The "Florida Man" today has become an object of ridicule. Add Scott Baio to the memes, who recently moved to Florida, citing homelessness and crime as his reasons for ditching sunny Southern California. I don't know what he expects to find in Florida but he seems to think the world's gone mad and that the only sanity that can be found is in a resort town just south of Tampa on the Gulf Coast.
I quit trying to defend the state some years ago. Most Lithuanians don't have much respect for it. I had to get an apostille for my transcripts and diplomas from the University of Florida, as the Architectural Union didn't believe it was real. They just saw Florida as the land of Mickey Mouse. Now, here is Governor Ron in a land battle with Disney over his "Don't Say Gay" laws. Something that simply stupefies Daina. Doesn't he have better things to do, my wife asks? Apparently not. Governor Ron won't be content until he becomes a Florida Man meme himself. Whoops, he already has become one.
My high school friends in the panhandle love Governor Ron. They are constantly singing his praises on facebook. This reached an ugly head when Bud Light decided to celebrate Pride Month with commemorative cans. Oh, the faux outrage! I made the mistake of wading into it and decided it was better to block some of my friends so that I would no longer respond to their posts. They see these social issues as paramount and if Disney or Anheuser-Busch isn't willing to comply with Governor Ron's decrees then the "alphabet crowd" be damned.
Ironically, Northwest Florida has long been regarded as gay friendly. Much like the "Green Book" of the Jim Crow South, the LGBTQ+ community provides travel guides. I remember a spat some years ago when the new mayor of Pensacola lashed out at gay rights only for the local businesses to remind him how much money the gay community brought into the city. He quickly shut up.
One would like to think it is a losing battle, much like segregation. The port city also had a long history of being friendly to persons of color, with several listings in the historic Green Book. The Hotel San Carlos had allowed Duke Ellington and other black celebrities to stay despite the Avery Bill, which was repealed in 1962. One hopes that will be the case with Governor Ron's bill when more reasonable heads prevail in Tallahassee.
In the meantime, I see all these crazy stories coming out of Florida, wondering if one of my old friends will soon be implicated. They still see the beach as the "Redneck Riviera" although most of them live on the bay unable to afford the high prices on the coast. Even Grayton Beach, which was notorious at one time for its rowdy inhabitants, has been completely gentrified and turned into an upscale coastal town.
Movies also cast Florida in a negative light. Against my better judgement, I watched Crawl one night. A young woman battles a toxic alligator in the basement of a house in an effort to rescue her father from a hurricane. Who has basements in Florida, particularly on the beach? I half expected Scott Baio to be her father. It would be his kind of movie, as his "Happy Days" appear to be long over.
I also tried to watch Florida Man on Netflix but it became a rather turgid affair after its promising first episode, taking itself far too seriously.
Dave Barry has a new book out, Swamp Story, in which he tries to cast the misfortunes of the state in a comic light, but for those being forced to comply with Governor Ron's decrees it is no laughing matter. He is literally trying to remake a small liberal arts college into his model university by packing the board of trustees with conservatives opposed to any mention of race, gender and sexual identity in school curricula. This worried the son of a college friend of mine so much that he opted for a small liberal arts college in Boston rather than attend his father's alma mater.
We went through something similar to this when we were in college. The new University of Florida President, Marshall Criser, wanted to put a pro-business spin on the school by farming out student labor in the form of "research" in exchange for donations from state businesses. UF was struggling financially after the "great football scandal" that led to the school being put on NCAA probation. One of our projects in architectural grad school was to redesign the central core of Orlando. It was great for the Chamber of Commerce, which was sponsoring the project. It got all these proposals for one measly donation. Several of our professors spoke out against this form of indentured servitude but were silenced. It was only when Criser wanted to close the Department of Philosophy in the name of budget cuts that board members began to wonder what was going on here. I see they put a friendly spin on his resignation on the UF home page.
Florida has always been a bit of a swamp but it didn't seem quite as mendacious as it does now. I think the turning point was Hurricane Andrew when pythons escaped an exotic pet store in Miami and took over the Everglades. One of them even managed to take on human form and become governor. He now serves as a slithery US senator.
Some of the stories coming out of the state are absolutely horrid, like the man who got mad at a Wendy's drive-thru and tossed a live alligator through the open window. People are literally taking a pass on the state to avoid running afoul of an ill-tempered Florida Man or the Governor Ron's decrees. Not Scott Baio. He welcomes the Florida Man hashtag. Surprised he didn't find someplace close to his pal Donald, but I guess Palm Beach is a little out of his price range. $3.8 million probably bought him a bigger crib in Bradenton.
I thought Trump might have dragged property values down when he officially moved to the state in 2019. But prices are soaring. Not so long ago I got nostalgic and checked Google Maps on my old homestead in Santa Rosa Beach. The lot is still empty. The concrete block house, which I can reconstruct from memory, was demolished after Hurricane Opal. Friends ask me if I have thought about returning, but I tell them I couldn't afford it even if I wanted to. I saw that the lot last sold for $450,000 on Zillow!
Give me one of those old weathered houses on the beach, which I imagine you can still find in the Big Bend of the state, similar to the bungalows in John D. MacDonald novels. It was like escaping all the noise in the world and finding somewhere hidden among the pines and saw grass to pass away the time before something disquieting happened. Alas, even Cedar Key has become expensive with the median home listing at $373,000. At least I would get a roof over my head.
Comments
Post a Comment