I love Tampa. Why are Miami reviews counting for T
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1/24/2022
This is my favorite city that I have ever lived in. I am reading all of these terrible reviews for Tampa, but then when I read what people are writing, they are actually writing for Miami. Why are the Miami reviews counting toward Tampa?
Anyway, this is my favorite city that I have ever lived in. I have lived in different cities in Europe, Washington DC, and New York. Tampa is hands-down the best. By Tampa, I mean Tampa Bay Area, not just the city proper. St. Pete is amazing too and that is a part of the Bay Area. You have cities, nightlife, amazing beaches, amazing suburbs. The culinary scene is incredible. You can find pretty much anything you’re looking for. However, if you were moving from the New York area and wanting this to be a clone of New York, with a Jewish deli on every corner, that’s not going to be it. There are several amazing delis, but the Jewish deli is not a corner stone of life here, so if you can’t live without a deli sandwich being available every 20 steps you take, then this is not a place for you. However, if you don’t need deli sandwiches to survive, the culinary scene here is amazing. I do think it is a bit lacking in the number of choices available for Ethiopian food and Afghan food though. Everything else is great.
The topography is amazing too. You have your choice of freshwater lakes, rivers, Gulf, you name it! The weather is amazing in the water is warm. The only bad weather season we truly have is late summer/early fall. It rains a lot in the summer, but it’s not like the rain up north, where it’s gray and it drizzled all day long. when it rains here, it’s beautiful all day, then suddenly the skies open up and the wrath of hell comes down on us, and dumps 8 inches of rain in an hour, then it’s all over and it’s sunny again. So don’t be fooled by the inches of rainfall. It takes one hour to get the number of inches of rainfall in Tampa that it would take two days to get in DC or NY.
I have never in my life seen an atmosphere that is both equally urban and outdoorsy like I have here. The number of water sports and cycling in swimming and other things that you can do are amazing.
The people are nice. There’s a whole lot of diversity, which is nice. In a lot of places, diversity is only focused on the African-American and Hispanic population. However, by diversity here, I mean diversity in all sense of the term. Beyond racial diversity, there is cultural diversity. There are a lot of West and East Asians, West and East Europeans, there are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, Sikhs, and immigrants from so many different countries. There is this on top of a large Hispanic population from all over.
There’s a good amount of political diversity. Most people tend to be very socially liberal here. Economically, there is a mix of liberal and more conservative. This is a progressive place, but this is also a place where you won’t get canceled or shunned for being a liberal or for being more conservative. There are not a whole lot of far right people, which is good. Most of the right wingers are the socially liberal fiscally conservative type. If any of what you see above offends you and you’re in the mood to scream at somebody and tell them they are stupid and ignorant for not sharing your beliefs, that won’t fly here like it does in places like DC in New York. So if verbally attacking people who don’t think like you is a favorite hobby of yours, might want to go somewhere else.
The economy in Tampa is extremely diverse too. There is no single industry that brings most of the money here. There’s finance, there is law, there are entrepreneurs, there’s a great taxing, Tampa is huge on healthcare too. There’s a lot of finance here as well. There’s also a big military base.
Tampa and St. Pete are very walkable. If you live in the city limits, or on the beach communities, you won’t need a car for the day to day living… unless you work further away. However, living down here, you will need a car for other things, like going to the beach or commuting to other areas of the city, or even the suburbs. The public transportation is nonexistent outside city limits, unfortunately. There are self-driving buses and trolleys within city limits, but if you want to go outside of the city, you are on your own. The buses run, but they aren’t necessarily safe. The kind of people that I see stepping off the bus are people freaking out, smacking themselves in the faces, talking to themselves… not the type of people that I feel safe around.
Tampa is constantly growing. Bill Gates and Jeff Vinnik are throwing a lot of money into the city.
There are no city taxes and no state taxes for income, which is amazing. If you plan to move down here from a high tax state, please do not try to turn Tampa or Florida into a high tax hellhole like the one you came from. You see how those cities and states are doing now. Not well. And it’s not gonna stop after the pandemic.
People are very into charity and giving down here, and helping the community as a whole. If you just join city specific Facebook pages, anytime somebody post some thing about not having enough food or struggling, people on Facebook who don’t even know that person are having groceries delivered to that person‘s door. People down here love to give and to help their brothers and sisters who are struggling. They would rather give directly to people who need it than give their money to the government in the form of higher taxes, have the government take 50% of it, waste the other 30% and only see 20% go to the people who need it. So please don’t get your panties in a bunch and think that people who want to keep low taxes here don’t want to pay taxes because they don’t care about the poor. They care deeply.
People down here are really into being physically active and working out, which is cool. The average age in Tampa is early 30s. Saint Pete area, and the downtown region, is the same. However, you will find people of all age groups. What you won’t find much of his retirees. For some reason, people have a stereotype That this area is full of old people. That may have been true 50 years ago, but it’s not now. If you go outside of the city and outside the suburbs of the Tampa St Pete area, there are more older people. Also, certain parts of the Clearwater/Palm Harbor/ Dunedin area definitely skew older.
If you a huge nightclub person, you might find that Tampa/ St Pete are lacking. There are night clubs, of course. There is Ybor, which is full of them. There are others too, but the nightclub scene is surprisingly small considering the size of the city. I think that will probably change, but I could definitely go for some more swanky night clubs.
I don’t know what else to say. I love it here. After all the places I’ve lived, I would never want to live anywhere else.
laura | Tampa, FL