It’s been a great semester, bucket-listers. Too bad it’s almost over.
I hope you’ve been inspired to be a little more pro-active during your time in Gainesville. Maybe now you’re keeping your eyes and ears peeled for potential adventures/blog submissions.
In true procrastinator form, I’ve taken it upon myself these last few weeks to cram in several bucket-list musts before I head home for the holidays. I won’t be back in Gainesville until next fall, but hopefully we can keep this blog going with guest submissions and firsthand accounts of weekend adventures.
If you’re short on experiences and tight on time, do some of these mini experiences before hitting I-75.
1. The Satchel’s Pizza Van
Hopefully you’ve been to Satchel’s. It’s an obvious bucket list selection for the awesome environment, signature salad and truly delicious pizza. I’ve made the trip more times than I can count, heading east on Northwest 23rd Avenue for miles and miles, but I had missed out on a critical part of the experience: landing a seat in the Satch van.
That changed Wednesday. Due to some smart maneuvering — well, mainly that we dined at around 6:15 p.m. Wednesday of a week of finals — my party of four landed the elusive van.
The aqua van, outfitted with a wooden bench and free-standing chairs and tables, can fit about two small- to medium-sized parties. Twinkle lights glowing above our heads made the experience even cuter.
The wooden bench got a little uncomfortable after a while, but trust me when I say the day-after soreness is worth the experience. Don’t forget to bring a Sharpie so you can add your own, ahem, artwork to the table, ceiling, chair, window or whatever other surface you find in there.
And just for the sake of envious salivation, here are some tiny pics of the delicious grub from our night. There was a devil’s food cake, but it was somehow devoured much too fast for the camera.
Don’t forget about the restaurant’s fittingly quirky hours: It’s open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1o p.m.
Bring cash and patience — the van is worth the wait.
2. Brophy’s Karaoke Nights
All semester long, gathering the nerve to arrange a karaoke night with friends was on my personal list of musts. I consider myself a Rock Band aficionado, but singing in front of strangers is considerably more frightening than friends (though I’ve secretly dreamed of it for, say, my entire life). After putting it off for as long as possible, three close friends and I went to Brophy’s Irish Pub, located downtown at 60 S.W. Second Ave., for Thursday night karaoke, per a friend’s recommendation.
The songs play from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., and the playlist is ex-ten-sive. Seriously, don’t look at the book for too long or you may not be able to sing at all — that’s what nearly happened to me. I was the last performance of the night before staffers started taking tips to keep playing (and to think, they almost missed out on a lovely rendition of Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger”).
I suggest coming in with a roster of crowd-pleasing songs you know (i.e. anything heinous from the ’80s, well-known country songs, classic rock) so you can ensure a performance and sign up quickly. It’s important to keep everyone in the bar happy — try to avoid somber numbers unless you’re confident you’ll rock it!
Overall, the pub is laid-back, accepting and comfy — I loved the wraparound couches.
3. Choose your own adventure!
For the postmodern bucket-lister: my multimedia reporting class recently launched a Web site called Glimpse/Gainesville that is chock full of stories detailing potential bucket list experiences (including the Morningside Nature Center video I posted earlier this week). The videos, slideshows and blog posts on this site were produced by students in our UF class over the course of this semester. For many of us, including yours truly, it was our first time creating pieces like this — be gentle.
The Web site contains stories about Satchel’s, the Santa Fe Community College Teaching Zoo, Lillian’s, Magnolia Plantation bed and breakfast, and self-defense classes on campus, among other profiles. You’ll also notice that bucket list posts about Burrito Brothers and the Friends of the Library book sale made the cut, too. Just sayin’.
Rapid fire community suggestions
These are delivered, some jokingly, via Twitter and Facebook:
RT @tandrew belligerent comments during Gainesville City Commission!
RT @kfreilly Stay in town when everyone else has gone home. Gainesville becomes a different city.
From Dominick Tao: Late-night games of capture the flag, hide-and-seek or assassin on the UF campus. When running for your life, the North Lawn never seemed so long.
That’s it for now, everyone. Thanks for reading.








My friends and I agree that the classic literature section looked the most picked over, though there are still plenty of copies of “Sister Carrie” available (I include this because I read that novel for a class this semester and understand why someone would decline to put in her or his basket.)



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