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Florida in the popular imagination
Posted by laurencefosgate • 8/06/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: beaches, disney world, Florida, geography, miami beach, places, tourism, travel.
Having recently started a blog called Florida Life and Times, it hit me that I have little idea of the range of viewpoints that might be out there about Florida in the rest of the world. I'm thinking most people probably like it and think of beaches and Disney World and maybe a little SoBe/Miami Vice thrown into the mix, but I'm really curious. Maybe there are people who hate it or who have very sophisticated or original thoughts on it. Please share them with me.
User Comments
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I have two abiding images:
1] South Beach Miami, 1930s, gorgeous streamlined art deco buildings in Ocean Drive, stucco surfaces, creams or pastels, nautical themes, tropical floral and fauna, ocean liners, palm trees, etched glass, painted wall murals.
2] spectacular CSI photography of Miami from the air: still, glassy water, golden from the sun; and boat marinas.
But I would never ever ever live in a country that allowed guns (except for the army). My image of Florida is that it seems to be even more gun-violent than anywhere else in your nation. -
Was born in Florida and moved in second grade. The only things I remember about Florida is it snowed once while I lived there and it melted before lunch. Disney and beaches. The humidity and the bugs. Older retired people flock there in the winter. And there is alot of sand and black dirt. Oh and the strawberry farms where we picked and ate all day long. -
I have images of Dave Barry getting eaten by an alligator and Bugs Bunny sawing off Florida from the rest of the United States. -
The first thing that strikes me is that either poetically inclined people have a strong response to Florida or something about it brings out the literary gene. These responses all were terrific. I was completely jolted by Hels comment when it took a left turn at the end about guns. I never think about guns, I never see guns, I never hear gunfire, I don't know anybody who has ever been shot.
I have come to the conclusion in the last few years, that Americans have an independent and anarchist streak that makes them want guns on the off chance that if the government ever became too big brotherish, they could mount some kind of civil unrest to stop it.
There is also some rationale to the notion that if guns are outlawed then only outlaws would have guns. I'm presuming that you think the army and police should have guns. It seems to me that in most dictatorships and fascist regimes, that's the way it is, the forces of repression have guns and the ordinary people are stripped of any ability to resist them. Am I missing something here?
Anyhow, if you walk along South Beach you won't see anyone packing a gun, although to parody the words of Mae West, you might see someone whom you ask, "Is that a pistol in your Speedos or are you just glad to see me?"-
I have made 14 trips to North America in my adult life (USA and/or Canada), the first time in 1977. And yet Laurence, I cannot even tell you where my gut feelings about Florida come from - American university colleagues? television programmes? films we see at the cinema? books and academic journals?
It probably doesn't matter if, statistically speaking, Florida is towards the top of the gun-violence table or not. You only asked for "viewpoints that might be out there about Florida in the rest of the world".
By the way, to show you how besotted I was with Florida architecture, I wrote "Art Deco in Miami Beach" ages ago (see melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/search?q=miami).
regards
Hels
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I am thrilled to have you as correspondant, I dig your aesthetic sense and although I haven't read all your articles, I really have liked those I have. And as a lecturer on art history, the son of a Florida MiMo architect, artist and designer, I absolutely relate to your aesthetic eye and voice.
What parts of America did you visit and did some strike you as more or less violent? I didn't really think you were singling out Florida as a "gun-totting place." Since you said you wouldn't visit a place where gun owning was legal, and yet you made 17 trips, when did the travel embargo begin? Are there other countries where guns are legal that are also taboo? I think in Switzerland, gun ownership is not only legal, but mandatory, and yet it seems to have one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. Is this notorious haven for victims of oppression on your list of countries you could never visit? On the other hand, I believe Iran and North Korea are quite safe. Only the police and army have guns there.
I am fascinated by this dialog because I haven't thought of guns in , almost ever. So your mention of them was like a gunshot, it got my attention. I think I remember hearing something about gun ownership in Australia not being legal. When did that happen? I simply have almost no idea what the laws are like ib most of the world, but I guess I figured that guns, at least hunting rifles, were legal almost everywhere. Now, I'm intrigued. Is this a big deal in the rest of the developed world? I plead ignorance.Best Regards
Laurence-
I said "never ever _live_ in a country", not _visit_. My goal is to visit all 193 countries in the world before I get too old to travel, or at least as many of them as humanly possible. Sofar I have done very well in the northern hemisphere, but not so well in South America or Africa.
Regarding gun laws, I believe my views are perfectly mainstream in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. In public survey after survey, 74-76% of the population report that guns should remained banned, with clearly specified exceptions eg the army, the police (under strict conditions), farmers (to kill wild animal predators) and elite sportsmen (inside specified lockup facilities only).
There never had been a gun culture in these three British countries, but the existing laws tightened even further, immediately following some tragic massacres. All four massacres in Australia (late 1890s and early 1990s) were so vicious, psychotic and un-Australian that all citizens can remember the names of the murderers, and the towns or streets in which the murders occurred (two in Melbourne, one in Sydney and the worst in Port Arthur in Tasmania).
After the Port Arthur massacre, the gun laws were tightened even further with, I believe, 100% support of the then-conservative government, the opposition parties, editorials in newspapers and almost all the public. I say "almost" because a pro-gun lobby suddenly emerged, during the debates, on the internet and with paid television ads.
Noone knows what might happen in the future, but my guess is that if a future British, Australian or New Zealand government ever thought of allowing guns into their country, that government would be voted out of office. Appropriately so!
I _assume_ the same would be true in countries we hold up as role models: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland etc but you would have to check their gun laws yourself.
Hels
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When I think of Florida, I think of space shuttle launches, since I've driven twice to cape canaveral to see STS missions take off. Such a powerful image and experience!
I also think of early Spanish occupation, Seminole natives, Tampa being the lightning capital of the world... the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine... and alligators in the Everglades.
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My cousin is Charlie Precourt, three time pilot of the shuttle and the first astronaut to dock with the Mir. I have many connections with the Cape. My sister was a computer programmer for NASA as a summer job in college in the mid sixties. As a child we would stay at a motel in Titusville Beach, no longer a town but part of the nature preserve at Playalinda Beach that was acquired by the federal government to build the space center. We made periwinkle stew which came from the beautiful coquinas with their rainbow assortment of shell colors. My sister and I would spend all day gathering them and our mom would put them in a big pot and make a most delicious broth.
And as for Texas, I have been a few times. Twice in Houston my mom had open heart surgery with the famed Denton Cooley of St Luke's. One time in 1969 I got to see Janis Joplin in concert in Houston and she was incredible. She died a few months later. I thought Houston was a pretty hip town.
Had the police called on me at a dance at a fancy hotel in San Antonio back in 1966. Was attending a convention with my parents and the hotel had a function with a live band for the teenagers. I was an expert at the "dirty dog." They seemed real serious when they told me, "son, we don't care how they do it in Florida, you're in Texas now!" I think the rest of the country thinks of Florida as just a little more sinful than the rest of the states (with the exception of California and New York, our sisters in being "out there.") I don't think that incident would have happened in Houston.
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I believe the difficulty with describing Florida lay in the fact that it is essentially 3 states shoved together. The "panhandle" in the north of the state is essentially Southern in nature, more like an extension of Georgia than anything else.
In the middle, Tampa, St. Pete, Orlando, it is a colony for northern refugees; retirees, giving St. Pete a "God's Waiting Room" feel, as well as providing a place for Northern visitors to play.
At the far end, there is Miami and its "beach culture" which seems to be an Atlantic variant of what one finds on the Pacific coast. Thus Florida has a diversity that is hard to pin down into a single theme. Perhaps what unites all three states is the triumph over adversity; this was a feature of its history since Ponce de Leon tried to search for the Fountain of Youth there.-
Iwould certainly agree that you got the first state right. Florida north of Gainesville is culturally very much like south Georgia, with Tallahassee and Jacksonville being islands in an otherwise Sea Of Dixie. Central Florida however is totally not old. One of the top eight high tech centers in the country, Orlando has one of the youngest populations in the whole US and Tampa is also very youth oriented. The last big stand of old people also seemed to have caught the bus to eternity in St Pete as well. The old crowd there is more old hippy than old geezer. Sarasota, Naples and Palm Beach county, now that's where old is. When I go to Home Depot in West Palm Beach I'm pretty sure the reason the greeters are still working there at their advanced age is because they originally retired before the social security system got funded and they have finally run through their nest egg. A sweet young thing in Boca is liable to have just presided over here grandson's Bar Mitzvah. And further down the road in Ft Lauderdale is where the gay people who showed up at Stonewall go to spend their golden years. Miami-Dade is the sole hot spot there. It's my second home and is antithetical to California culture. It considers itself Manhattan with palm trees and a dash of Hispanic and European seasonings. And as the main entrepot between the Us and Latin America it plays the same sort of strategic role on the world stage as Hong Kong, Istanbul or London.
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