- 5/30 Poor People on 192 Subject of Cannes Film Festival Hit "The Florida Project"
- 5/23 Hourglass District to be Hub for Foxtail Coffee, Craft Beer Brewery, Woodfire Pizza, Farmers Market and More
- 10/8 50-Unit Shipping Container Apartment Complex Homes Coming to Orlando
- 4/17 Blaze Pizza in Winter Park Gives Out Free Pizza April 18th
- 4/12 Halal Guys Coming to Orlando from New York City
- 10/28 UPDATE - Dexters Heath Inspection Reveals 32 Violations and a "Local" Brand of Wisconsin Chorizo
- 2/19 Mass MRKT Lakeland Food Hub and Event Space Set to Open This Spring
- 4/21 Olde Dixie Fried Chicken Food Truck Coming Mid-June
- 11/11 Nasty Old SODO McDonalds to be Knocked Down and Rebuilt Like That Nasty Old SODO Arbys
- 11/20 Parents Name Newborn After Olive Garden
I am grateful for every click readers choose to give me. Bringing back this blog from the dead was a slow and steady, be happy with every click you get, write about what you want, write when you want effort. Getting back into the routine of being 100% responsible for 100% of the content took a year. 2017 was a year of getting back on the horse.
The Daily City grew slowly in popularity 2007-2012. It won all the blog awards, I was invited to City of Orlando brainstorms and I was putting on special events like Orland's first pop up shop, pop up dinner, recurring U-Haul art show, Cardboard Art Festival, Taco Truck Taste Test and eventually the gigantically successful Food Truck Bazaar. I loved what I and many many others had created: this little brand that could do a blog and events.
And then I caused its downfall (1) I turned my attention to Food Truck Bazaar which by 2012 had turned into a legit real business and (2) I fired my writer. Bazaar started as a one-night event but I turned it into a 8-15 night a MONTH event. While the decision to focus on Bazaar was the adult thing to do (I was a poor and old-ish), it took my attention away from the blog which was my passion and how everything got started. My passion was the blog... and yet I screwed that up by firing the one person who was creating content for it.
Bazaar flourished and The Daily City died.
In February 2016 I announced I was closing the blog after 9 years in business. Orlando Sentinel wrote about the closing which shocked me because I felt it'd been dead a long time. At that point in 2016, The Daily City had just no relevance anymore. It was gone.
Then in 2017 I told myself to screw my 5-posts-a-day requirement and (1) write when I felt like it and (2) write about what I personally was interested in and (3) celebrate any clicks I got ever. If I got 50 clicks I would make myself say "Awesome!" These three things brought me back to life slowly over 2017.
I am so proud of myself for completing 714 posts on my own based on enjoying the simple mental rewards I gave myself.
Thank you for reading.
-Mark Baratelli
-Mark Baratelli