I spent a week and a half in Miami Beach in the late 70s. It reminded me of Coney Island, NY of the day; a place where elderly Jewish people gave birth to Hispanics in their teens and early 20s.
Alright, voltaire, since you nitpicked, YOU get to tell everyone when it changed from inter- to intra- and why. Don’t know? Then I’m going to Unca Cecil. Or at least TubaDiva. 
I warn all of you: I’m old as the hills, and I KNOW all those signs I saw growing up said INTERcoastal waterway, and I won’t rest until I get to the bottom of this. Or die. Of old age. Tomorrow.
The problem is that trying to draw an exact line where some cultural characteristic begins or ends is hopeless. This may work between countries where people can’t easily move across a political line. It may also work where a difficult-to-cross physical boundary exists. It can’t work if traveling back and forth across the line is easy.
Clearly throughout Florida there are far more folks from elsewhere (e.g. me) concentrated in the (sub-)urban areas whereas lifelong Florida natives are relatively more concentrated in rural areas.
So far it seems most posters are simply equating “Southern” with “rural” and not-outhern with (sub-)urban. And then trying to draw lines around the bigger conurbations as islands of non-Southern-ness.
Do those folks believe there are any urban or suburban areas anywhere in the geographical South which are in fact “Southern” culturally? Or is rurality a prerequisite for genuine Southern culture?
Or does “Southern” culture actually mean old-fashioned pre-1940s or pre-1960s culture? Is it possible to be both “Southern” & 21st Century?
I know I don’t know. I think if we started with trying to define the indicia of “Southern Culture”, then once we got some modicum of agreement we could start looking around the South (including Florida) to see where the indicia might be found.
My dad’s family are from West Palm Beach and Boca Raton, and I would consider them “Southern” as people. They are not rednecks, though. At least I don’t consider Southern black people to be rednecks. They are also mostly in their 50s-80s and I haven’t been there in 20+ years. So I don’t really know what the broader current culture is like.
Heh, it’s always been Intracoastal, signifying that the waterway travels within the coastline. A lot of people aren’t aware of this, and pronounce it inter-, as in the much more familiar word, “interstate” highway. Which is probably where sign-makers have sometimes gotten tripped up, since they’re even more accustomed to using the inter- prefix for all the “Interstate” signs and are thus prone to use the incorrect prefix for the “Intracoastal” signs.
Of course there are tons of cities that are Southern culturally. The best and clearest examples are places like Charleston.
Bite your tongue. Any town with schoolbus races and demolition derbies is a place I’d be proud to visit twice a year.
The Keys are permanent homes to oodles of Southerners. Our tourist base is folks from the north in the winter. Folks from Florida in the summer and a growing international visitor year round.
Oh yes, there most certainly are. The Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana area is the closest city to where I am from is completely Southern for example. It isn’t that small either at about 450,000 people. New Orleans and Baton Rouge have their own sub-type of Southern culture going on but they are most certainly not generic American by any stretch of the imagination and most certainly not Northern influenced. All cities in Mississippi and Alabama are Southern as are Memphis and Nashville. I would even argue that Dallas is mostly a Southern city and it is huge.
You have to get to the mega-cities like Atlanta and Houston before you can make good arguments that they are so influenced by other cultures these days that they aren’t truly Southern anymore. It starts to vary as you move up the Eastern seaboard. Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA are about as Southern as they come. Keep going North and you can make an argument that Charlotte, NC is not purely Southern because it was built as an international banking center. However, keep going North yet again and you are into Virginia where Virginia Beach is mixed because of the huge military presence yet Richmond is a Southern city. It fades as you get into Northern Virginia but you can still find pieces of the Old South in large communities even in parts of northern Virginia especially to the west.
The vast majority of the South is still The South culturally and socially. It is only a few outliers that people get confused about. Southern Florida has long been one of those areas because it had many influences and those have started to get displaced by newcomers in the the last few decades. Even the smaller cities in the panhandle are still most definitely Southern.
Like I mentioned earlier, some suburbs of Orlando are more “Southern” than others; generally those located to the north and east. The traits:
- More transplants from Southern states (as opposed to those from the Northeast and Midwest), along with a higher percentage of families from the pre-Disney era, compared to other areas.
- A more recent citrus/farm town past, compared to other suburbs (Winter Garden, Apopka, etc).
- Higher blue collar employment, even in upper income areas - general contractors galore, skilled trades, etc. In the early 2000s, Nextel chirps were constantly in the background in Orlando’s western suburbs, but I seldom heard them elsewhere.
- Higher percentage of “mechanical commercial” businesses - places selling truck caps, auto body shops, equipment rental, etc.
- Visual indicators - Dale Earnhardt memorials, Confederate flags, ratio of pickup trucks vs passenger cars in local traffic, etc.
I think you mean north and west.
Well as it stands out Orlando would be Southern, to a certain extent. Geographically, Orlando is definitely Southern, as it is in Florida, which is a Southern state. And Southern culture is still prevalent in at least parts of Florida, especially in North Florida and large parts of Central Florida. South Florida is what could truly be lacking Southern culture, and even Central Florida would be more Southern than South Florida. Now as far as culture, some Orlando suburbs such as Apopka and Ocoee are definitely Southern in character. Downtown Orlando may lack Southern culture, but some of the suburbs still hold on to Southern culture. Now Orlando, as in the city proper, may not have the traditional Southern culture anymore, but it still has Southern heritage, and Orlando would most certainly be a Southern city in that sense. And to top it all off Florida in general has Southern heritage, especially since it’s a former Confederate state. Now I know Orlando has had some Northern transplants, but that doesn’t mean it’s a Northern city, and Orlando doesn’t even remotely resemble any Northern city. It would resemble a California city more than it would resemble a Northern city.
The rule of thumb for Florida is “The further south you go, the farther north you are”.
Actually it’s a little more dependent on where you go. In light of your aforementioned idiom, that could be true for maybe Fort Myers and Naples. But that wouldn’t be quite the case for Miami as well as it’s surrounding vicinity. Miami as well as it’s nearby suburbs would culturally Latin American in light of all the Latino immigrants. So as it stands out South Florida could be lacking Southern culture, but North Florida certainly isn’t, and Central Florida is a mix.
And enjoy this reference I cited:
You are most certainly correct about Atlanta, Houston, and Charlotte and they have most certainly become less Southern than they seem. And would like to point out that Nashville has kind of been going in that direction as well. As it stands out a lot of the major cities in the South are losing the traditional Southern culture they once had, and instead they are moving towards the more generic American culture. And like you said about Charlotte, the Research Triangle in NC has gotten to be less Southern. So to top it all off the traditional Southern culture is becoming more confined to more rural areas of the South, and the urban areas are getting less and less of it. Now as for Florida, it’s major urban areas such as Tampa, Orlando, and Miami no longer have the traditional Southern culture but rural parts of Florida still have it. So Florida is not completely out of Dixie.
I spent a week waiting for transportation in the Miami Beach area in 1979. It reminded me of Coney Island of the same year; places where elderly Jewish people give birth to Hispanic teens.
Actually, Miami is more culturally part of the Caribbean, which is obvious when you consider the geography and all the history, not to mention the recent demographic shifts (aside from the existing Cubans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans). Miami truly is the capital of the Americas with all of its constituents well represented.
Although it’s 37 years old, Joel Garreau’s book The Nine Nations of North America is still vaguely correct in its socio-politico-economic divisions of North America. The names for the nine areas are excessively cute and should be replaced by simple regional names. The dividing lines are more vague and smeary than Garreau indicates. Still, he’s right when he splits off southern Florida from the South and allies it more with the Caribbean:
As someone who has lived in Atlanta for 15 years and prior to that was from New Jersey, I’d caution that it seems that way to Southerners. Any Northerner who came to Atlanta, Houston, or Charlotte would definitely consider it culturally “Southern” (in terms of food, mannerisms, etc) and not really generic American. A lot of those cities also have a mix of other Southern cultures, but not necessarily white Southern culture (Atlanta in particular).