Learn me: why Florida?

Given that the mag is based in Florida, and there seem to be an awful lot of dorks living there, this seems like a good place to ask.  Why?

It's a sincere question.  I am not here to roast Florida.  I've never been there, and my knowledge of the place is limited to memes, anecdotes, stereotypes, and whatever comes over the wire about weather and politics - and let me be clear that I'm not discussing the latter one way or another, just acknowledging it as one of the few sources of information (noise) that reach me.  There's also entertainment media (of which I consume very little), which typically stereotypes the state either as Miami Vice or a Carl Hiaasen novel.  Or that b* Carole Baskin...

What little I know, or think I know, is that it's flat, sunny, hot, humid, prone to hurricanes, densely populated, and there may or may not be alligators and snakes in unexpected places.  As someone who grew up in a rural, mountainous part of the west coast and has the complexion of a vampire, those are all things I struggle with.  And it's probably not fair to the state or people who live there.  An awful lot of people either choose to stay or decide to move there, so there must be something to it.

Having confessed my considerable ignernce, I have to ask: why Florida?

I lived here first because the Air Force sent me to Hurlburt Field in Ft. Walton Beach on the panhandle.  That area wasn't as densely populated back then but after Hurby they sent me to Korea.  There I saw more snow than I ever wanted in life.  After getting out I had an opportunity to move to Jacksonville so I took it.  What I like about Jacksonville is no one is from here.  It's a great mixing pot of people from all over the country.  You learn to appreciate different cultures and ways of doing things.  We're far enough north that it's not unbearablly hot.  As far as densely populated that's only the coast and the people in Orlando.  Much of the state away from the coast is country and acreage is pretty cheap.  It's been a couple of years since I've seen a gator, can't remember the last time I saw a venomous snake.  Honestly you have four very different areas in Florida.  South Florida, Orlando, North Florida, and the Panhandle.  Other than a mountain region I think anyone could find an area or several that they would like.

Edit - You might relate to this more since you're west coast.  Thinking that Florida is all the same is like thinking all of California is like LA instead of breaking it down to South California, Central, and Northern.

I lived in New York and Michigan around my college years.  I remember the one perfect week of weather in April and another in September.  Florida has that weather form January to March.

Air conditioning is universal.  If you work inside, you are only hot when you walk to and from your car.

The government is funded by tourism so our taxes are low and fees are high.  It means my effective tax rate is lower than most other states.  On the other hand, I would not to want to live here near the poverty line because benefits are low.

We have a weird set of laws that make all arrests public records.  That leads to most of the Florida Man type news stories.  I assume dumb people live in other states too.  They just have a stronger right to privacy.

Hurricanes aren't that bad.  You see them coming if you are paying attention.  I had 8 days of notice for Milton.  Most Floridians don't leave until they are definitely getting hit by a category 3.  Living in east central Florida, Dorian in 2019 was the last one that scared me enough to consider evacuating.  Flooding is scary and tornadoes are extremely scary but they aren't limited to Florida.

I have looked at east coast alternatives.  Eastern Tennessee is probably the most likely for me.  It has a similar low tax/high fee system to fund the government.  The government sounds roughly as dysfunctional as Florida.  Trading the ocean for the Appalachian foothills is a reasonable trade.  Trading hurricanes for a month or two of 35 degrees weather with icy rain is a harder decision.

Stampie said:

Thinking that Florida is all the same is like thinking all of California is like LA instead of breaking it down to South California, Central, and Northern.

That's an excellent analogy that I was thinking of as I wrote up my first post.  I grew up in a tiny gold rush town era timber town in far northern California, and had a hell of a time explaining to people who'd only ever seen California through movies and TV that we had four seasons.  Some were surprised to learn that I had seen snow, was not wealthy, did not live on the beach, and had, in fact, never met Madonna.  Oregon is the same way; I live near Eugene, which checks all the Oregon stereotype boxes, but east of the Cascades is a very different place, and not at all homogenous. 

ojannen said:

I have looked at east coast alternatives.  Eastern Tennessee is probably the most likely for me.  It has a similar low tax/high fee system to fund the government.  The government sounds roughly as dysfunctional as Florida.  Trading the ocean for the Appalachian foothills is a reasonable trade.  Trading hurricanes for a month or two of 35 degrees weather with icy rain is a harder decision.

That's interesting.  I have roots there (Morgan County) a few generations back but, like FL, have never been.  Although I don't mind the cold and would choose TN for the geography in a heartbeat, I can see how that might be a tough decision for some.

I moved to SW FL ( SWFL=everything below Tampa) out of college in '07. The economy was on fire and I wanted to invest in real estate. Luckily I was flat broke until around 2009 and by that time the market crash had happened so I was buying duplexs for 50k, two chickens and a pack of lucky strikes. I also knew there was a demographic wave coming as the Baby Boomers retired. Basically, I came to that part of Florida to make money.

Now that I have money, I'm gone. 

A lot of mid-westerners choose to retire there because they start vacationing there when they were younger. Rte 75 goes right up through Michigan, so a lot of folks from WI, MN, MI, IN, OH, KY, etc, etc. have dreamed about retiring to the beach where they spent time when they were younger. 

 Caveat - typing this on my phone, so editing is suspect.  Items below are listed in steam of consciousness order.....beware....

I was born in TN, but my folks moved to FL when I was 13. I like both places immensely and I've traveled a lot for business.

Here's my Florida, about 20 miles from Grassroots/Classic Motorsports headquarters.  I live directly on the Intracoastal river/waterway near Ponce Inlet.  I have dolphins, manatees, and sea turtles off my dock 365 days a year.  I drop my boat in off my electric lift in 10 minutes.... Available almost 365; days a year.  As a teenager, we would waterski during Christmas vacation regularly, I live 20 minutes from Daytona Beach International Speedway and have been attending the 24 hours of and on for 50+ years and race there (SCCA).  Sebring is less than 3; hours away and I race there from time to time as well.  I see most rocket launches form the Cape Kennedy from my front yard. The weather is heavenly for about 8 months of the year (summer is brutal).  I had 100 mph wind  in my backyard Wednesday night, bit we are already 95 percent back to normal two days later (lucky that way).  Some of the best, if not the best surfing on the East Coast is two miles away as the crow flies (farther by car).  I've had my highly modified bugeye Sprite for 50 years alongside my Lotus Elan and just sold my Lotus Europa to a friend in Santa Barbara.  There's are many classics here (it's a muscle car stronghold).  Good car club activity.

We have no income tax, our state is well run.  You can do the Disney/universal/sea world thing if you like that (about 50-60 miles away).  We have the largest university in the nation (some would say second largest, but whatever...) with an excellent school of engineering (I am a grad).  Many engineers at the Cape graduated from UCF.  The boating/fishing is outstanding.. I've seen many gators, many sharks, etc. We are tropical, so that's what you get.  Comes along with bugs and snakes as wel.  I actually live in the shark bite capital of the world (really), but no one dies, the sharks don't want you and they only bite when they mistake you for food in distress.  10000 freshwater lakes, many freshwater springs. Some good diving.  Housing is reasonable and downright cheap compared to Cali.  Politics? Pretty much TV news hype.  Overpopulated?  Only the Metro areas, many beautiful areas have low population.

Downsides... Hot as hell in summer, no curvy roads, no elevation changes, so not perfect.  I really regret that as I am a twistt road guy at heart, that part is just sad.

Most laughable is Florida man stuff (I laugh too), but really, do you think that represents the state as a whole?  

​​​​Could this changes? Yep, it's well underway, people streaming constantly and that threatens everything.

Why California?  Why Michigan?  Why Georgia?  You could probably ask that question about all 50 states, they all have positives and negatives.  I lived over 40 years in PA and it'll always be "home", spent 10 years in GA.  Now in the process of moving to Florida and couldn't be happier.  I'm just outside of Melbourne.  The eye of Milton passed right over us.  Hurricanes suck, they're part of life in Florida just like tornadoes are part of life in the Midwest.  I can walk out of my condo and be on a quiet serene beach in literally 5 minutes.  I can be in Disney World in just over an hour (a huge positive for me, YMMV).  No state income tax.  I will never touch a snow shovel again.  I can be in Key Largo in just over 2 hours.  I can be at one of several road courses in a few hours.  I can wear shorts and flip flops all year.  Outside of the big cities, it's quite rural and peaceful.

...and now I can call myself Florida Man!!!!!  Life is good...

Family moved here NY/CT before I was born due to job relocation. I don't know where I'd go if I do leave, I like the area and have a good job. But hate a lot of things about the state and the people who run it. I will keep it at that. 

The "Florida Man" thing, apparently is not due to a higher level of insanity there, but more due to a law requiring all court cases to be reported to the news media.

Or so I hear.

I keep trying to like it, but other than the Keys I really couldn't live there. It's a great place to visit for a few weeks the winter, I enjoy visiting different parts but the summers are unbearable.  

I think it was the first year moved here...2015-2016...there was a point where there was snow on the ground in 49 out of the 50 states. 

I do not like snow. 

Dang, guys... I'm getting anticipatory depression these days just thinking about the upcoming months of gray skies in Michigan. Like I think we had a couple weeks straight of no blue skies last Jan. And THIS is really making me reconsider NOT moving there. 
 

we were watching the rocket launch, talking to a couple from New York this last spring, and this couple pointed out one very wise thing: whether you live up north or if you live in Florida, you get a couple months where you don't really go outside. But at least in Florida, the sun will still be shining outside.

I'll tell you my second anecdote that kills me inside: a couple years ago we were there in February, as we typically are, and I am from the great plains where is bitterly cold but mostly sunny and dry all winter, and now I live in Michigan where it is more bitterly cold but I get snow and there is no sunshine for months out of the year. And there I am at a waterside restaurant in Tampa with the family and I look over and see a local at the bar wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and it suddenly hit me that THIS is his idea of what February is like. Shorts and t-shirt weather. To him, Feb should always be shorts and t-shirt weather. 
I pointed it out to my wife and starting that every minute we both began trying to talk the extended family (vacationing down there together) into moving down there. Everybody was on board with it until they realized we were dead berkeleying serious. Then all the hemming and hawing started. I'm getting a bit triggered thinking about the years I have wasted not being in the sunshine because we have decided to prioritize family. I need to go cry. 

In reply to P3PPY :

Come on down to Florida, you won't regret it.  Don't get me wrong, I miss PA badly.  My next move is to buy a summer home there, but I am extremely happy making FL my new home.

I feel like this thread is matching my expectation of "I hate cold/snow".

From what I understand, it's the cheaper way to get away from it, but if you also want away from heat/humidity and southern California is the expensive option. You trade hurricanes for earthquakes and wildfire smoke?

I even think the brutality of the summers is overrated. We took a vacation down there in the middle of summer because my wife really wanted to visit Florida, and didn't occur to her what that would be like in the middle of summer.

It was hot. It was humid. It wasn't *pleasant*, but was perfectly bearable. We spent a lot of time outside. Heck, we went to skate parks in the middle of summer, and it was fine. Seemed like rain rolled through every afternoon at about 2pm and cooled things down a bit. It was kinda nice.

I imagine the clever thing would be to live there, and take vacations during the summer to someplace cooler. As opposed to the people who live in the cold and vacation to Florida in the summer.

Comparing to Southern CA... I think San Diego wins for the nicest place, but is also expensive. Daytona area or just outside of Tampa are really nice. I wouldn't want to live in LA or Miami.

As an outsider, I think the hurricanes sound more threatening in FL than the earthquakes or fires are in SoCal. FL doesn't seem to have the drought problems that CA does.

I'm very happy in central OH. If I were to move, I think I'd rather be in the Carolinas over FL.

This thread makes me miss living in Southern California 

We have two seasons:

1) Shorts and a t-shirt. 2) Shorts and a hoodie. For me, that's kind of all it takes. I like being able to do stuff year round and not have to put everything away for months at a time. Our parrots get to experience fresh air and sunshine pretty much every day, and I don't feel like they;d thrive as much being inside for weeks or even months on end in someplace with a larger temperature delta. I like having a large piece of property with exceptional biodiversity of flora and fauna right outside my window. 

Yeah, hurricanes suck. But honestly there's almost no place in the country that's free from some type of natural disaster, and on balance I'll take hurricanes over the alternatives. A little bit of preparation and careful choosing of your dwelling goes a LONG way toward mitigating hurricane worry. 

Apexcarver said:

I feel like this thread is matching my expectation of "I hate cold/snow".

That's kind of what I was expecting to see as well.  The places I've lived have mild winters with only occasional snow, and that's seldom more than an inconvenience.

P3PPY's comment about years wasted not being in the sunshine made me chuckle a little.  Bright, direct sunlight seems to make everybody else (we'll call this group "normal people") happy, but it makes me wince and squint and go right back indoors...

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

There are wild parrots living in The Bronx. They tolerate cold better than I would have expected.  

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

There are wild parrots living in The Bronx. They tolerate cold better than I would have expected.  

Oh yeah, they're super adaptable. But those flocks are also several generations in to acclimatization. Meanwhile I get stink eye if I roll our guys out and it's below 60.

The Air Force moved me from Albuquerque NM (Kirtland) to Panama City FL (Tyndall) in 1979.  I was on my motorcycle and my wife was driving the car and I remember cruising along US98 and 30A between Fort Walton Beach and Panama City Beach. It was mile after mile of unbroken, undisturbed sugar white sand along azure blue water and I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  After getting out of the AF in 1983 I moved to Orlando to attend UCF which at the time was a compact commuter school campus on a narrow two lane road in the middle of nowhere off the eastern edge of Orlando.  There was almost nothing between UCF and the coast except the junk yards in Bithlo and the post office in Christmas.  Graduating from UCF in 1985 I moved to Palm Bay, a small, sleepy residential community near Melbourne and worked for a small company located on A1A in Satellite Beach.  My co-workers and I stood on A1A on a frigid January morning in 1986 and watched the shuttle explode in front of our eyes.  I moved to Raleigh NC in 1988 and on to Chattanooga TN area in 2000.

Florida back then was pretty nice.  The weather was what it was, and still is, mostly hot and humid. But it gets pretty cold too on occasion, as witnessed by the aforementioned shuttle episode. I rode my motorcycle almost exclusively all year, just having to be ready for the afternoon thunderstorms that you could set your watch by.  It was a relatively relaxed way of life, the beach was never far away, endless stretches of it, uncrowded and easily accessible.  My two sons were born there and the ready access to the beach and Disney area was great.

None of those simple, relaxed places that I lived still exist in any recognizable form.

I have three siblings that still live in Florida.  One in Sarasota, one in North Port and one in Panama City, so I visit the state pretty often.  Every time I go there I swear that I will never, ever go back.  It is the most overcrowded, overbuilt, overdeveloped chunks of real estate I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing.  There are so many people and so many vehicles and everyone is always going somewhere all at the same time, it's just crazy.  I was there for a wedding earlier this year and drove from Sarastoa to Orlando and back and it was a white knuckle ride the whole time.  11:30PM on a Sunday night and it went from gridlock to 90+ MPH blasts and back to a dead stop over and over again for the whole trip between Orlando and Tampa on I4.  Where the hell is everyone going???  As bad as Atlanta traffic is I can cruise straight through downtown on I75 without touching the brakes at 11:30PM on Sunday night! Insanity. I couldn't wait to get on the plane back to Chattanooga.

If I had never left, I might not think it was that bad.  Like the frog in a pot on the stove, you don't notice the changes going on and just adapt and accept it as it comes.  If you go there for the first time, never having experienced it in its more undeveloped state, you might not give any of it a second thought.  Depends on what you know and expect.

A lot, probably MOST of Florida is rural, farmland or swamp in Florida that is quiet and relaxed. If deep rural is your thing, it's probably still pretty great.  But it isn't going to be near the coast and at some point you will have to go somewhere, and it's not likely to be much fun.
 

I ask myself that every day.  It's obscenely hot and humid most of the time.  I can't go outside and work on anything without being eaten alive by insects. I've seen a 1990 single wide trailer sitting on 1/4 acre with an asking price of $499,000 in the last month so the meth is strong.  The used market (cars, guitars, tools, whatever) is ridiculously overpriced compared to anywhere else I've lived.  The local sheriff's department is the most corrupt I've seen since I lived in East Tennessee.  

However, I'm making the most money, by a long shot, than I've made in my entire life. The little town I'm in, in the middle of the area that people worn everyone not to stop in, suits me very well.  Lots of nature activities and I have excellent fishing no matter which direction I decide to go. Today the humidity is only 29% so I'm going to get some outside projects wrapped up. 

yupididit said:

This thread makes me miss living in Southern California 

Yeah, Southern California is no joke, man. I was there a couple times, once for over 2 months, and Spanish Colonial style architecture still gives me warm fuzzies. Superior climate for sure. 

Nick Comstock said:

  The local sheriff's department is the most corrupt I've seen since I lived in East Tennessee.  

Well, that hasn't changed.  There was this gem just a couple of days ago, and won't be prosecuted.  Just read the laundry list of crap this clown has been pulling for years.

Rhea county sheriff

Nick Comstock said:

 I've seen a 1990 single wide trailer sitting on 1/4 acre with an asking price of $499,000 in the last month so the meth is strong.  The used market (cars, guitars, tools, whatever) is ridiculously overpriced compared to anywhere else I've lived.  

Where are you located?  I just bought a 2/1.5 condo one block from the beach for just north of $200k.  I've also seen great prices on used cars.  I'm near Melbourne.

I think Florida, like California, has a lot to do with personal perception.  Growing up in PA, everyone where I lived went to Florida for vacation.  Either at the beach, or at Disney world.  Therefore, I grew up with a very positive impression of the state.  It has been my dream since childhood to live there and retire there.