I read something to that effect lately in an old copy of National Geographic I believe. Is Southern Florida more “northern” in culture than Northern Florida or was it in the past?
A lot of people, especially retired people, moved (and still move) to southern Florida from the northeast and midwest. So, southern Florida has less of a “southern culture” than northern Florida, where there hasn’t been such large immigration from the rest of the country.
I just started talking to a girl from south Georgia. She has only been living here, Tampa, for about 4 months and she tells me the culture shock is huge for her. I moved here from Cleveland in 2000 and didn’t really experience much to any culture shock at all.
It takes a very broad brush to answer this in any reasonable amount of space. Northern Florida, especially in the panhandle, largely has a Southern culture just like neighboring Alabama and Georgia do. That part is easy to define and it is reasonable to call Northern Florida culture “Southern” in many ways.
However, Southern Florida cannot be accurately described as “Northern” in the same sense. There are many, many Northern retirees there but other cultural influences, especially Latino, are very prominent and makes the region its own thing.
South (not southern, but south) Florida is full of retirees and relocated families from the northeast (mostly New York/New Jersey) - hence the “Palm Beach Jews” thing during the '00 election.
Now, “South Florida” really only refers to Southeastern Florida- from about West Palm Beach (which, confusingly, is on the East coast - not west of anything except the Azores) down to Miami. The inland portion of the state and West coast aren’t much like that at all- they’re more of what you’d expect in “the South”.
*the Naples/Fort Myers area, on the South-ish West coast is a bit like that too, but isn’t dominated by new arrivals like Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties.
The northern portion of the state is more like an extension of Georgia… ie. classically “Southern”.
I’ve been in S Florida over 20 years, and that seems accurate to me. I haven’t really spent any time in Northern Fla, but I can say for sure that even a couple states above, North Carolina (which I visit every year) is considerably more southern than South Florida.
The “Southern” part of north Florida must be mainly the panhandle.
Jacksonville doesn’t feel very southern to me at all.
Tallahasse also didn’t feel all that southern (maybe because of all the college kids).
Jacksonville is definitely Southern, but in a cosmopolitan sort of way; if you stay in the right parts, you could almost be in, say, Cincinnati.
Tallahassee is really Southern if you don’t stay within FSU’s sphere of influence.
West Palm Beach is directly west of Palm Beach.
Well, yes, technically. :smack:
When you go to northern Florida it really depends on how close to the ocean you are. It seems places come in pairs - my parents live in Fernandina Beach, which is a vacation place and not at all what I’d call Southern, but across the Intercostal Waterway there’s Yulee, which is, well, you know. It’s called Yulee. I think the same pattern probably follows on a lot of the coast - vacation communities, and then real towns where the people live who work in the fancy hotels.
I go to Pensacola regularly on business. Many of the inhabitants I meet refer to the area as LA, meaning Lower Alabama. They perceive considerable cultural differences between themselves and the rest of the state.
They think of themselves as Southern, but I think they consider the rest of Florida to be more Latin than Northern in character. I’m trying to phrase this in a less inflammatory way than they would. The folks I meet mostly do not welcome diversity with open arms.
I’ve lived in south (east) Florida for more than fifty years. It has always been a running joke that, on driving trips, we have to drive several hours north in order to get into the south.
Exactly. And I’d even say the same of Tampa and Orlando, though they may be less Southern than Jacksonville.
(“Southern” and “cosmopolitan” are not mutually exclusive terms, y’all.)
Now down in southeastern Florida, you really do have northern culture. (Mixed heavily with Hispanic culture.)
Pull up some archival video of the 2000 election recount. Many of the folks you hear interviewed in the “southern” part of the state have NY accents.
Question: If we were to go back to say, the 1930s or 40s, would we see all of Florida as southern? If not, was there ever a time when it was so?
You’d see most of it as largely uninhabited. Would you count the pre-casino Seminoles as Southern?
What I’ve learned from people who live over there (my company has offices on Florida’s west coast) is that Naples/Ft Myers etc has been “settled” by folks from the mid-west, as opposed to us damyankees here on the gold coast.
Something like 1,000 people move into Florida every day. (Cite: Florida Trend Magazine)
The reason you experienced hardly any culture shock (besides seeing the sun after however many years of living in Ohio), is because you moved to the west coast of FL. The vast majority of transplanted Floridians on the west coast moved from the midwest somewhere, traditionally Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, etc.
The vast majority of transplanted Floridians on the east coast moved from the Northeastern U.S., i.e. New York, New Jersey, Massachusettes, etc.
This native Ohioan moved from a town of 1,500 people in the middle of a cornfield to Boca Raton, FL (on the east coast, between W. Palm and Ft. Lauderdale). The culture shock was, erm, shocking.
Then I lived in South Carolina, so I got a dose of what y’all mean by “southern.” Then moved back to Florida, to the panhandle, which is distinctly southern and very different from both the west coast and the east coast (the peninsula part).
In other words… Florida is three states, rolled into one. You can hear it in the accents, depending on where you are in the state, the food that is offered in restaurants, and the culture in general.
When I lived in the Orlando area, I got the feeling that it was a mix of Southern and Northern, much like one could call Cleveland both “Northeastern” and “Midwestern”.
Some suburbs of Orlando – Ocoee, Winter Garden, Apopla, Clermont, and other communities to the northwest that were until recently dominated by orange groves, have a more Southern feel. I lived in Ocoee, and although it was definitely middle-class and not really “rednecky”, there were far fewer Yankees among its residents than in someplace like Winter Park, Altamonte Springs, Doctor Phillips and other burbs in other directions. Winter Garden felt like small town Alabama; very Southern population, mostly Southern accents, a hardscrabble commercial base that was dominated by vehicle and mechanical trades-related uses, plenty of Baptist churches, and so on.
Well, let’s talk about Miami, which in 1920 had about 30,000 people living there.