• Kansas City has famous barbecue joints and steak houses – and now it has Jacksonville-founded Firehouse Subs. The local sub company is opening 26 restaurants in in the city over five years, beginning in September.
• The Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra will perform a benefit concert Saturday to help rebuild Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church. The program, which starts at 7 p.m. and is free, will include Mendelssohn’s “Reformation Symphony.”
• The Jacksonville office of Fowler White Boggs Banker has added Karl Hanson Jr. as a shareholder. Prior to joining the firm, Hanson was of counsel with Dewey & LeBoeuf. He’ll practice in the firm’s real estate group.
• Go home with a bag of money: The Jacksonville Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is housed in the large building on Water Street just east of the Osborn Convention Center. If you have ever wondered what goes on at “The Fed” in general or at the Jacksonville Branch in particular (including handling all the cash and checks processed by every financial institution in the area), you can learn that and more by taking a guided tour of the facility. For information, call 632-1025 or visit www.atl.frb.org. After the tour, you’ll be given a small bag of (finely shredded) U. S. currency as a souvenir.
• The old gold business is booming at Barnett Jewelers at Independent Square. Susan Barnett-Ricke said with gold trading at more than $855 an ounce this week, people are bringing in broken chains and single earrings at a record pace to turn it into cash. They’re also buying a lot of 80s-style herringbone chains as well as wedding rings and other pieces she called, “bad Karma jewelry.”
• HBO will offer a sneak peek of “Recount” — the Jacksonville-shot movie about the 2000 presidential election starring Kevin Spacey — May 14 at the Florida Theatre. The movie will begin showing on HBO May 25.
“An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for years or months. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.”
– Evelle J. Younger, former Attorney General of California