while without hearing the cars.  It's pretty too: it has alot of really nivce architecture which has been taken good care of over the years.  Most importantly, there are plenty of local restaurants and shops to try out and meet cool people at.  My favorite one is the Cigar Bar, which has smoke, booze, music, and fancy chairs.

• What impacted you the most during the field experience?

    Well...  Most of the stuff there was stuff I'd already seen.  I've been to the Edison home, and I've hung out with Ron and Scottm, who are 60+ residents of Fort Myers I know from Occupy.  They've always been eager to point out some interesting historical fact, like my favorite one: the story about the bricks on the road, which were laid when the town was young, paved over, and then fixed after they were rediscovered under the pavement.  You can see a picture of Fort Myers way back then in the window of Toot's Dollar Store, the "home of the $1 beer".

• How would you redesign Fort Myers and encourage more community engagement?

    I'd probably widen the alleyways a bit and make more plazas like the one with Morgan House.  Also, more little green spaces to break it up, like Centennial Park and the Courthouse, where Occupy has met in the past.  At the same time, there are already some cool things in downtown Fort Myers, like the old theater.  If people were interested in becoming "engaged", they could look into the things that already exist, like Food Not Bombs, and the drum circle, both of which meet on Sunday nights in Centennial park.