Author: Joey deVilla

Lake Roberta is on my daily bike ride, and four circuits around it make a mile. I stopped for a moment to take this photo, which is one of my favorite scene shots from 2023:

I combine errands with my daily bike ride, which includes grocery shopping. The nearest Publix is around the corner from Lake Roberta, so the two are often tied together:

Also on my regular bike ride: Patterson Street Park and the “paisley” with glass from Gott Glass, which I covered in the previous posting in this series:

I often end up passing by one of the few remaining Lustron houses in the world, just a couple of blocks over from our place. These are houses made of enamel-painted steel that came in kit form and were available in the late 1940s, and one of them is in Seminole Heights:

The house was on this year’s Seminole Heights House Tour, and the owners did a fantastic job preserving its 1950s vibe. I’ll post the interior photos that I took on the tour later.

There’s no shortage of murals in Seminole Heights, including many that feature our mascot, “Bite or Smite,” the two-headed alligator:

Here’s the mural behind Ella’s Americana Folk Art Cafe, a long-time and beloved institution here in Seminole Heights:

Ella’s owner, Melissa Deming, has been running it for 15 years — her son pretty much grew up in the restaurant — and she’s looking to sell. I hope there’s a buyer out there who can keep it running with the same quality, care, and quirk that we in the neighborhood have come to know and love.

Here’s another mural featuring “Bite or Smite.” This one is on the wall of the service depot for ABC Autos:

Two new local pubs opened in Seminole Heights in 2023. One of them is The Rollin’ Mullet, named because it’s “business in the front, party in the back” — literally! The owner, Angi Brittain, has an architecture business in the front, which features this fine octopus mural:

In the back is the bar itself, a deck built around an Airstream trailer:

It’s a lovely, lively place:

Spaddy’s Coffee is another place Anitra and I regularly go to. If you’re one of my Facebook friends, you’ve probably seen me post status pics here:

Another regular haunt of ours is The Corner Club, once a dive bar built into a windowless bunker, now a neighborhood cafe serving great homemade food, a nice selection of drinks, good coffee, and just a generally great place to hang out.

It’s where we often host our “Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer” meetups, like the one pictured below:

Also worth checking out: Rene’s Mexican Kitchen, a taco truck that makes excellent tacos and burritos. Their sign on Nebraska Avenue cracked me up, and I had to take a picture of it:

I wrote about the other new pub in the ’hood, Common Dialect Beerworks, back in January 2023, but I thought it was worth mentioning it again, as well as including some photos from that article:

It would be wrong of me to not mention the pub we go to most often: Southern Brewing and Winery. That’s because it’s the home of the Tuesday Afternoon Tipplers, a little “let’s get together every week over beer” club that the folks in our neighborhood formed years ago.

As you can see, we tend to go there, rain or shine:

The selection is pretty nice…

…as are the people.

Every year, a few weeks before Christmas, Northeast Seminole Heights organizes a progressive potluck dinner where four house volunteer to serve as houses for:

1. Appetizers
2. Soups and salads
3. Mains
4. Desserts

Each hour, the entire group — about 80 people this year — moves from one house to the next, starting with the appetizers house and ending at desserts. It’s a great way to get to know your neighbors, as well as reconnect with those whom you haven’t seen in a while.

We provided a lot of pea soup for the “soups and salads” house, whose backyard is pictured below:

A couple of days after the progressive dinner, we had the neighborhood tree lighting in Park Circle…

…and event which included a guitar player leading the Christmas carols and accompanied by a surprise guest musician:

And finally, I’ll close with a couple of photos of home sweet home: