What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[ElkinFencer10]

In typical Vance County fashion, we've got a two hour delay for what is little more than God's dandruff.

[Ack]

Florida is really a handful of different states(and one other country) stitched together. The panhandle is Deep South, Redneck Riviera, while you've got the ocean side where folks go to play. The Gulf of Mexico side is where America goes to die. Miami is Little Havana, and the Keys are the Conch Republic.

[Erik_Twice]

Redbeck Riviera sounds like a great name for a band.

[samsonlonghair]

Florida is really a handful of different states(and one other country) stitched together. The panhandle is Deep South, Redneck Riviera, while you've got the ocean side where folks go to play. The Gulf of Mexico side is where America goes to die. Miami is Little Havana, and the Keys are the Conch Republic.

I grew up in Miami, FL. I'm proud of my hometown, and I would go so far as to say that it's one of the most American cities. I don't mean that it's representative of middle America; rather, I mean that Miami represents the idea of the American "melting pot" in a vibrant, living city.

For example: Just on my block there was my family (mixed black and white), a Cuban family, a Dominican family, several black families, a Japanese family, a Jewish family, a Mexican family, a house wherein approximately five dozen Haitians lived together in close quarters, and a huge house at the end of the block built by a drug trafficker...err... "entrepreneur"...before the F.B.I. seized it. My block was always considered kind of "ghetto" in the sense that everyone who wasn't in the drug business was poor, but we were rich in culture. I had eaten Kosher food at the Glasserman household and drank Japanese tea at the Isa household before I was in kindergarten. This is the neighborhood where I learned that there's only one race: the human race. You can't replicate that in the suburbs.

The cross-cultural nature of Miami influences the cuisine, the media, and the arts. You can listen to Tejano music in the BBQ restaurant. Did you know that Scotch/Irish shepherds pie tastes great with Indian curry? There are countless examples of Art Deco alongside Mediterranean architecture. My neighborhood was rich in Moorish architecture influenced by muslims of the Iberian peninsula. The arts district in Miami has a constant influx of painters, sculptors, and artisans from around the world. At home I would watch WWF professional wrestlers crash through the Spanish announcers table - from the Spanish announcers viewpoint. I used to watch Dragonball Z dubbed in Spanish, and I assure you that few things are funnier than watching Vegeta kill Napa while shouting Spanish expletives. When I tuned the radio, I could hear infinite variations of Latin jazz fusion, R&B, Hip-hop, and southern rock-n-roll.

I could have a longer discussion of Florida as a whole (including things that seem uniquely Floridian), but this ramble is long enough as is. I'll just end with this thought: if America is a melting pot, Miami is the simmer.

[fastbilly1]

Everyone forgets that Florida is a huge cattle state, and usually number 1 or 2 in rodeo competitions.

[samsonlonghair]

Everyone forgets that Florida is a huge cattle state, and usually number 1 or 2 in rodeo competitions.

This is also true. I went to a private school in Hollywood, FL (another story for another time) and the school was surrounded on three sides with a cattle pasture. It smelled lovely. This is also where I learned that sometimes cows have horns too, not just bulls.

[Ack]

Yeah, the interior is ranching country. Also, Samson is touchy about people cracking wise on Miami apparently.

[samsonlonghair]

I'm not cranky. I'm just stepping up to defend Miami. It's not so different from how you defended American exceptionalism in the "World Falling Apart" thread on Tuesday. You speak up for your home, right?

[Ack]

I'm not cranky. I'm just stepping up to defend Miami. It's not so different from how you defended American exceptionalism in the "World Falling Apart" thread on Tuesday. You speak up for your home, right?

No worries, chief, I just don't think you needed to defend anything. All the stuff I said was jokes about Florida...unless you really do believe the Keys are a separate country, in which case, Viva la Conch!

[ElkinFencer10]

I'm not cranky. I'm just stepping up to defend Miami. It's not so different from how you defended American exceptionalism in the "World Falling Apart" thread on Tuesday. You speak up for your home, right?

I get the same way about New Orleans. Although in our cases, Miami and New Orleans really are great cities whereas American exceptionalism is a xenophobic myth perpetuated by warmongers trying to justify America's imperial conquests and political domination during the 19th and 20th centuries.