{"id":203648,"date":"2026-03-24T09:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T09:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/203648\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T09:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T09:05:18","slug":"meet-the-regulars-at-james-weldon-johnson-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/203648\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the regulars at James Weldon Johnson Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

As James Weldon Johnson Park<\/a> celebrates its 160th year in Downtown Jacksonville, the city\u2019s oldest park is\u00a0using a photography exhibit to showcase some of the people who frequent it. And a storyteller reveals even more about the 10 park regulars.<\/p>\n

160 Years of Stories: A Photo Exhibit<\/a> tells the stories in word and portraits of the people who make the park in Jacksonville\u2019s public square what it is today.<\/p>\n

The photo exhibit is produced by Friends of James Weldon Johnson Park and the Jessie Ball duPont Center. They describe it as not a history lesson, but rather a love letter to the Jacksonville residents who make James Weldon Johnson Park the heart of the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exhibit photographer Toni Smailagic came to Jacksonville from Bosnia as a refugee and has excelled at natural-light portraiture and documentary storytelling. He is the founder of events website Cre8Jax<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Smailagic described one of the exhibit\u2019s photos in an interview Monday on WJCT\u2019s First Coast Connect<\/a> program. The photo is a portrait of Park Ambassador Randy Britt, who also does spring planting at the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, everybody sees Randy. Everybody has their own stories with Randy,\u201d Smailagic said. \u201cLike after we posted some of the preview pictures, the amount of people who either commented or talked about their experiences with Randy afterwards or the stories that they\u2019ve had, or I don\u2019t know, just even talking to Randy on a more in-depth level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Randy Britt came to Jacksonville from Chicago, living in a shelter until he got a job offer while walking through James Weldon Johnson Park to the library.<\/p>\n

The park\u2019s storyteller<\/p>\n

Pulling together the stories of those like Randy Britt is Barbara Colaciello, storyteller and artistic director at Bab\u2019s Lab<\/a>. \u201cIt was a perfect project for me. And it\u2019s always about distilling it to that experience, that moment. I was looking for visceral connections to the park,\u201d Colaciello said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Park regular Jason Benjamin plays Bit Whist in James Weldon Johnson Park in Jacksonville | Toni Smailagic<\/p>\n

Colaciello saw that in Jason Benjamin, owner of Big Baby Trucking Inc., who likes to spend part of his day in the park playing Bit Whist, a card game similar to spades. He\u2019ll start playing in the late morning and play until about 3 p.m., as long as it\u2019s not raining.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Colaciello described Benjamin to First Coast Connect host Anne Schindler as working from the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got the phone, he has a great business where stuff comes in at the docks, and he has a team that will pick it up, and he\u2019s doing all the logistical stuff on the phone, but playing his game,\u201d Colaciello said. \u201cYeah, he just loves being in the park.\u201d<\/p>\n

The photo exhibit, 160 Years of Stories: A Photo Exhibit<\/a>, runs through May in The Jessie Ball Dupont Great Hall at 40 E. Adams St.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As James Weldon Johnson Park celebrates its 160th year in Downtown Jacksonville, the city\u2019s oldest park is\u00a0using a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-203648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}