This morning while walking — headed on back roads over to Red Eye Café plaza then up 3rd to Monroe — I thought to myself, “wow, it is super busy for a Sunday! Look at all of this traffic!” Which is when I saw that Red Eye is, in fact, open. It is not open on Sundays.
Oh right. It’s Friday.
I lost track because I took yesterday and today off from work. No particular reason other than to burn up vacation time, which I have *checks notes* 10 weeks worth built up. Alas, I have been told I am not allowed to take them all at one time so here is me, parceling them out on long weekends and random weeks off. Yay capitalism.
The advantage of a late walk on a weekday is to see what is really going on, rather than the dark empty husks of buildings that mark the usual pre-dawn treks. Such as:
This is the old The Sharing Tree building on Third, across of Venebites (eat local!). Drip Drop Fitness is a fitness studio that used to be in an old, rank building across Tennessee Ave. from the downtown bus station, and opened up a couple of years ago. I honestly thought they had closed down last year, but that’s my observational skills for ya. The sign there says it is opening in April, and in the lower right corner you can see some equipment that is being used to gut the interior right now.
I’m glad a local business is doing well, of course, but I do feel bad for The Sharing Tree, which has suffered a lot of setbacks over the past couple of years. Focused on art therapy and billing itself as a “creative playland” I really appreciate their values and the work they do. I hope they can keep rolling with their new vision of a traveling art bus!
This is also ironic in the sense that another fitness studio is coming to this five block area of Midtown, making a total of six (Midtown Crossfit, Orange Theory, F45, Sweat Therapy, Queens Fitness, and now Dew Drop). That seems like a lot and opening during a pandemic (as Midtown CF, F45, and Drip Drop have done) is nothing short of daring, but to be fair, they all seem busy on the regular.
That’s not even counting the new yoga studio next to Einstein’s Bagels!
That said, the fitness/martial arts studio in the Lk Ella Publix plaza closed down.
So many changes.