Joseph Hayes

freelance writer

If it's of interest, I write about it. Restaurant reviews and critical essays on theater and movies. Profiles of jazz musicians and leaders in the business community. Traveling - and eating - in Italy and New Orleans. My piece on the environmental impact of sushi (in 2001, years ahead of the "green" media) was distributed online internationally and featured as a cover story in several cities and two countries.

[articles...]

  • Expanding on Genius

    In 1902 artist, designer and businessman Louis Comfort Tiffany began construction on a multimillion dollar estate on the western shore of Cold Spring Harbor in Long Island, N.Y. He named it Laurelton Hall and designed every aspect of the 84-room house, from its copper roof to its furniture to the silverware on the dining room table. Taking three years to complete, it would become a testament to his immense and wide-ranging talent. It also was considered Tiffany's greatest work.
    read more► (    Winter Park Magazine)

  • Rivers' Edge

    Musicians call sheet music a chart. Like a diagram or a map, it’s designed to help them get somewhere; specifically, it leads them through the changing chords of a particular tune. When you’re a musician in the 18-piece RivBea Orchestra, the charts written by jazz-saxophone legend Sam Rivers are maps of a very convoluted road.
    read more► (    Orlando Magazine)

  • Hunger on the Prowl

    10:30, Saturday night. It’s quiet outside Jimmy John’s, a downtown sandwich shop poised like a corner umbrella salesman on a rainy night. “When the bars close,” I’m told by a kid behind the counter, “all anyone wants is pizza, pita or us.” Black-clad delivery kids in groups of three hustle boxes of subs out the door as I order a “Beach Club”: turkey, provolone and veggies. The 8-inch hoagie is bland and underwhelming, but when you’ve partied until 2 a.m. and that red “JJ” sign on Orange Avenue beckons, bland could be just the ticket.
    11:30 p.m. Partiers in a startling variety of shapes and sizes hop noisily from bar to bar. The rule on this muggy night is short, slim, speedy. Women in miniature skirts strut by on laser-beam heels so high they make my feet hurt. They pause to watch two immaculately tailored men pass, shaved heads and pressed lapels gleaming in the streetlights, then continue on toward Church Street. A spaghetti-thin man chain-smokes down to The Social. I doubt that he eats at Jimmy John’s; the attempt would resemble an anaconda digesting a brick.
    Almost 1 a.m. Lines are forming across the street at Pita Pit; JJ’s is quiet on the outside but bustling inside, a half-dozen sammichistas slicing meats in anticipation of the rush. Orange Avenue is closed to cars; the foot traffic spills off the sidewalk and forms one large crowd dressed in sequins and torn denim.
    1:45 a.m. A queue of sandwich-craving late-nighters wraps around the corner. Jimmy John’s target audience—hungry bar evacuees, taste buds deadened by alcohol—waits to devour cold cuts between the hip-hop beats from cars cruising on Central Boulevard. On the corner, a street preacher with a microphone froths that “we’re all going to hell.” A chunky kid in jeans and T-shirt enters the shop, commenting to no one: “I’m getting a sandwich first.”