• Blue Cross is doing its part to spiff up Park Street. The insurance company is installing iron fencing around the big parking lot next to the St. Joe Company.
• The Main Street bridge lights are working and it’s more than you think. The lights change colors and there’s an American flag in there, too.
• A big oops! to Florida State, which had the Gator Bowl send tickets to the campus and then apparently forgot they were coming. The main building is closed until Jan. 3 and the tickets are somewhere there, so officials had to send someone over (with a key to get in, we presume) to bring the tickets to Jacksonville.
• The Budweiser folks are going all-out for the Gator Bowl Parade on Friday. They’ll bring their team of Clydesdale horses plus floats from the Sea World and Busch Gardens attractions that they own.
• All those buses outside the Omni? The Florida State football team is staying there and that’s how they get to their practice sessions.
• The Jaguars home season is over but, like good Florida Gator fans, they can wait ‘til next year. If you want a peek at next year’s home schedule, it will have four teams coming here for sure: Baltimore, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Seattle. The fifth is yet to be decided as it’s based on this year’s finish, but the probability is that it will be the New York Jets.
• The mayor’s office and Super Bowl Host Committee will host a series of Host City Huddles beginning in January. The town-hall-style meetings will give local residents a chance to ask questions of game organizers. The first Huddle is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 5 at Twin Lakes Academy Middle School.
• Those shower singers among you take notice. The Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra is holding auditions for the all-volunteer Jacksonville Symphony Chorus. The auditions are scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 8 at Jacksonville University. The chorus has already performed with the orchestra on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Handel’s Messiah and Holiday Pops. Upcoming concerts include Verdi’s Requiem and a fully staged opera production of Puccini’s La Boheme.