The good lord has blessed her tremendously, however, she has decided to leave. She lives here in NJ and works in NY City. She has decided to move to Florida. She is married with three small children.
She has received three job offers so far at different parts of the state. I don't know exactly where.
I wanted to give her some advice, something that she could look at me and say, good thing you mentioned that, or, I hadn't thought that, what a great brother I have ;)
Make me look good people!
57 comments:
Summer is almost unbearable there?
The snails eat stucco in Florida.
The thing I've thought of so far is asking her to compare the schools for the children.
Inglés no es necesario.
Trooper knows NYC, NJ, and FLA. I defer to him.
Gators.
Remember to pet the alligators, they need love too.
Tell her to point the car west and move to Utah, Montana, Idaho. Then again anyone who decides to move from the hell of Jersey to the hell of Florida is beyond the reach of advice.
Fark.com has a "Florida" tag.
Illuminating.
Alligators will come out of the artificial lakes they have at all the developments down there, crawl up onto your lawn, and drag away your dog.
That's fucking true.
And watch the fuck out for osprey and . . . well . . . Florida is chock full of things that are very good at killing and eating other things.
On the plus side, you can get orange flavored soft serve pretty much everywhere.
Two tips.
Tell everyone you are Cuban.
They don't like Dominicans.
Oh and stay away from Icepick.
Just kidding.
They think Dominicans are ok.
They hate the Ricans.
Motor vehicles didn't have to get inspected, last time I was down there, and it showed.
Judges didn't have to be lawyers, and it showed.
They used to have some kind of Homestead Protection law by which judgment deadbeats could keep their million dollar mansions while flipping the bird to judgment creditors. Don't know where your relative shakes out on that.
Just remember, North Florida is the DEEP South
Lizards everywhere!
Everybody wants to listen to lounge lizard music.
Mike the Mutt, the original drummer of The Old Dawgz, lives in Florida and nobody wants to play rock and roll with him.
They all want to play elevator music.
The census bureau has something, kind of clunky though.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/florida_map.html
If you want to fly somewhere there are websites that do the shopping comparing for you. Anything like that for living standard of cities counties within a state?
Just got back from Florida. I want to move there. Naples, specifically. Or the Keys, not sure yet.
Anyhow, you can tell her that she'll love the big difference in income and property taxes. Tell her to stick near the coasts because most of the inland is pretty hot and unbearable in summer.
Tell her that the Atlantic coast is pretty much full of New York and New Jersey immigrants, and that the Gulf coast is mostly midwesterners. Miami is okay in parts, pretty high crime in other parts. And Miami Beach is being bought up by Eurotrash.
And tell her you'll be down for vacation every winter.
Don't text in movie houses.
"I don't know exactly where."
But that's the key, Lem. Give us that info and you might get some useful advice.
Trooper, she should stay away from me because I live in a shit hole.
Tell her to make certain she'll like pleasant winters. A surprising number of people move down here and go apeshit crazy in January and February because they're not ass deep in snow. They're all brain damaged, of course, but there it is.
Also, central air conditioning is a must.
The stuff about Ricans and Dominicans is very location specific. The Orlando area is very PR. With few Cubans. We have a lot of other islanders in this area too, especially Haitians. But not so much Cubans.
She told me. Miami Dade and Palm Beach. She turned down Tampa.
Yes, the inland part is hottest. Gainesville tends to be the hottest area in my experience. The worst is the the air doesn't move when it's hot inland unless a storm is blowing in.
But there's an upside to that heat: 98 is pretty much the hottest it ever gets. I had a cousin living in Virginia, and she would get quite angry because they would be hitting 108 in heat waves and it would only be 95 here. Nice being surrounded by an ocean.
Lem, so she's moving to the third world.
Another thing, people are insane about their dogs down here. They will train their pits as fighting dogs and then let them run loose.
And a shame that she turned down Tampa. Other than the traffic it's pretty nice.
And Jacksonville has been described as a great place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there. I'm skeptical about the first part of that statement, though.
I rode through Palm Beach County. Admittedly that's not a way to evaluate a place to live, but the parts I saw were mostly nice. High traffic in winter, I'll bet, so living close to work could be a plus.
New Jersey or Florida.
hmmm. No thanks?
Though I've not been to Naples and I've heard nothing but good things about Naples. and the low taxation sounds good.
I visited relatives in and around the Orlando area (Eustis?) a few years ago and I was not at all acclimated to the taste of the water (awful - sulfur-ie ) and the flatness is very disorienting to me. I had a good time but I couldn't' live without my mountains.
Warm weather is a plus as always. I have a client to has a 3rd home in the Keys. He has an open initiation for me to come visit - but I keep missing the window.
And a shame that she turned down Tampa.
I thought the same thing. I'm not accusing her of anything but for the kids sake I would have picked a 'quieter' area.
Her husband commented that Tampa was kind of dead.
"so living close to work could be a plus."
That was the first thing I told her when she first mentioned it awhile back.
For a well paid professional, and a mom like her, to spend time commuting is crazy.
Yammering on about myself-- hashtag not helpful.
Agreed - if she has kids, try to keep the commute short and easy.
No streets to plow, that's a plus.
Of those three I would have picked Tampa. The other two can be extremely expensive, but it will get down to the neighborhood she lives in and the distance from the city and the beach. That would apply to Tampa too, but I think you would have more reasonable costs with a modest drive.
If she does a good job finding a place to live, she'll love it.
The obligatory BH Surfers song, "Moving To Florida"
I was thinking I hadn't been as far south as Naples, but I drove to Marco Island once - that's south of Naples. Very nice. The water was phosphorescent. CL knows why.
Florida is nice. She'll like it.
Except maybe not Miami.
I have been to Florida thrice and I thought it was nice.
My dad bought land there - up near Weeki Wachee - in the early '60's. He hoped to retire there but his dream outlived him.
The water was phosphorescent. CL knows why.
That's bioluminescence, not chemoluminescense, so only Ritmo knows, especially since it appears to involve Lucifer.
I have been countless times, and have seen everything from the Keys to the orange groves to the sugar cane fields to the panhandle.
It is not an easy place to sum up - the variety of plant, animal and human life defies easy categorization.
The only thing it doesn't have is changes in altitude, regardless of what Jimmy Buffett says.
Question for Icepick: Does Florida permit trial in abstentia, especially for capital crimes? The story told in this old Kingston Trio song would say yes: Everglades.
I'm a bum in the sun
and I'm having fun
and you I know I've got no-- special plans...
*special plans*
How do I remove this song from my head? I think I need a Johnny Cash Chip.
I don't believe so, not anymore, chick. Back in the old days? Well, it was the Old South back then....
Also, the Tampa Bay area traffic can induce homicidal mania if you've got to go over or even near one of the bridges.
And the reason Tampa is so quiet is because about 300,000 people in that area are prison guards, and they've got about 8,000,000 locked up in jails and prisons over there. Seriously, driving into Tampa from Orlando you used to pass three prisons. It's like Raiford/Stark but on a vast scale.
I w I'll say this: Florida is a lot less fun than in the old cocaine cowboy days. Something like 50% of the world's coke supply used to come through the state. Modern Miami was built off coke proceeds. Now that most stuff comes ovr the Mexican border the fun has moved west.
Don't be a white hispanic.
http://www.marshallfrank.com/
Icepick, you've reminded me of this guy... who is apparently my Dad's cousin or something. Miami homicide cop, mom married a mobster, plays the violin, writes thrillers, looks an awful lot like my Dad.
I keep forgetting to read something of his to check it out.
Aren't Dominicans hispanics?
I believe most self-identify that way. Not "white Hispanic".
I think you have to look white in order to identify as white Hispanic.
Most Dominicans are shades of brown.
So the answer to your question is, I don't really know for sure.
Thanks everybody for contributing... greatly appreciated.
Been to Florida once. Key west was nice, as was the beach near Miami. Every other place else was hot, humid, and full of mosquitoes.
Or so it seemed.
Synova, have you read any of the hilarious novels set in Florida written by Carl Hiassen?
Icepick, As you know, much of that Miami skyline was built w/ coke $'s.
Florida's gross. Not Alabama gross but still really gross.
tits
Haz, Hiassen novels aren't funny. They're straight reporting of how the state works. Only the names have been changed, to spare Hiassen endless lawsuits.
My own preference would be for about eighteen million of the nineteen million people that live here to go someplace else. The state is better with fewer people.
I moved here (Orlando) from the Boston area. Boston drivers are crazy and aggressive, but mostly skilled. Florida drivers are like squirrel monkeys in pedal cars. Give everyone a wide berth. Upside - you don't have to shovel heat.....
Scott, there's almost no such thing as a Florida driver. Most people are from someplace else, and every place has its own idiosyncratic driving tendencies, most of which are awful. So we get homicidal Bostonians, people from NYC who don't understand either the concept of the two way street or lanes, entitled assholes from DC, little old men and women from everywhere, and apparently it has never rained anywhere else in the world, because not a Damned one of you can drive in the rain.
And Orlando has the added problem of lots of tourist drivers, many of whom come from places where they drive on the wrong side of the road.
We've also got lots of PRs, all of whom think they're a cross of Don Garlitts and Mario Andretti, and all of whom suck behind the wheel.
Florida would be much nicer if most of the people here would leave.
Have her watch "The Glades" on Netflicks to get that Florida feel.
Or the Real Housewives of Miami.
You can learn everything you need to know about life from reality television.
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