I'm one of the few remaining natives that actually has several generations of family born in the Florida. Cracker style.
There are some legitimate issues with Florida, but ones you see everywhere else. The beautiful ecology has been wrecked. That's true. Satellite view google maps on the state and you'll see a patchwork of tree farms with crappy soft pine, that replaced all the real subtropical plantlife that used to be here.
You know the St. John's river had more traffic than the Mississippi during it's high day of steamships? It was all the wood being cut down and sent up north to make all your furniture and everything else. Everything in Florida was pretty much stolen, sent north, and taken over by northerners to begin with, so lets not blame us too much for the ecology. Only now has the everglades and some of the areas tried to come back to life costing billions to attempt to reverse the process of decimation.
At least Florida didn't have a real decimation of the native population. The Seminoles are about the only unconquered tribe there ever was. They hid in the swamps and fought the regiments off as only they can. There's a reason that he Seminoles are the team of Floirda State, and not in that exploitive way you hear people complaining about up north. We respect the original native tribes that were here and we've never had the problems you've seen in other states regarding the original owners.
Florida is a lot of agriculture. Florida crackers continue to ranch here generationally as well. Jacksonville, the largest city in the lower 48, was originally named Cowford, and was the best part of the river to cross the cows over. In the old days the river would flood right up the streets of downtown and people would sit on porches and shoot at alligators, the seafood surrounding the state is some of the best in the U.S.
Florida, due to its subtropical nature, has always been good for citrus and we can grow things year round since we aren't under 20' of snow half the year. Sure we can't ski, but it's freezing in New York and I can go hang out in the pool. It's 72.
For those complaining about how all Florida has is old people, agriculture, and service sector jobs, take a look at Detroit. See all those burned out factories? We don't have those. When the big companies up north wanted everyone elses resources, they took all of ours and didn't build the factories. That's fine, we didn't want the factories. We based our economy on tourism and agriculture and having fun, so much so we don't even have an income tax. If you'd like to go work in a burnt out factory, I'm sure Detroit is hiring. We'd prefer slightly cleaner air and less smog.
We also have a large population of hispanics and carribean islanders, what with our being so close. I'm not sure what happens out west in California, Arizona, Texas, or wherever you see all the wall building and gun toting and racism, we are a little more embracing of our friends from other places. If you're too racist to enjoy Cuban food, you have something wrong with you.
Now that having been said, one of the BIG reasons Florida turned to crap is because what culture was here, which may seem quaint and lame for being agriculture, relaxation based, and not moving at the speed of the "big cities" is because northeners sent their losers here. There are very few native Florida families here anymore. Most everyone else came from somewhere else, either because they couldn't make it work up north, or they came to retire. So when your friends in Jersey who got chased out and failed and came here and pumped a few kids out in the trailer park, they aren't natives. They're bastard offshoots from places that didn't want them, and they came here to do the best they could. So when you're making fun of "Florida Man", you're just pointing at yourselves, and your own people that just couldn't embrace the culture and make it work.
Go to Palm Coast. It's literally filled with yankees that bring down their crappy attitude and make fun of us. No wonder they can't adapt. They don't even try. They're so busy feeling superior that they forgot they were losers from where they came from. Their kids carry that attitude forward. Then they turn to meth. We appreciate you sharing that with us.
It's similar to Lousiana and New Orleans. You can tell the transplants, and tell the attitude, because they whine about how a completely different state and culture isn't like Times Square. Sorry you moved away from New York and you can't get sushi at 4am. Surprisingly, nobody here cares. Go start a sushi restaurant and be open and 4am. Oh right, you came here expecting to be coddled too. Sorry we couldn't adapt to your needs.
I apologize for not being like Vegas, New York, or Boston. You have your cultural background, and we have ours. You make fun of ours and financially exploit us, and we do our thing and leave you alone. If you want to make fun of people in Florida, have you ever wondered why you see so many of you in Florida, and so few of us where you live? I mean we have cars and things too and could drive there, but you almost never find a lot of Florida people migrating to other states. When I run into one in my travels it's usually "Well I was stationed at NAS for a couple years" or "I went there for work but had to move back home to Tulsa". People that are gypsies looking for opportunities or came to go to college and left again and haven't found themselves.
Most of the Florida jokes really started adter the Bush/Gore nonsense. Before that it was just old people, alligators, and hurricane jokes. Then it turned ugly. I'm sorry your guy didn't get elected. Last I checked a whole bunch of other states voted in that election too. The whole issue with voting issues wasn't that we were all idiots and hanging chads, it was that you people were so desperate to find someone to blame when your boy didn't work out. I'm sorry for that. It's not our fault it was close. Next time try not to send an Ivy League Harvard liberal to a southern state filled with old scared republicans and get angry that he "only" got half the vote +/- some magic number.
But it's popular to pick on Florida. American's wang can take it. After all, we're to blame for all that wrong in the US, which is pretty impressive since we're just a bunch of retarded meth smokers, but you have to admit we can band together to bring the country down.