19 Maps That Prove South Florida Is Not Really the South

If there's one thing that the South and South Florida can agree on, it's that South Florida is definitely not the South. Not culturally anyway. Sure, we may be geographically one of the most southern parts of the United States, but culturally we're some mix of New York and the Caribbean. 

In fact, next time someone seems confused by this fact, show them these maps. It couldn't be clearer. 

We're not Southern. We're subtropical. 

1. We are a McMuffin state.

McDonald's may have all-day breakfast now, but the all-day options depend on what type of sandwiches are most popular in each market. While the South clearly prefers its biscuits, Florida joins the rest of the country as McMuffin territory. 
 
2. We're also a definitive IHOP territory. 

Yes, breakfast food really does seem to separate us from the South. Deadspin calculated whether Waffle House or IHOP was more popular in any given area, and South Florida is definitively pancake territory. 

I also had to double-check, but I was surprised to find that there isn't a single Waffle House in Miami-Dade. There are a few in Broward and one down in the Keys, but not a single Waffle House in the Magic City. On the flipside, there are 14 IHOPs in the county. 

3. We don't say "Y'all."

North Carolina State University statistics student Joshua Katz created a series of maps illustrating the dialect differences throughout America, and some of the differences between South Florida and the South were quite pronounced. 

"Y'all" is pretty much the signature word of the South, and, naturally, South Florida is the only part of the geographic south where we prefer "You guys." 

4. We call them "sneakers" not "tennis shoes."
 
This one almost illustrates that we're actually just a suburb of the Northeast. 

5. It's "soda," not "Coke." 

... but do they really refer to Pepsi as "Coke" in the South? 

6. "The City" is New York.

OK, other areas of the South have a slight preference for calling NYC just "the city," but South Florida has the strongest tendency to use that term outside of the areas actually surrounding New York.

7. We're Star Trek geeks.
  We had never really thought about it, but apparently sci-fi isn't that popular in the South. It does kind of make sense. It's a genre all about embracing science with all different races of aliens living together. So, when Movoto ranked each state by how much they've liked Star Trek on Facebook, it's not surprising Florida ranked much higher than the rest of the South. A similar difference can be seen for Star Wars, though it's not quite as distinct. 

8. We also like Spider-Man a whole lot more. Using similar methods, Movoto also found that Floridians like Spider-Man a whole lot more than the South. The same trend could be found for Wonder Woman. 

9. We drink wine and spirits.

10. Actually, we just drink a lot more in general.

11. We like to name our children differently.
  12. We curse differently.
  Jack Grieve, a professor in forensic linguistics at Aston University in England, used Twitter data to find out which curse words are more popular across the map. Not surprisingly there are some differences between South Florida and the rest of the South. Including that we like to use "asshole" more.

13. We have our own climate.
 
14. We tend to vote differently in presidential elections.


15. We're much more Catholic.
  16. We work in retail stores, not factories.

17. We name our streets differently.

The Washington Post found the most popular street name in each state. Our was "Second," as in "NE Second Avenue" or "SW Second Terrace." The rest of the South preferred naming their streets after nature. 

18. Apparently, we're not even part of the United States.The name of author Colin Woodard's book is pretty self-explanatory — American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Except when he mapped things out, South Florida didn't even get to be part of any of those eleven rival regional nations. He just lumped us in with the Spanish Caribbean and forgot about us. 

19. We prefer vans to pickup trucks.

According to Every Car List, Florida is the number one state in the nation for van ownership. We were also the only Southern State where the Ford F-150 was not the most popular car. instead, ours was the Nissan Altima.