Where We've Been

Have you been wondering "WTF is up with Jacksonville Confidential"? Probably not, but if you have; we're still here. The past two months have been all about change. We've been upgrading our systems and have been involved in a major renovation of our office. We'll be back real soon, bigger and better than ever. Stay tuned.

For now, please enjoy some of our classic posts, starting with one of our most favorites ever!...

This crack ho knows how to bump that sh*t, pun intended. Just wait til the end...

Accidental Dongs Galore!

Engrish Lessons

Separated at Birth

Pics of the new office and plenty of posts coming soon...

Engrish

HEY LAZY POEPLE!! PICK UP YOUR TRASH CANS
OR JUST MOVE TO DUMP SO YOU DONT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING

Sign spotted at the corner on Goodwin Street in between Myra and Dellwood in Riverside by Mark, filed under Engrish.

Engrish

Today’s Engrish is brought to you by the most-engrish-having-restaurant-in-jacksonville, Ardens Kafe & Katering in Murray Hill (1650-4 Hamilton Street), serving the best Kountry Kooking in town, including their famous fried ”Kat Fish”. The eatery has been a favorite of Westsiders for many years.

Photo by Mark

Yoji Pop

We’d like to introduce you guys to our favorite singer from last nights American Idol premier in New Jersey. Meet Yoji Pop, the 25 year old crooner from Japan who’s been imitating Michael Jackson since he was in the womb. Seriously, it took us until about a minute into the song to figure out exactly what he was singing. This video is FULL OF ENGRISH!!

Engrish

Here's a lil bit of Christmas Engrish for you guys all the way from classy Amelia Island. Michael snagged this photo of a sign in a dry cleaners' window this morning. You can barely see the sign due to the reflection but it states "We COLSE Christmas Eve New Year Eve 3:00PM".

Engrish

Jacksonville Confidential reader Sarah saw this gleaming example of Engrish at Fuji Sushi in Baymeadows (10899 Baymeadows Rd) near 9A. ”Push the Brid” to get your toothpick. We have to admit, that contraption is pretty darn cute; do they have any for sale? (You know they do, along with Fancy Chopsticks, Hello Kitty Coin Banks, and Plastic Buddhas)

Engrish

There’s a whole slew of Engrish happening in this photo. These chopsticks are brought to you by Little Saigon at 1975 Wells Road near the Orange Park Mall. Thanks to Tom for this…

Engrish

We just wanted to let everyone know that the newest sushi restaurant in supersaturated Riverside/5 Points, Yoshi Sushi, just had its ”GRAND GRANG OPENING”. Such a treat and what a way to start out, already providing us with some Engrish.

Photo by Mark

Engrish Corrected

It looks like we’ve started a trend, according to NPR some awesome guy named Jeff Deck and his friend Ben traveled around the country spotting and correcting Engrish…

”Incensed by a "no tresspassing" sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs. He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes. The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade. In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country, exploring towns and cities in search of typos. They found 437 typos, and were able to correct more than half of them. Some typos were uncorrectable -- out of the team's reach, or, as Deck tells NPR's Tony Cox, requiring tools and materials that weren't included in his "typo correction kit."

Click Here to read our (adorable) hero’s full story.

Fu Hao Bistro - Closed

Another one bites the dust, but not before leaving us with a little Engrish present, Fu Hao Bistro in 5 Points (at the corner of Park and Post Streets) has closed its doors and is ”closed for sale”. They’re also selling some of the furnishings from inside the restaurant. We wonder if the closure has anything to do with those terrible seizure inducing lights that they had flashing throughout the place. Jason swears they had the best Cashew Chicken in town, so that will be missed.

Thanks for the pic Joe(y)

Engrish

Today’s Engrish lesson is brought to you by the Jacksonville Sharks and their ”SOUVINER SODA REFILLS” and Fuji Sushi’s delicious ”Brow Rice” made from real animal brows.

Thanks to David and Mark for these submissions.

Engrish

An Engrish double-whammy just arrived to our inbox from Julio. These two completely different and incorrect spellings of “Restaurant” were spotted in the vacant space, formerly Panda Express, next to La Nopalera in San Marco. They should have tried a third time, it’s always a charm.

Engrish

Mark was traveling through the great City of Bunnell, Florida yesterday looking for an affordable lunch when he spotted a great deal at Chaps Bar & Billiards for a $5 ”Meaball” sandwich. Yum….engrish….

Engrish

If you happen over to Fuji Japanese Restaurant at 731 Duval Station Road on the North side, be sure to try out sushi roll #47, the ”Key West Roll”. It sounds absolutely delicious, Conch, Cum, and Tobiko (Flying Fish Roe). Jess and Joel spotted this Engrish while dining on such delicacies. Mmmm mmm.

Engrish

Whoa! Someone on Ernest Street in Riverside either really hates transsexuals or they are terrible at spelling (Engrish) TRESSPASSING. You be the judge, just be sure to not ”TRANSPASS” or dump (we’re thinking dog of doom) on their property.

Engrish

It's been a long time Engrish. Avid JC reader Jessica sent in this gem from O'Brothers here in Riverside. The economy sucks right now and tons of people are looking for jobs, they're hiring "proffesional" bartenders. Apply within.

Engrish Heaven - Shep's Discount

Who here has ever been to Shep's Discount (7890 Normandy Boulevard) over on the Westside? It's like a Solomon's (a Jacksonville classic and WOW they have a website!) or J&W Discount (behind Dave's Diner in Murray Hill). These places are bargain bin extravaganzas with expired what-have-you's and off-brand-throwaway's galore...anyway, these shops house a cornucopia of Engrish examples both employee and manufacturer contributed. Here is just a very small sampling of what you may find.

Engrish

It's time for an Engrish round-up. We've been aggregating submissions for about a week now, so here we go....

Jason and Mark were tooling around Atlanta a couple of weeks ago when they spotted this sign for "Crab Langoon" at a China Buffet. Pronounced "Rangoon" by the Asians, it's still spelled wrong.

Joe(y) eyed an error on the draft beer list at European Street in San Marco. "Mony Python".

Faithful reader and multiple Engrish submitter Erminda e-mailed us this gem from a posting on Craigslist. Quite the "Montley Crew". DOUBLE WHAMMY!

The Healthy Bagel Company in Lakewood (1500 University Boulevard) has posted a "No Cash on Premisses" sign to deter robberies, but it didn't deter Linda from spotting the misspelling.

Our final submission is also from Joe(y). Found on the streets of San Francisco, a street performing trumpeter touts his ability to "Perform With a High Degree of Accuacy". Maybe, but he sure can't spell with a high degree of accuracy.

Engrish

We've received quite a few Engrish submissions throughout last week and decided to just aggregate them all into one big post. Of course, none of them beat our winner of "Most Engrish in a Restaurant Menu 2009" from Al Hilm - The Dream Cafe and Hookah Lounge, but good none-the-less.

First we have a couple of selections sent by our News Room Chief Mark. Johnsons Family Flea Market is having a "Chrstmas in July" sale in September (double whammy), and the Riverside Avondale Preservation Society printed up some Neighborhood Watch "No Tresspassing" signs for last weeks meeting.

Then, sometime staff member, Tom sent over the picture below from The Terrace at Fleming Island Plantation Retirement Home. His grandmother is a resident and often has the pleasure of dining with her companions in the "Dinning Room" there. Of course "dinning" is a word, but we're assuming that this is not what's going on in that room -

din |din|
noun [in sing. ]
a loud, unpleasant, and prolonged noise : the fans made an awful din.
verb ( dinned , dinning )
1 [ trans. ] ( be dinned into) (of a fact) be instilled in (someone) by constant repetition : the doctrine that has been dinned into all our heads.
2 [ intrans. ] make a loud, unpleasant, and prolonged noise : the sound dinning in my ears was the telephone ringing.
ORIGIN Old English dyne, dynn (noun), dynian (verb), of Germanic origin; related to Old High German tuni (noun) and Old Norse dynr (noun), dynja ‘come rumbling down.’

Finally we have a picture from Jacksonville Confidential reader Kane who was vacationing in Mt. Carmel, Illinois and spotted this very crude "Pakring" sign at the local VFW.

Thanks guys and keep reading and submitting.

Engrish

Holy smokes! We told you guys in our fairly positive review of Al Hilm - The Dream Cafe and Hookah Bar that we would be doing a follow up Engrish post. Well we have a treat for you guys, we are going to go ahead and bestow the title of "Most Engrish in a Restaurant Menu 2009" to the venue. That's right, even though we are only about 3/4ths of the way through the year we feel pretty confident that AL Hilm will win....HANDS DOWN! Check it out....

May we suggest that the owners of Al Hilm give our good friend Joe(y) over at Compound Graphics a call if they want to re-do these terrible menus and special thanks to Hank for the photos.