In Jacksonville, it’s common for its residents to stick to their neighborhoods and not venture out into other areas. 

I’ve had conversations with the Beaches people who moan about not having enough neighborhood bars at the beach. 

In all of my “Miss Explore Jacksonville glory,” I cheerfully recommend a bar only a few miles away. But a few miles away is too far if they have to go over the ditch. In case you don’t know, Jaxon’s call the intercoastal waterways ‘the ditch.’

It’s no wonder Jacksonville is a difficult city to define or label. We all have our opinions about the city, but what do we really know if we don’t have the desire to experience all the city really is?

But you can’t blame them. Jacksonville isn’t the easiest city to get to know or explore. She’s a whale of a beast—all 747 square miles of her.

To understand this better, San Francisco’s city landmass is 46.87 square miles, Jacksonville is over 15X square miles larger than San Fran.

To put that into perspective, you could fit Boston, Miami, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, Chicago, and Manhattan into the outline of Jacksonville’s city limits.

So most of us stay in our familiar setting. There is no issue with this; it probably makes for a more tight-knit community, which is always good. But please remember that Jacksonville is much more than your neck of the woods.

You could live at Beaches (Jax Beach, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach, and PVB) and feel like you know what Jacksonville is about, but you would be wrong. 

You could be raised in North Jacksonville and feel like that is all Jacksonville is. But you would be wrong.

Jacksonville IS those two neighborhoods, but it’s also a combination of the many other neighborhoods, plus small unique corners within those neighborhoods. 

Kind of like Sans Souci. It’s a small neighborhood between San Marco and Baymeadows.

This little nook of Jacksonville is a special place to me. It feels good to be around this small cluster of interesting shops. Maybe it’s the nostalgic exteriors, or maybe I love visiting Amar’s European Grocery store. 

Either way, I wanted to share this small unique corner of Jax with you to help you understand your city a little bit more.

– Esther Rimert (Thanks for reading.)