DOWNTOWN DIARY
One gal’s (that’s me!) account of going in search of pleasure in downtown Fort Myers and its surrounding areas
If it’s the first Friday, it must be Art Walk in downtown Fort Myers. Wait a sec … this is the first Friday in July, in the heart of off-season, and this place is congested—a couple thousand of us wandering from art galleries into shops and diners, absorbing and giving vibes, gawking and watching the sun set, feeling pretty good about Southwest Florida. Tonight, at least, we’re better than St. Pete or Sarasota.
What a difference a few years make. Art Walk was started in 2008 by a handful of artists wishing to rebuild a downtown written off as lost. Money, of course, drives the bus. Proceeds from the Arts for ACT Gallery on First Street, for example, last year helped pay the medical and shelter costs for 5,000 abuse victims. Claudia Goode, Arts f or ACT curator and an Art Walk co-founder, is literally bouncing off the gallery’s brick walls tonight, it’s that busy downtown.
From a standing start, Art Walk and third-Friday Music Walk have turned the downtown inside out, in turn prompting businesspeople to take a chance. Art Walk also helped establish the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center on one end of downtown, the Franklin Shops anchoring the other end, with new stuff crammed inside and around the edges of town―a Starbucks, the fun Flat Top Larry’s Diner, the remade Hotel Indigo and other hotspots led by the Ford’s Garage team that materialize like wildflowers. There are now plans for a huge hotel next to the Harborside Event Center, a downtown senior development, riverside condo towers and rumors of old properties under contract. If the downtown were a balloon and its many new tenants the hot air, the place would sail off with the wind.
Art Walk has become so popular that the city closes to traffic on event nights. Within that area, I pause to observe a man portraying Jesus. He’s a regular and welcomes gawkers to snap selfies, to talk about their faith. It seems impolite to ask his name, because that’s not his purpose. But the man next to him, Eddie McCarthy, is different. In his thick New Joisey accent, Eddie invites us to take photos of his Jack Russell, Whitey, leashed to a Harley. “Hi, I’m Eddie, meet my dog and take a [Whitey’s Services] card.” His approach is pretty creative. And funny.
I wander east to the Davis Center, which tonight has a Mila Bridger exhibit of edgy photography, as well as Billy Huff’s Ask Me Anything exhibit in a side alcove. It’s packed—hardly the vacant former post office the Davis Center was before Art Walk. Davis is also home to the Fort Myers Film Festival screenings on first Mondays.
I amble a few streets past the thumping Dash nightclub to Dapper Cuts on Main Street. The barbers here are more like artists, working mostly on beards and the shorter hair younger men prefer. Dapper Cuts could not have been imagined even a year ago, I learn, but downtown now has that much appeal. It’s like the Bootlegger’s alleyway off Patio de Leon, a narrow brick corridor of younger artists and crafters. It was just a smelly alley until Art Walk.
And we have a handful of artists to thank for sudden and booming interest in downtown Fort Myers. Klaudia Balogh is an Editorial Assistant for TOTI Media.