On May 26th, 2019, Explore Jacksonville came back to life.

A year and a half ago my husband Calvin and I thought it would be a fun weekend project to go around Jacksonville and take pictures of the murals. Then we would share the pictures on his Instagram account called Explore Jacksonville so others could see them too. The account had 12.3k followers, but no one had posted on it consistently in over two years. We had the idea to just post on it for fun as we discovered the city a little deeper.

Back then, there wasn’t someone posting all about the new murals on Instagram. And we kept seeing more and more murals go up, so we wanted to capture them ourselves and share what we found.

We researched all of the best murals in #jax the night before and headed out the next morning.

It was a scorcher that day. The sun was out and the humidity was high. Getting out of the car into the blazing heat got tiring, but it was fun discovering each new art piece, so we kept going.

Then we arrived at Toon Town…

The bright mural colors and energy of the cartoon characters changed my mind about Jacksonville and murals in general.

Before that day, I had no clue Toon Town existed. Most of my exploring was around food and coffee. I hadn’t actively explored Jacksonville with the intent of finding unique art or new corners of the city.

Toon Town was one of those little corners. Who would have guessed that in downtown, near the shipyards, and amongst many lonely buildings, there would be a building covered in Looney Toon art?

Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird; pretty much all of the great cartoon characters that were popular in the ’90s were on this building.

We took pictures the best we could and hopped back into the car in search of the next cool mural. Out of all of the areas we stopped at, this one stood out to me the most.

“This made me believe that all along there have been great things existing all around me, I just never took the time to discover them.”

Maybe it was because there was no one else around and we felt like lone survivors on planet earth, or maybe the bright Looney Toon art spoke to my nine-year-old self, either way, It opened my eyes to a whole new Jacksonville. This made me believe that all along there have been great things existing all around me, I just never took the time to discover them. And that made me want to keep looking for more.

After that day, we both edited some photos and posted them on the Instagram page. Then after the weekend, my husband got engulfed in his real work and didn’t have the time to post on the account with me. I love editing photos and writing so it all felt very natural to me. So I just kept posting.

Now, a little over a year later, I bought the website and Instagram page, started revamping the site, explored many new spots, gained 6k plus followers, met many wonderful people in Jacksonville, and I am planning for more great content as we speak.

I hope you visit Toon Town and take in all of the fun art as I have. I also hope that while you live or visit Jacksonville, you find someone inspiring and have a good time.

Thank you for all of your support! I truly appreciate all of your comments, likes, views, and DM’s. It brightens my day every time!

– Esther Curry

Address:
444 Talleyrand Ave
Jacksonville, FL 32202