Jaded Hipster bible Vice has no love for the Sunshine state. Blogger Sam McPheeters unleashed on our peninsula in a recent blog post, casting the state as "a violent, dong-shaped netherworld of grifters, drug smugglers, gun runners, swamp nazis, hobo killers, killer hobos, elder abusers, kidnappers, skinhead tweakers, sex maniacs, escaped prisoners, grave robbers, and steakfuckers." Apparently Florida is just a little too rough around the edges for the Williamsburgh crowd.
Vice claims Florida has a "direct connection to every evil thing that ever happens anywhere on the planet." Which, yes, in the face of the Terri Schiavo controversy, Casey Anthony, 2000 election, and Aileen Wournos is kind of hard to shake off. Vice also lists of the number of horrible bands that have emerged from our swamps like Against Me, Backstreet Boys, Creed, Limp Bizkit, and 'N Sync (uh, yeah Vice did once declare Against Me "one of our favoritest bands ever," but whatever).
That's the thing, though. Most of the horrible things that happened in Florida are perpetuated by people born and raised outside Florida. People who emigrated here. Every major jackass behind every one of those horrible bands: all from outside of Florida. Casey Anthony: a product of Ohio. Aileen Wournos popped out of the womb in Michigan. Our own state Supreme Court got it right in the 2000 election by ordering a recount until the US Supreme Court came along and reversed that decision.
It's not necessarily our fault that because of our warm weather and geographic location all the horrible things from the rest of the country seem to drip down here like runny bird shit streaming down a car windshield. We're the gutter picking up the rest of the countries run-off, but what the hell is wrong with that?
Before Giuliani, Vice's HQ NYC used to be a pretty rough place for the worst (and best) kind of people. Now its a concrete playground for investment bankers and trust fund kids working on their art. We'd rather be around steak fuckers and grifters than stock fuckers and privileged hipsters.
True, true, most of Florida (and as Miamians we really have no interest in defending "most of Florida") is a horrible place of gated communities and non-stop suburban sprawl, but we kind of enjoy our city's weird mix of Florida dysfunction and urban buzz.
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