FIRST-TIME DINERS at Michael John's (regulars refer to it as MJ's) Bradenton brasserie might be in for a shock since this classy--and pricey--restaurant is tucked into a
down-at-the-heels strip mall on the outer fringes of the gated Carlton Arms apartment complex.
A
down-at-the-heels advertising copywriter when he hit on the idea, he originally meant it as a joke.
Alas, this sweet spot soon soured as the proximity of noisy neighbors, and the general
down-at-the-heels aura of the town of Guerneville, prodded my restless spirit to action.
No sensible young girl wants to stay in Gypsum, Missouri, especially the
down-at-the-heels neighborhood the rich kids call Trashtown.
I like a genuinely depraved,
down-at-the-heels town, wait staff with vacant eyes, the whole suffused by a pervasive sense of despair.
Kratchman reworked the overall character of the existing,
down-at-the-heels building, giving his client-family a "new," elegant, upper Madison Avenue-style, single-family townhouse mansion, now consisting of six floors plus a usable, excavated cellar, stretching the building from three to six floors and increasing the usable living space from 4,400 to 6,670 s/f., an increase of 2,270 s/f.
With Teddy, it was like being stuck next to a lonely person on a plane, or in his
down-at-the-heels case it would be a bus, and having to listen to story after story about his life in show business.
The
down-at-the-heels salesman is not conspicuous, even among the passing suits and fashionable women, for there are other vendors under the elevated railway, a nether region of greasy spoons and the hard-up, a penumbra fringing the great white way of Ginza.
As principal of his own Alexandria, Va., firm, Moore has renovated many
down-at-the-heels houses in the Northern Virginia area and brought them into the 2ist century.
At various spots around town,
down-at-the-heels commercial buildings are being given new life.
The overall feeling is not exactly one of film-noir dissolution, but one that definitely does invoke the sort of
down-at-the-heels waterfront ambience that is commonly associated with Glasgow, where the film takes place.
The Robesons are old settlers in this once
down-at-the-heels urban neighborhood very recently gone trendy and upscale.
Among Silicon Valley households, which have prospered far more than most, the ratio of giving to income is just 2.1 percent, scarcely distinguishable from the national average and well below the figures for such
down-at-the-heels states as Alabama (2.5 percent) and Idaho (2.4 percent).
Well into the novel, Astley reveals that the narrator is a woman named Janet, a newcomer to the bush town and the operator of a
down-at-the-heels news agency where no one buys reading matter, for they are all television addicts.
Although the world's big brewers may not be interested in
down-at-the-heels countries like Mozambique, many have sniffed around South Africa.
