Fun at the roundabout.

The focal point of the Riverside district of Jacksonville is Five Points. Given the normal rigid street planning of American cities, it is a somewhat bizarre convergence of Margaret Street, Lomax Street and Park Street, which dog legs at the point it meets the other two streets. In many ways it resembles a British mini-roundabout, a traffic measure not often found in the United States.

Riverside residents and intelligent drivers approach this intersection in the correct manner. Park Street has the right of way and so these drivers act accordingly. Strangers to the district, and drivers of a timid disposition, approach gingerly along Park Street and often stop at the junction with Margaret Street, even though there is no stop sign present.

Of course, an added complication to what can be, for some, a confusing arrangement is the lazy attitude of a lot of Florida drivers. Is it really too much effort to use a car's indicators and give other road users a heads up as to your next maneuver? Close observation from many hours spent at the Hovan restaurant, on the corner of Margaret and Park, coupled with those from behind the wheel of my car suggest the effort is indeed too great.

Many is the time that I wince as cars turn left from Park Street or cross Park Street from Margaret Street. I turn my head and wait for the sound of crunching metal but amazingly, like a sequence from a Keystone Cops film, the cars manage to miss one another.

The other night, from my vantage point on the Hovan restaurant’s patio, a black guy on a bicycle approached Park Street from Margaret Street, ignored the stop sign and simply held his left arm aloft as if that would protect him from oncoming traffic. Miraculously it did. I just sat there shaking my head in disbelief. Thirty minutes later, and in the fast fading light, he did exactly the same on his return.

But that kind of behavior sums up Five Points and the Riverside district. It is a place where convention is flouted and it is all the richer for being thus. I wouldn’t want to live in any other part of Jacksonville.