The Doors of Audubon Park
Audubon Park is a cool little neighborhood adjacent to my own. As the neighborhood name would indicate, each street is assigned the name of a feathered friend, to-wit: Osprey, Robin, Mockingbird, even Bobolink. As if that is not sufficiently cool enough, here are a few other reasons for the neighborhood’s high cool quotient:
The Audubon Park Garden District (as they refer to themselves) received the 2016 Great American Main Streets Award, recognizing its transformation from a neighborhood that historically had served the nearby military base to a corridor of flourishing small businesses (no chain stores).
Audubon Park Orlando
Audubon has become a hub of organic farming and gardening, from a community garden to farmlettes, little plots in residents’ yards. There are farm-to-table restaurants and several organic green grocers and bakeries. (Bakery options are so prolific the area might become known as the Dessert District.)
APGD is also working to become an EcoDistrict. The plan calls for creating a “Bee Safe Zone” to protect native pollinators, a public orchard, native tree walks and to become a certified wildlife habitat community.
If all that weren’t enough, they play host to a Zombietoberfest and Bastille Day.
Fleet farming
Audbon Park door
front doors of Audubon park
Audubon Park front door
All of these qualities have contributed to making this community a hipster haven. At almost 65 I certainly don’t remotely qualify as a hipster but I, along with many hipsters, love how bike friendly the neighborhood is. (The Fleet Farmers who tend the farmlettes tote all their gardening equipment on the back of bicycles). Bicycling through the neighborhoods in route to my yoga class, Stardust coffee shop, or the Bluebird Bakery, one encounters an array of midcentury modern style houses. These homes, built by “forward thinking people” between 1945 and the 1980s, feature flat planes, large plate glass windows, and fun, colorful front doors. Given the fact I’m an avowed chromophile (color lover) it’s not surprising I take great delight in the rainbow of colors bedecking the entrances of these homes. Check out a few of my favs below.I can’t attest to the personalities of the inhabitants but the colorful exteriors certainly present a welcoming front.Our senses are bombarded by scary stories via iphone news alerts, cable news networks, even from my beloved NPR. This thriving, authentic, hip little community just feels comforting and welcoming, kind of like the bar on the 1980s television show, Cheers, “where everybody knows your name”. While certainly not everyone knows my name in Audubon Park, it somehow feels possible.