Yeah, it's real, real, bad.
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10/26/2016
First off, native Floridians are for the most part wonderful people. Central Florida however is full of people from the North East corridor, and the slums of Americas mid west. I used to think that Central Florida was some giant fenceless prison somehow created by the shadow government where the countries nastiest, least sophisticated sociopaths were somehow secretly herded for eventual purging but then how did I become one of them?
The truth is far less sinister but still the truth. It is a melting pot and cultural differences lead to conflict and stress. Central Florida is also a very poor place, and poverty, scarcity can and does bring out the worst in people.
Why so poor here? Wages are low. Because Disney sets the bar everyone has to "Limbo". The vast majority of people here make 10 or less an hour. Cost of living is comparable to the rest of the country. Houses are still "cheap" but rents are very, very, high unless you want to live someplace where you are afraid to sleep at night or leave anything of value at home when you go to work. Assuming you can find a job. Let me mention while I'm thinking about it, the professional class down here. Everywhere around the country there are bad lawyers, doctors etc. but after some selection you can usually find the excellent ones. Here in Central Florida that process of finding "excellence", is potentially devastating. Just saying, it's tricky wherever you are, but here it's depressingly desperate. Now what makes all this most baffling is the potential this place seeminly offers. The sunshine, the blue skies, the lush tropical green, the temperatures, all the great outdoors, and yet this state has yet to really capitalize on it's natural beauty except to offer it up as a place to come to while you wait to die.
Back to the people. Again, "natives" excepted, the people that come here are for the most part the refuse of everywhere else. White, black, hispanic, asian, purple, does not matter, and of course this is a generalisation, and a curious phenomena, but no less true. People are rude. PERIOD. It is unrelenting too. It's exponentially multiplied and exasperated by the volume and constant influx of more. Rude begets rude. Try to turn it around yourself, be a one person army afainst it all and you will go insane. A brick wall, is still a brick wall no matter how many times you beat your fist against it.
I use what I call the shopping cart test to explain to people what I mean about a culture of rude. Think about where you live when you go to the grocery store. Look around the parking lot. How many people return their carts to the store when they are done unloading, or to the "corral"? If you are one of those people who don't bother yourself then the question is lost on you so don't bother to read on. If you see carts all over and no-one returns the carts and it doesn't bother you in the least, then come on down you might like it here. Here, NO ONE returns the carts when done. Instead the give it a good kick and send it careening off of as many cars as possible. This may seem a silly example to some people but I use it to ilustrate what I see as the endemic, systematic? all pervasive, underlying indicator of some fundamental deficiency in the socio-economic fabric of Central Florida society. SAD.
Anyway, this has been therapeutic for me.
In closing if you have read this far let me qualify myself. I'm 50. I have lived in Ct., N.Y.(City), S.C., Oh.,Mass., and D.C./Md.
Not one of those places did I want to leave, but work or family prompted relocation. I found wonderful reasons to love all those places and miss them all.
I am not angry with Central Florida but I do wish to warn others about the truth of this place. It is not nice. Opportunity is not here.
Brent | ,