[quote=briansd1]sdrealtor, I agree that that FL is a funny place.
I don’t know if we can simplify it to an East Coast vs. West Coast of FL thing. I mean compare Jacksonville, on the East, vs. Naples on the West.
I think it has to do with better educated immigrants to Florida who came in search of warm weather, vs. the native pitchfork peasants.
In general, I’d say that South Florida is better than Central and North Florida, except for Gainesville a college, in North Central, that’s the Bloomington (not quite like Austin) of Florida.
Could be true of the panhandle however a lot of people go to places like Destin for some R&R.
Frankly speaking for Orlando it seems fine to me. UCF is massive, and with that getting much much pickier about who gets in. Not quite at the level of the UC picky but not as easy as it used to be. As a result of the sheer size of UCF there are college graduates all over town. Now the downtown area is kinda sucky compared to something like the gas lamp, but remember they have to compete with Universal City Walk and Downtown Disney as far is night spots.
Bear in mind we were in Cardiff/Encinitas area, attended church regularly, and went to SFC in Solana Beach so if the area is slightly more “churchy” we basically were out there in Encinitas. Spending most of our time with youth baseball otherwise I find central florida to be every bit as baseball crazy as San Diego, however millions of people probably live in greater SoCal and either don’t have kids or they aren’t involved in baseball, so as big as it seems in SD, most of you could care less. In my case, it’s basically the same thing except the latins are now usually PR or Cuban. So for my family and what we do for extracurricular it’s virtually identical outside of not being close enough to walk on the beach at night.
If you surf, mountain climb, snowboard etc. then this place is of course a death sentence.
However culturally it’s not all yahoo redneck and I don’t see that nearly as much as I thought I would. There are a whole lot more blacks here and always have been so around here things are fairly integrated race wise. Tons of mixed race couples everywhere you go.
