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The Op wants a boat, & I asumed here wants Gulf or Atlantic not freshwater, so I didnt discuss Central FLA.
I know Central Florida quite well from Lake Placid up 27 to Haines City, and all towns in between on 17 & 27.
None of these meet the OP's criteria. All middle class retirement town w/ mining, and agri as staples to the economy's. Very little tourism, but middle class snowbirds who cant afford the coasts (for the most part). Parts of Lakeland are nice a scenic, and Winter Haven too. The rest...blahh.
My Great Grandparents wintered in Deltona/DeLand, and I liked the gentle rolling hills there. Lots of 70+'ers.
I never lived in Orlando, but work took me there enough to know I don't like it. All the toll roads drove me insane. North side Winter Park is the best IMHO. Disney's Celebration sounded cool when it was new, but I've heard bad things about it of late.
Gainesville area is nice, but quite Liberal. Ocala nice, more conservative, but Horse Country, and snoozfest after dark. John Travlota's got a nice spread there on a private airstrip.
Lake City has a high crime rate, due to all the drugs passing through, so pass.
I dont know much about the area's South and inland of Ponte Vedra/Sawgrass. That is the area I know the least about. I'm not an expert on the Space Coast either. Vero Beach is excellent for 70+'ers, and could be our last stop out on the barier Island (32963 zip code). Great little off the beaten path town w/ a very affluent barrier Island. More retired Fortune 500 CEO's here per capita than anywhere else in FLA I read once. Mainland Vero's blah, gotta be in 32963.
Sebastian's laid back hippy type surfer dude town. Hodge podge zoning makes it look dumpy.
Ft. Pierce hs to much crime on the mainland. The barrier area's nice, but just a small handfull of biker bars along the coastal road, and further South is an old Nuclear Power plant that chased me away from that area.
Of everything I've seen in between Jupiter & Ponte Vedra, I like Vero's barrier Island best. Classy looking, ~6 very nice and good restaurants and bars that pretty much close down at 9pm, but excellent beaches, only 2 buildings over 4 storys high, and the natural vegetation there is impressive...massive oak trees like Savannah GA has, and the low Country.
Daytona and Daytona Beach are garbage. Sorry to offend, and I think there are a few pockets just North of there that are decent, maybe Orange Park is it called? The downtown area's a dump.
Sorry, I'm pretty opinionated. I size places up pretty quickly, and can be harsh w/ my judgements.
I hope I didnt hurt anyone's feelings, or say anything that is too far off-base. Plz correct me if so.
I've just covered ~2/3rds of the State in 2 posts, & not many can do that with much degree of accuracy.
I dont know 100% of the State, but I know ~75% of it in fairly high detail.
So you describe Florida as Haves vs Have Nots, but when I describe California the same way, you suggest it’s asinine? Great argument there. Please do us all a favor and educate yourself on income disparity in California, an absence of the middle class in every large Californian city, and the soaring numbers of homelessness in said cities. In San Jose, San Francisco, and to a milder degree, LA and San Diego, either you’re rich or you’re poor. End of story. I don’t know what else to tell you. If you haven’t lived there, please do not speak on this.
It’s not fun or easy to pick on California; it simply is the truth. Anyone with an IQ above 6 recognizes there’s an absolute homelessness crisis there, and it’s immensely visible, not because California has twice the amount of people as Florida, which is 100% not a credible argument. This homeless issue is not at all as prevalent in other large cities like Houston, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Phoenix, or Boston, hell or even NYC with its 20 million people. But but but math!
California’s homelessness crisis is in your face 24/7, with tent cities sprawled all across San Jose, SF and LA, people shooting up drugs in broad daylight and the police powerless to stop them because of politics, human waste everywhere, and aggressive panhandling on every corner on 5th Ave in LA and Tenderloin in SF. Have you lived in California? If not, then your opinion on this is irrelevant.
Your “that’s how math works” underscores your true ignorance on the topic. DC, and NY might have a high homeless population but many are in shelters and therefore not regarded as “chronically homeless” and on the street. LA, SF, Seattle, San Jose, and to a lesser degree San Diego and Portland have the most individuals sleeping on the street. There simply is not enough money to house most of them, and many of the homeless in SF simply prefer to remain on the street. There have been COUNTLESS exposes, special news stories, documentaries, and personal eyewitness accounts of California’s shocking homelessness. Jesus, how do you not know this? Google is your friend.
I will continue saying this until you understand: if you haven’t lived in California’s largest cities, you truly need to keep your mouth closed because it’s painfully obvious you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
The Op wants a boat, & I asumed here wants Gulf or Atlantic not freshwater, so I didnt discuss Central FLA.
I know Central Florida quite well from Lake Placid up 27 to Haines City, and all towns in between on 17 & 27.
None of these meet the OP's criteria. All middle class retirement town w/ mining, and agri as staples to the economy's. Very little tourism, but middle class snowbirds who cant afford the coasts (for the most part). Parts of Lakeland are nice a scenic, and Winter Haven too. The rest...blahh.
My Great Grandparents wintered in Deltona/DeLand, and I liked the gentle rolling hills there. Lots of 70+'ers.
I never lived in Orlando, but work took me there enough to know I don't like it. All the toll roads drove me insane. North side Winter Park is the best IMHO. Disney's Celebration sounded cool when it was new, but I've heard bad things about it of late.
Gainesville area is nice, but quite Liberal. Ocala nice, more conservative, but Horse Country, and snoozfest after dark. John Travlota's got a nice spread there on a private airstrip.
Lake City has a high crime rate, due to all the drugs passing through, so pass.
I dont know much about the area's South and inland of Ponte Vedra/Sawgrass. That is the area I know the least about. I'm not an expert on the Space Coast either. Vero Beach is excellent for 70+'ers, and could be our last stop out on the barier Island (32963 zip code). Great little off the beaten path town w/ a very affluent barrier Island. More retired Fortune 500 CEO's here per capita than anywhere else in FLA I read once. Mainland Vero's blah, gotta be in 32963.
Sebastian's laid back hippy type surfer dude town. Hodge podge zoning makes it look dumpy.
Ft. Pierce hs to much crime on the mainland. The barrier area's nice, but just a small handfull of biker bars along the coastal road, and further South is an old Nuclear Power plant that chased me away from that area.
Of everything I've seen in between Jupiter & Ponte Vedra, I like Vero's barrier Island best. Classy looking, ~6 very nice and good restaurants and bars that pretty much close down at 9pm, but excellent beaches, only 2 buildings over 4 storys high, and the natural vegetation there is impressive...massive oak trees like Savannah GA has, and the low Country.
Daytona and Daytona Beach are garbage. Sorry to offend, and I think there are a few pockets just North of there that are decent, maybe Orange Park is it called? The downtown area's a dump.
Sorry, I'm pretty opinionated. I size places up pretty quickly, and can be harsh w/ my judgements.
I hope I didnt hurt anyone's feelings, or say anything that is too far off-base. Plz correct me if so.
I've just covered ~2/3rds of the State in 2 posts, & not many can do that with much degree of accuracy.
I dont know 100% of the State, but I know ~75% of it in fairly high detail.
Informative an accurate view ... tell it like is, is the only way to tell it.
I've just covered ~2/3rds of the State in 2 posts, & not many can do that with much degree of accuracy.
I dont know 100% of the State, but I know ~75% of it in fairly high detail.
You missed a couple of places that I'm very familiar with.
First there's Tallahassee. Tallahassee doesn't really look like the rest of Florida, with it's rolling hills and majestic old oak trees. The city has ordinances to protect those trees, and the result is many roads that have "canopy oaks" over them.
It's a beautiful and well kept city. Even the poorer parts of town are relatively well kept. I haven't checked the crime statistics, but I imagine they're above average. I also would expect that crime to be limited to certain well defined areas. You can go to realtor.com and check their crime map to see where those areas are.
Tallahassee has a unique atmosphere that's probably not replicated in many places in the US. It's the capital of Florida, so state government is centered there. The collection of government employees establishes a firm economic base for the city, though the median income is not much more than the state's. That's due to the high student population. Florida State University has 40,000 students, and then theres FAMU - the largest historicallly black college in Florida - which has a student body of about 10,000. There's also a community college and a vocational school with a combined student body of over 25,000.
Florida State University is probably the second best university in Florida for sciences and engineering, and the top Florida university for law, business, and the arts.
The universities are a big part of the Tallahassee cultural scene, but they're not the only part. The legislature and the wheeling and dealing that goes on when it is in session confer an unusual business sense to the place as well.
This is all happening in a southern city, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by an extremely conservative southern population.
It works pretty well. My only complaints about the town are:
The humidity is debilitating in the summer. If you can stand that, you may appreciate the fact that Tallahassee actually has four seasons. It can get very cold there in the winter, low twenties for a couple of weeks out of the year.
Then there is the problem of the students. Of course, they are like students everywhere, and this means the place is suffocatingly liberal. The cure for this is just to avoid the university and it's propagations when they get too annoying.
The other city that you missed, which may have a certain charm for some people, is Live Oak. Live Oak is in Suwannee County between Lake City and Tallahassee. Suwannee County is bordered by the Suwannee River, and there are a lot of river houses built on the Suwannee. The town's population is about 7,000, but the county population is a good bit more than that. Look it up.
Live Oak is small and well kept. There are many old brick buildings downtown, and the old county courthouse, and these impart a small town charm to the place. It's very conservative. The county was dry until about 5 years ago. You find churches on every corner and there is a bible store there, but don't worry. These Christians are relatively subdued. They may ask you to go to church with them, but you can just tell them you have to mow the lawn and they won't mind.
Suwannee County is very agricultural. They grown a lot of peanuts and there is a peanut processing plant out in the sticks. They also grow a lot of blueberries, and there's a blueberry festival held annually in some town I have forgottent the name of. It's an attractive and slow paced place to live, and there's some sort of assisted living facility in the south of the county. It's associated with some church, I think. I did some work there a few years back, and I was impressed with the cleanliness and aesthetics of the place. It's got plenty of space for people to walk around, and it's not far from the city of Live Oak if anyone wanted to head into town.
Live Oak is maybe an hour away from Gainesville, another university city, where there are many events and proceedings related to the school.
If you're looking for a place to relax and do mostly nothing except fish, hunt, and maybe go to church, you should check out Live Oak.
I guess it's worth adding that I know a couple of people who raised children over there. There's drug thing going on in the shadows, like every rural area of the US now, but it can be avoided in Live Oak by sending your kids to one of the inexpensive Christian schools, which provide a very good education. I knew a guy who was a devout Hindu who sent his kids there. They did great and went on to university.
Gainesville area is nice, but quite Liberal.
Lake City has a high crime rate, due to all the drugs passing through, so pass.
.
Gainesville is annoyingly in your face liberal.
But I have lived in Lake City, and I don't think the crime rate is related to drugs passing through. There are drugs here, mostly meth, but they're not passing through. These rednecks are creative. They cook up their meth right out there in the trailer parks.
And that contributes to the crime, but that's in all of rural America now. The fact is that perusing the Lake City Reporter, the local newspaper, you will notice after a while that there are just a bunch of stupid rednecks who do stupid things. Florida Men (and women), if you will.
Example. Last week a guy was arrested for having sex with his dog. Not making that up. There are regular shootings at the honky tonks around town. The last one I remember reading about was some guy who got in an argument with his baby mama and his girlfriend at the bar, and the baby mama shot the girlfriend in the leg. I think she fired a couple of rounds into her car too, just for good measure.
Really, most of the crime here is of the baby mama shoots girlfriend variety. There's just something about the culture here that makes these rednecks mean and impulsive. I noticed it when I first moved here from the panhandle of Florida, another rural and countrified area, but with a different culture. The people there are more accomodating and friendly. These rednecks are friendly too, but they just function differently.
A buddy of mine put it this way: If your car breaks down and one of these rednecks happens by, he'll stop the truck and spend the afternoon helping you get it going again. That night, though, if he sees a radio in your car he likes, he'll break the back window and steal it.
You missed a couple of places that I'm very familiar with.
First there's Tallahassee. Tallahassee doesn't really look like the rest of Florida, with it's rolling hills and majestic old oak trees. The city has ordinances to protect those trees, and the result is many roads that have "canopy oaks" over them.
It's a beautiful and well kept city. Even the poorer parts of town are relatively well kept. I haven't checked the crime statistics, but I imagine they're above average. I also would expect that crime to be limited to certain well defined areas. You can go to realtor.com and check their crime map to see where those areas are.
Tallahassee has a unique atmosphere that's probably not replicated in many places in the US. It's the capital of Florida, so state government is centered there. The collection of government employees establishes a firm economic base for the city, though the median income is not much more than the state's. That's due to the high student population. Florida State University has 40,000 students, and then theres FAMU - the largest historicallly black college in Florida - which has a student body of about 10,000. There's also a community college and a vocational school with a combined student body of over 25,000.
Florida State University is probably the second best university in Florida for sciences and engineering, and the top Florida university for law, business, and the arts.
The universities are a big part of the Tallahassee cultural scene, but they're not the only part. The legislature and the wheeling and dealing that goes on when it is in session confer an unusual business sense to the place as well.
This is all happening in a southern city, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by an extremely conservative southern population.
It works pretty well. My only complaints about the town are:
The humidity is debilitating in the summer. If you can stand that, you may appreciate the fact that Tallahassee actually has four seasons. It can get very cold there in the winter, low twenties for a couple of weeks out of the year.
Then there is the problem of the students. Of course, they are like students everywhere, and this means the place is suffocatingly liberal. The cure for this is just to avoid the university and it's propagations when they get too annoying.
Yea, Tallahassee is a lot different than the rest of Florida. Florida north of Orlando is a lot different and the Pan Handle is a lot different than the rest of FL. Northwest FL away from the coast you won't even see very many palm trees other than your Sable palms. Looks more temperate.
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