Florida Doesn't Suck!
Florida Doesn't Suck!
...at least not as much as I was worried it might
Welcome to another edition of Willoughby Hills!
This newsletter explores topics like history, culture, work, urbanism, transportation, travel, agriculture, self-sufficiency, and more.
If you like what you’re reading, you can sign up for a free subscription to have this newsletter delivered to your inbox every Wednesday and Sunday and get my latest podcast episodes:
As I mentioned on Wednesday, my family and I are spending a few weeks in Florida this summer, camping in our RV at Disney’s Fort Wilderness campground which is located at Walt Disney World outside of Orlando.
We had originally hoped to join my extended family for a reunion in Montana near Glacier National Park, but the logistics of making that trip happen proved too difficult with our two young kids. We were seeking alternative vacation ideas and realized that our RV essentially gives us a vacation home wherever we chose to park it. We were able to get a rate at Disney’s campground that would make it palatable to stay for a few weeks, so we decided we’d try using our RV as a second home for a while and see if we liked that.
We initially booked our stay in the spring, not knowing for sure what the summer would hold for us. As time passed, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida began to ratchet up his legislative attacks on everything from teaching Black history to affirming trans people to books. Yes, books.
I started to wonder if it was prudent or even safe for us to visit Florida. The NAACP pulled no punches, releasing this travel advisory in May:
"Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color."
When I spoke with Christian Cooper a few weeks ago on the podcast, he further encouraged people to vote with their wallets, especially when it came to spending vacation dollars in Florida. I agreed with him in principle but also really liked the comfort and familiarity of camping at Disney. I was torn.
My wife is Brown, our kids are Brown. We still mask in most indoor settings, which is still acceptable in Massachusetts, but seemed to never be the norm in Florida, even at the height of the pandemic. Could traveling to Florida be not only hostile to us but perhaps even dangerous?
I know it’s anecdotal and it’s hard to speak for all situations, but I have been pleasantly surprised that Florida is not the awful place that I feared and that I’ve been hearing about on the news for months.
We arrived in early July, but Disney gift shops were still filled with Pride merchandise from June. There were Pride photo opportunities in the theme parks and I even saw a cast member (Disney speak for employee) with a transgender flag pin on their uniform. For a state that has tried to erase LGBTQ+ people from the public space, at least within the Disney Bubble, people were out and proud!
After staying late for fireworks at the park one night, we decided to take a Lyft back to our campground. Our driver had moved to Orlando from Columbia five years ago. She said she enjoyed driving for Lyft because it helped her practice her English, which has been the hardest thing for her to master living in a new country. She was wearing a mask for the whole drive, as were we.
In fact, while masking isn’t the norm, it’s also not the outlier that I was worried it might be. I have been mentally preparing for how to handle an encounter where we get told that COVID isn’t real, but so far, I’ve only occasionally felt like we might be catching a few stares. People don't seem phased by our mask wearing on buses or in line for rides. They barely seem to notice.
We’ve seen numerous cast members in masks. We stopped in a Whole Foods a few days ago to replenish some of our groceries and there was a worker in a mask and a plastic face shield, which I haven’t seen since about 2021 in Massachusetts. DeSantis outlawed many COVID mitigation techniques, but the reality we’ve encountered on the ground here, at least in touristy Orlando, is much more nuanced.
We spent the Fourth of July at the Disney campground, which was definitely a scene. Fort Wilderness has a reputation for campers decorating their sites to look like Clark Griswold’s house, with inflatable figures, dancing lights, and personalized signage. We’ve encountered this phenomenon at Christmas before, but this was the first time being at the campground for the Fourth of July.
Most campers seemed to at least have some form of decoration, which ranged from tasteful American flags to gaudy inflatables of Uncle Sam carrying a rifle or a cartoonish Statue of Liberty.
The campground is also spread out and many people either own a golf cart or rent one when they stay here. The golf carts were similarly decorated with every form of American iconography possible (there was a golf cart decorating competition on July 4, which motivated some of it).
At times, the amount of red, white, and blue had the vibe of a Trump rally. There was flag waving for its own sake, but there also seemed to be flag waving as a means of puffing up ones own chest, bordering on aggressive.
Like a Trump rally, some of it was a bit sad to me. I’ve already written about my complicated relationship with the more patriotic holidays and the boosterism that they seem to encourage, but I also just felt like there was an immense amount of waste happening.
The American decor all seemed to be cheap, tacky, and meant to be thrown away after one use. It was the kind of things that a dollar store sells.
Here were cheap plastic goods, almost certainly made overseas, shipped across an ocean, trucked to a store, purchased for a dollar or so, used to decorate a campsite for a few days, and then sent to a landfill. The wages of the people making and selling these items were likely very low, both on the manufacturing and retail sides of the equation. There was very little sense of permanence or reuse; many of these items were single-use by design, destined to take up space in a landfill.
I don’t fault the people buying these decorations. For one thing, this is a country of fast food and fast fashion and we don’t stop to think about our individual impacts on that system. American manufacturing is also largely a thing of the past, so I don’t expect that these items should have been made domestically- it’s just not our current reality. There can be a place for some of these items if they are bringing joy to people and helping create memories, although perhaps in smaller quantities.
Still, I can’t help but connect the disposable, imported “American” decorations, a Florida that on paper is incredibly discriminatory and predatory, and a Florida that on the ground is much more diverse and complicated than can be summed up in a news report or a social media post. Simply put, humans are strange and contradictory.
Last summer, I had a similar reaction to visiting West Virginia. It was a place that I wasn’t eager to visit for fear that my East Coast liberal sensibilities would be at odds with the reality on the ground. I was taken aback by the natural beauty, the kindness of the people, and how politics didn’t seem to inform their daily lives. Whether West Virginia or Florida, it’s easy to buy the caricature rather than see somewhere as complicated and multi-dimensional where contradictions are normal.
I think the challenge for me is finding ways to oppose the policies of DeSantis while also supporting the people that are living in Florida who are working to make their communities better.
Don’t get me wrong though, DeSantis doesn’t exist in a bubble and the people of Florida have some culpability in all of this too. They re-elected DeSantis with 59% of the vote in 2022. But it’s also worth noting that voter turnout in that gubernatorial election was only 54%, meaning nearly half of eligible Floridians didn’t cast a vote.
Politics and policy matter. As a straight white male, I am less susceptible to the discrimination that other groups face, so all of this should be viewed through that lens. I have the good fortune to always feel relatively safe.
But I also think it’s worth remembering that there are good people just trying to live their life everywhere in this country and painting residents with the same brush as policymakers often leads to oversimplification, prejudice, and division.
I continue to have major policy disagreements with DeSantis and see many of his stunts as attempting to throw red meat to a far right wing base with the hopes of capturing some of the Trump vote (based on polling, it doesn’t appear to be working). Sadly, these stunts have real world consequences for the lives of people of color, LGBT+ people, immigrants, and many others. It’s hard to turn a blind eye to that.
These policies are also suppressing travel to the state, with some conventions cancelling or relocating and individuals likely opting to stay home out of solidarity for the discriminated, fear of the reality on the ground, or both.
I am glad that I have been able to see first hand that in Orlando at least, diverse perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds are still welcomed, or at least aren’t persecuted in the way I expected.
It’s a good reminder that people are complicated and no one stereotype can apply to an entire city, region, or state. Politics is fickle and a right wing administration can easily be replaced by a left wing one and vice versa. While policies have real impacts, they can often be short-lived. The real marker of a place is not the actions of the people chosen to govern for a brief period but the spirit of the people who continue to work hard every day to make a place home.
Thanks for reading Willoughby Hills! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Related Reading
Did I Have West Virginia Wrong?
The Thanksgiving Play and Memorial Day
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
Florida is a giant melting pot controlled by older white guys. Sooner or later that will change (been living here 9 years after 5x that in MA). Just a reminder on MA that although I was born in Boston I grew up on Cape Cod and it and the Berkshires were bright red versus blue in politics. Even the most liberal state had conservative pockets as is true with even the most conservative states.
As a conservative, I honestly can’t relate to this at all. I understand that you want nothing to do with my kind, but I’m perfectly happy to go vacationing up in the Northeast, California, or the PacNW. Eh, the laws might not be much to my liking, and perhaps I don’t have a whole lot in common with the folks who make their home there, but I’m not moving there - just visiting a week or two. There’s stuff to see and do, and I refuse to let people who I know for certain don’t like me stop me from the things I or my kid want to experience. Besides, original sin notwithstanding, most people of every stripe are actually decent humans in daily, mundane interactions. It makes me sad that you’re so terrified of people like me, and that you’re teaching your kids to be as well.