No, I am not Paris Hilton, or as a second title, you could call this the post about a photo book of Gainesville.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, I am sure a question often comes up in your minds. Is “Bill from Gainesville” really Paris Hilton? Short answer, I am not, however I get how you might think that.

Paris lives in the world. You may see her being followed by Paparazzi in L.A. one day, NY City the next, the day after, it might be Las Vegas. She lives everywhere, just like me, except, You know, completely different. While she is jet setting between NY, LA, Chicago, and Vegas, etc. I am driving my car between Miami, which is my home, to my other home, Gainesville.

She is Paris HILTON, I might as well be called; Bill LAQUINTA.

She gets to stay free at any Hilton in the world. I get to stay free at the LaQuinta in Gainesville on every tenth visit for one night. She is Beautiful, So yes, I see how you could make the mistake of thinking I am actually her.

Part of what we Jet Setters do is blog about our various Cities that we live in. I once wrote a post about how similar I am to Tiger Woods and it ended up being a shill for a coffee table book of Historic Photos of Miami. http://stuffyouthinkyouneed.blogspot.com/2008/04/paid-advertisement.html

This post is similar to that post, in that I am not really a professional golfer, nor am I an Heiress to a hotel chain. I will tell you about an Awesome book that Turner Publishing sent me for free, only asking that I write a post about it.
Their website is http://www.turnerpublishing.com/ and the book is: Historic Photos of Gainesville.




This past weekend I saw it on the shelves of Borders, the one on Newberry road, right across the street from the Red Lobster and just down a bit from the intersection of I-75. You can get it there, or you can order it from Amazon. It is such an awesome book.

Page 55 has a picture of Newnan’s lake. We used to go down to that very same lake when we skipped school during my High School days, only we didn’t wear suits with funny little hats and stand on Cut logs, nor did we help over dressed ladies into cutout canoes.

Page 57 has a picture of Hogtown creek at the point where today, 34th street exists. The belt I am wearing right now came from the Benchmark that is on that very corner. The place had a lot more trees in 1905, not that there aren’t still tons of them, I mean the city is called Tree City for a reason.


Page 85 has a photograph of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church taken in 1905. In 1991 it would burn down, but in the rebuilt version, my daughter was baptized in 1997 and my son in 2001.

Page 135 has a picture of what later on becomes the Seagal building, circa 1925, it wasn’t called that then and wouldn’t be completed until ten years later. The guy who started it went broke, kind of like lots of developers of high rises here in Miami today.

The corner of University and 13th street looked a whole lot different in the 1920’s then it does now. My college Fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon was located on that corner then, now, there is a Holiday inn, a Leonardo’s Pizza and the wall that announces the campus of the University of Florida. (I was an SAE, just not at U of F) This photo is on page 139.

Page 148 has a picture of Florida field from 1931. It looks a lot different then it does now. In 1981 and 1982 I played High school football on that same field, and my wife who I didn’t know then, played clarinet during halftimes of her High School’s games when they played city rivals.

During football season I often tailgate right by the Century tower. A picture of this bad boy circa 1955 is found on page 194. (thats my thumb, I know sexy, just like Paris' thumb)




The book looks awesome on my coffee table. It would look good on yours as well, especially if you are a Gainesvillian. Coffee tables need coffee table books, and besides, men don’t wear hats like they used to either, so having a bunch of photos of old time dudes wearing hats is just an absolute bonus.

Finally, when my parents first moved to Gainesville we lived in the Flavets. I was two years old and found myself living on a college campus, partying with coeds, discussing Sartre and Machevelli and economics and stuff, you know living the life. Now the flavet village has long been gone, a dormitory exists their now, but that place accross the street from right field of Perry Field is still home to my very first memories (probably towards the end of my stay there, when I was about five years old)