What's Wrong With Florida?

Is it just me or does Florida seem to have a disproportionate number of stories like this?
Weird Mother and Daughter

I've told you, I see shit on the news in Florida that you just don't see anywhere else. Like the news story about the beating death in the convenience store, and nobody called 911. I thought it was about the clerk getting beaten during a robbery. Nope, the clerk went outside the store and beat a customer to DEATH, while not only did the other customers not call for help, but they calmly continued shopping. I mean, God forbid we run out of beer and Slim Jims!

Lilo, Florida is a strange mix of back-ass hillbillies and transplants from the North.

OMG!! Mother/daughter bonding, how sweet.

You are NOT alone Lilo, but it wasn't til recent years that I concluded FL is a tad "weird/odd/different"???? Take your pick.

Are they not the only state to have the "stand your ground" rule? Anyway, even their Governor is weird. Or, let me put it this way, he gives me the creeps. I expect his head to start spinning, if you now what I mean.


TIS

Edit. Of course California has absolutely NO weirdos or oddities whatsoever.

Florida is great, but yes, very strange.

There are a lot of transients there, and a ton of people "starting over." Not to mention the fugitives .

There's also a growing homeless population because the homeless in the north are figuring out that it's easier to be homeless where there's no snow (I shouldn't laugh, because homelessness in't funny).

But it's a gorgeous state with great weather, so it's it's going to attract people till the end of time. I've mentioned this before, but if you really want to laugh pick up a Dave Barry or a Carl Hiaasen column. Those guys will make you pee even when they're writing seriously.

My daughter, who's lived in South Florida for 14 years, says that there's a volatile mixture of wealth and poverty (breeding fear and resentment); overcrowding; and a high percentage of recent or fairly recent immigrants from totalitarian regimes who are used to having to grab and push for everything in life.

And that's just in Boca .

I also watched a show which said the Everglades were full of released pythons........

Thats a trip there knocked off the old Bucket List

Your English, Yogi. The Florida sun would vaporize you .

Been to the Everglades and done the airboat tour a couple of times. I've never seen a python, Yogi, so c'mon down! You'll be safe, if the 'gators don't get you! LOL

Florida is at the bottom; everything drains into it.

Florida's just a weird mix of everything in my opinion. You can't put a single label on it.

My father-in-law lived there and he loved it. Perfect reason for me not to go there.

They should cut Florida off at the Georgia border and let it float out to the Caribbean.

I have the opposite. My mother-in-law went on vacation there, hated it, and that's why I love it.

My Dad (RIP) lived near Daytona Beach. I love it there.

Those must be some "interesting" family reunions.
What's that joke? If you go to a family reunion to pick up chicks, you might be in Florida?

Thats okay Babe, i don't have a pathological fear of gators like i do with serpents

I heard on the radio today that State Conservation people are encouraging the killing of the Burmese python. They are not native species and they are upsetting the natural eco-system. They have no natural enemies. So, here comes man.

About 20 years ago, I was at a business meeting (read: junket) at a Marriott resort in the Jacksonville area. I went for a run to the beach from the resort. The run took me across some open land near a creek. While stopping to, uh, relieve myself,I spotted fresh 'gator tracks right alongside the path. I think I broke the world's broken-field running record for the 200-yard dash to get out of there.

We have friends who moved to Vero Beach. They have a "lake" (a man-made pond by any other standards) in their development adjacent to their house. They regularly have to call Animal Control because of the gators that make their home there.

I swear, I could NEVER get use to gators. I'd be screaming and running in the house, calling animal control, all the time.


TIS

Then look away, Tis. You scaredy cat .

I posted this once before. Here's a pic from April 2010 of a gator that got on our condo grounds in Delray Beach, Florida. What's weird is, we're east of the Intracoastal, where gator sightings are supposed to be less frequent because they usually run away from the salt water. But tell that to this little guy:

He is a fine specimen PB, a bit like myself

If he had a Guinness in his teeth, I bet you could take him, Yogs.

Aw, you bet PB. I would take him down just for the fun of it. We be crazy us limeys

It's funny, Yogi. In our little town in Florida, there's a great English pub called the Blue Anchor. I think I sent you a link once before. Anway, when we're down there we eat there at least once a week. The pub grub is great (liver and onions, shepherd's pie, etc.). I also sneak there a few days a week by myself .

http://www.theblueanchor.com/

Yes you have sent me the link before, It looks like a really great place, i would certainly visit!

I swear, even in America, the stout tastes different in an English pub. Maybe I'm nuts.

I do like the occasional stout.

Or a frequent stout even

Attack of the land snails. Gross.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/15/us/florida-giant-snails/

From what I know Florida is really a cheap state to live in, the cost of living is really low. Plus it's warm weather, sunny and if there's no snow means you have less payments for heat in winter. I guess the cheap living is attracting all kinds of people than anywhere else.

Depends where you go. Towns like Coral Gables, Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Naples and Marco Island have some of the highest property values in the United States. Then again, some parts of Central Florida have some of the lowest. But I do suspect that those snails came into the country from somewhere in the so-called "third world." Most likely somewhere in South America.

What about Orlando? I'm more or less looking to live there when I move to the U.S., at least for the time to get settled.

Orlando is a mixed bag. First of all, it goes without saying that it's very touristy because of Disney. But that doesn't mean that it isn't a nice place to live. My nephew moved there a few years ago when he graduated and he loves it. Just keep in mind that the rest of Orange County can get pretty boring. But that isn't always a bad thing. Depends what you're looking for. Windermere is only about ten miles outside of Orlando and it's consistenly voted one of the nicest small towns in America. Nearby Kissimmee is also pretty popular nowadays. If you want to be in Central Florida but live closer to the beach, try Melbourne or Cocoa Beach. My wife and I live in Florida for about four months a year, but much further south in Delray Beach. Hope this helps .

Thank you very much for the info

"Florida - America's weirdest state"
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/24/florida-americas-weirdest-state/


"Crazy Florida!"
http://crazyflorida.tumblr.com/

It's probably my Laptops fault but the 1st link takes me to this - http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ 2nd - http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/sp
3rd - http://crazyflorida.tumblr.com/

No, I screwed up the links. Sorry. I fixed the ones that were fixable.

The 1st link is still this - http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/

the 2nd is nothing - http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/sp

the 3rd is unnecessary imo - http://crazyflorida.tumblr.com/

Did you try scrolling down. Because I clicked on it and it's working now.

Edit: I just posted it below.

Florida: America's Weirdest State
AOL News
April 24, 2011


It's the state of butterfly ballots, gator farms and oversized mice.

It's the retirement hub discovered by a Spaniard rumored to have lost his life hunting for the legendary Fountain of Youth.

It's the only place in America where the farther north you go, the farther south you get.

Florida is undeniably a quirky place. But among many journalists and news junkies, the Sunshine State has developed a reputation for being the state that generates the most weird news and the weirdest weird news.

How did a state once famous for its oranges and seniors turn into a hub for all things strange?

According to Florida resident and weird news legend Chuck Shepherd, Florida emerged as a weird news capital a little more than a decade ago.

Shepherd -- credited with inventing weird news reporting in his widely syndicated "News of the Weird" column -- said he knew Florida had come into its own in the late 1990s, when the San Francisco alternative newspaper SF Weekly featured a story on men who surgically remove their sexual organs; two of the paper's three sources were Floridians.

"When a San Fran writer on sexual aberrations has to buy a ticket to the 'F' state to fill out his story, we have a winner," he told AOL News.

Florida historian Gary Mormino agrees that the Sunshine State overtook California as "the new capital of weirdness" in the 1990s or 2000s.

"The rationale used to be that America tilted toward the west and all the nuts rolled to California," said Mormino, a history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. "Now, perhaps, there's been a tectonic shift and America tilts toward the southeast."

For many Americans, that shift first became noticeable in 2000, when Florida bizarrely hurled itself onto the national stage in the aftermath of the contested presidential election.

In the years since, analysis of Associated Press stories has identified Florida as the nation's strangest state, while popular websites like Gawker.com have turned the Sunshine State into a punchline.

Readers of Fark.com categorize news stories with descriptive tags, including "asinine," "obvious," "weird" and "interesting." The only state honored with its own tag is Florida, a keyword on the site since 2001.

"Newest Florida bumper sticker: My honor student pistol-whipped me," read one snarky headline assigned a Florida tag last month.

"Fark put it up, thinking it would be a temporary thing, but we quickly discovered that there were more than enough strange things happening in Florida to warrant the tag," said Tony Deconinck, a Fark admin and AOL Weird News contributor. "Other states have odd stories come out of them, but no state can challenge Florida. It's the heavyweight champion of weirdness."

Here at AOL Weird News, journalists have written more weird news stories about Florida than any other state -- and with pieces about a mom accused of driving her son's getaway car, an orthodontist who repairs turtle shells, bags of stolen dildos, and a bikini brawl at a Burger King -- it's safe to say we're doing it for good reason.

Though Florida only recently achieved recognition for producing so much weird news, the state has an odd history dating back centuries.

From Spanish colonization through American statehood, Florida played host to a variety of eccentric characters and strange happenings, like the "wreckers" who turned Key West into one of the continent's wealthiest communities by legally plundering sinking ships and auctioning their cargo.

But according to Mormino, the Florida we know today -- a "fast-paced and over-the-top" place that is, in many ways, the least southern state in the South -- only emerged in the 1920s.

"You had the wealthy building homes in Miami Beach," Mormino said. "There were the 'Tin Can Tourists' -- the respectable middle class and the working poor -- coming to Florida for the first time in automobiles. That was the beginning of the alligator farms, ostrich farms; the start of the crazy tourist destinations."

That's also when a speculative real estate bubble inflated and burst, setting the bar, in many ways, for a culture of lax regulation that continues in Florida even today.

With a history of lenient divorce laws, it's no surprise that Panama City, among other Florida communities, tops national charts as a divorce capital.

Meanwhile, Florida's "homestead exemption" has long protected private property from creditors, making Florida a place where the bankrupt and highly indebted -- including celebs like O.J. Simpson -- have shielded their assets.

Florida has even advertised its bizarre legal loopholes with the iconic 1980s tourism slogan "Florida: The Rules Are Different Here."

Indeed they are. (This is the state where lawmakers are still struggling to pass a bill that would make bestiality illegal.)

Thankfully for readers of weird news, the rules are also different when it comes to public records laws.

Will Greenlee, the reporter who maintains the Treasure Coast Newspapers' "Off The Beat" blog, said it's unclear whether Florida actually generates more weird news than other states -- or if more weird news stories just happen to find their way into Florida newspapers.

"You may be hearing about it more (than in other states) because the open records laws are very liberal in Florida," Greenlee said. "It's easier to get access to police reports and things that might not be as accessible in other places."

Greenlee spends his days scouring police reports and scanning mug shots in search of newsworthy items, like the story of a suspect who allegedly called 911 to ask about airfares to Guatemala; the time Vanilla Ice's kangaroo and goat escaped and ran wild through Port St. Lucie; and the incident involving a man who deputies claim hid crack in his, well, crack.

"It's certainly not what they taught me in journalism school," he said.

Though Greenlee himself is a Florida native, he said part of what makes the state strange is the fact that it attracts so many outsiders.

"It doesn't seem like anybody is really from Florida -- it just seems like a transient state where all the miscreants wind up," Greenlee said.

According to census data, only about a third of Floridians were born in the Sunshine State.

Barbara Hijek, the blogger behind the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's popular "FloriDUH" blog, said it's the "odd mixes of people" -- "from bootleggers to Baptists" -- that make Florida bizarre.

"A lot of people drifted south to Florida to reinvent themselves. It's an odd juxtaposition of people that makes it so interesting," said Hijek, who has been covering weird news in Florida seven days a week for the past three years.

Hijek's stories spotlight utterly absurd incidents, including a man arrested for allegedly masturbating atop the roof of a club and a woman accused of driving while shaving her bikini line.

Though Florida has been inhabited for thousands of years and is home to the oldest continuously occupied European city in the U.S., large numbers of people only began moving to the state following World War II. That influx transformed what had been the least populous state in the South into the fourth (soon to be third) largest state in the nation.

These new residents helped turn Florida into a destination with a cutting-edge art scene, an international music scene, posh neighborhoods, top-flight resorts and world-class amusement parks, among other attractions.

But with so many people coming from such different backgrounds, Florida was bound to become a place like no other.

"Florida is both a deep Southern state and the northernmost province of the Caribbean," said Mormino, who teaches courses on modern Florida. "Everyone seems to cluster in Florida -- you've got a million immigrants from Cuba alongside retired Jews from the northeast."

Each Floridian has a different reason for living in Florida, but according to Mormino, much of the state's strangeness comes from the fact that so many of its residents are dreamers.

"It's a 'dream state,'" he said. "It combines the American dream for immigrants with the dream of the promise of a better life or a second chance."

In Mormino's eyes, Florida is so odd because it's a place people go to escape their pasts and pursue their fantasies -- weird as they may be.

"Only California and Florida are legitimate 'dream states,'" Mormino said. "You have the sand dunes, the palm trees, and the promise of a better life ... or at least a better February."

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/24/florida-americas-weirdest-state/

Thanks

Very few people other than retirees and refugees from Cuba and Haiti have Florida at the top of their lists as destination for life.

For many it is a place where people who have failed elsewhere dome to re-invent themselves. Usually this re-invention includes an allergy to pay taxes for little things like schools, transit, health care and the like, so other than the overrated weather, and the overpriced waterfront there is not really much here. Considering that Disney is the cultural touchstone of the place, it is clear this is no haven for intellectuals. There are no writers' artists' musicians' colonies here to speak of, but instead a collection of small business owners and their employees who have little interest in anything but whatever project they are doing to their homes.

Even the sports franchises here sufffer. Argably the most exciting team in the AL East, the Rays, has 300 yes THREE HUNDRED season tickets sold for this season. Red Sox and Yankee fans travel here for weeekend series, stay in hotels, go out to eat, and go to the games for less than a single ticket costs them at home.

I could go on about the web of corruption that passes for government and a justice system, but won't bore you.

Suffice it to say, anyplace that claims "Margaritaville" as its State Song, and does so with pride is pretty f*cked.

Never been to Key West?

I know what you're doing, DT. It's exactly what Carl Hiaasen does. He emphasizes all the bad stuff in hopes that it will keep people away and the building will come to a halt. Didn't work for Carl. Won't work for you .

Although I wouldn't want to live in FL 12 months a year, mostly because my family is in NY, it is my goal to become a snowbird. It may take me a few more years, but that would be heaven. I don't understand how the restaurants can give the deals they do (and some of them are after 5 pm!).

The supermarkets are fairly expensive. The food is no bargain. It's actually less expensive in most cases to eat out.

The best bargain was Lobster Night at the Ale House. Three lobster dinners, 6 Tequila Sunrises, one Lemonade and a brownie sundae, all for $60.

So you are on to me!