1993 Florida Journals: Kissimmee

It's cooler today than it has been these past couple of days

in the vicinity of Orlando, Florida. I've been all over this city, from

the northern sections to Ocoee to the Disney Resort to the tourist trap

of Kissimmee. And in Kissimmee I stay my nights until I leave here with

mom a few days from now.

While getting my haircut two days ago, the hairstylist said that when she moved to Kisshee 15 years ago, the place was a small little town with only a couple of stoplights. She said that hse remembered the days when the insanely busy intersection of US 192 (Main Street) and Michigan Avenue ( ! I was a four way stop. It now has six lights: two facing east, two cfacing west, and two left turn lights in each of those directions. Kissimmee is the living example (or perhaps dead) of a land, and town

raped. At night it is hard to see driving down US 192 because of the glare

of all the light boards perched atop

signposts, blinking, flashing, vying for the tourists' attention. There is more neon here on this one street than I have ever seen before in my life (and that includes my tenure at Video Watch, the Candylaand of video stores ) . It is seconded in its garish decadence only my International Drive, west (Ithink) of here, at

one time a quiet city street, now so overcrowded with Hispanic-owned curio

and souvenir shops and so illuminated with neon and lightboards and signs

everywhere that it looks like a tropical Blade Runner. But only a few

miles away is a different place, the quiet, placid Florida country side

where I will be living.

I shall reside in a complex called Pine Club I, in the residential c

munity of MetroWest, a collection of apartment complexes and office buildings

owned my Arnold Palmer. Yes, that one. It's a nice area, far away from

the tourists, and working at Disney, I'm sure

I'll want to be far away.

The contrast between City and Tourist Area and Countyside here is so often and so sudden that it quite frequently jarrs the mind. The statement made by the cashier at Alobar, a music and bookstore in the nortern part of Orlando, sums it up perfectly: when I told him my perceptions of International Drive, he looked at me quizzically and said, "International Drive? God, that's like an entirely different province." The capitalist rape of the land surrounding the Walt Disney World Resort

is precisely the reason that

01' Uncle Walt bought twenty-six square miles

o f l a n d t o surround h i s Vacation Kingdom, having l e a r n e d h i s l e s s o n w i t h i

second- rate g i f t shops k i s s i n g the d o o r s t e p of Disneyland i n C a l i f o r n i a . When t h e q u e s t s came, h e wanted

them t o be a b l e t o escape, and n o t b e bombar-

ded by Vegas- style t a c k t h e moment t h e y opened t h e i r h o t e l c u r t a i n s . F o r t u n a t e l y , t h i s Motel 6 i s set back from t h e street, s o I am s p a r e d t h e s i g h t as ell, d e s p i t e t h e f a c t t h a t I ingnore it when I do see it.

More later.

6/11/93

6:51 PM

K i s s k n e e , Florida