Nine days in Florida, nine potential Florida Man sightings

Oct 23, 2022

Beer enthusiast and sector 7-G legend Homer Simpson once called Florida “America’s wang.” Homer wasn’t wrong, but Florida is more than just a dick-shaped state full of orange groves, swamps, and amusement parks. Florida is also the source for the endlessly entertaining Florida Man meme.

Typically, people living outside of Florida encounter Florida Man via clickbait news stories, or through the Florida Man subreddit. Florida Man stories vary wildly, but common ingredients include an unusual mix of cultures, a large population, a high number of transplants from other states, bad life decisions, good drugs, nudity, guns, booze, mental health issues, poverty, encounters with Mother Nature, and the internet’s never-ending appetite for misery disguised as entertainment. In other words, Florida Man is complicated. For reference, here are just a few of the thousands of Florida Man headlines👇

Couple arrested for selling ‘Golden Tickets’ to heaven behind a Burger King
Police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at Walmart
Florida man and son shoot at neighbor returning their mail
Drunk Florida woman pulled over after speeding through checkpoint, takes selfie and flees scene before being pulled over again and arrested
Naked Florida man named “Hercules” attacks woman with machete because she didn’t have a crack pipe
Florida man demands money, urinates on victim
The Florida man who caught the alligator with a trash can? He does the same with snakes, too
Florida man threatened neighbor with machete over dog poop
Florida woman hand-fishing with a hot dog gets whole hand swallowed by tarpon

But that’s the view from outside of Florida. To visit Florida is to know Florida Man in his, or her, or their, natural element. If you’re really lucky (or really unlucky) you might witness, or guest star in, a viral Florida Man story. But those extremes are rare.

What’s much more likely is an encounter with someone I call Florida Man Inchoate. Unlike the internet celebrity that is Florida Man, Florida Man Inchoate can be found everywhere. In fact, Florida Man Inchoate is so common that you might miss him. After all, Florida Man Inchoate is any Florida resident with the potential to go full Florida Man, which means the total population is somewhere around 21 million (and counting).

I recently spent nine days in Florida, and while I didn’t witness, or participate in a viral news story, I did come across plenty of examples of Florida Man Inchoate. Here are the nine best Florida Man Inchoate specimens.

Florida Man Inchoate #1

At the Discovery Cove amusement park, I saw a man with a very bold tattoo. Written in text that arced up over his belly in a half-moon shape, the tattoo read:

Drug Life

Florida Man Inchoate #2

As I exited a Wawa convenience store in Orlando, a man walking toward the store unzipped his fly, reached into his jeans, and exposed himself.

“You never seen a Black man’s dick?” he yelled at me.

At first, I took that as a rhetorical question. But when he yelled the question again, I felt compelled to respond. I have seen a Black man’s dick. Several dicks, actually; I used to be a reporter at the second best trade publication covering adult entertainment. But I didn’t want to yell my bona fides across the gas station parking lot. Instead, I raised the bag of Skittles I had purchased inside the Wawa to my forehead and gave a rainbow candy salute.

Florida Man Inchoate #3

At Busch Gardens in Tampa, I saw a man wearing a pro-gun t-shirt. Gun ownership is popular in Florida, and 2nd Amendment virtue signaling is all the rage. But I found this particular t-shirt to be exceedingly on target—pun intended—for these inflationary times. The t-shirt read:

Ammo is expensive

Don’t expect a warning shot!

Florida Man Inchoate #4

Technically, I never got a look at Florida Man Inchoate #4, but I did overhear his phone conversation. I wrote about it in the Wednesday edition of Situation Normal. The following has been reprinted without permission👇

In the restroom stall next to mine, I heard a man on the phone. Since he was using the speaker phone function, I heard both sides of the conversation.
Man: Hey, baby, what are you up to?
Woman: Oh, you know me. Same old, same old. I haven’t seen you in ages. Are you at work?
Man: No. I left work an hour ago. That place is boring. Going golfing.
Woman: Of course you’re going golfing. You’re always golfing. Hey, am I ever going to see you again? I miss you.
Man: Soon, baby, soon. Hang on. Let me send you a picture of me.
[The phone’s camera goes “click”]
Man: There you go, baby. Just sent you a picture, so you don’t miss me so much.
Woman: What is that? What is this picture?
Man: It’s a cobra, baby.
Woman: You’re an asshole, Jerry.
[The man laughs]
Woman: And it doesn’t look like a cobra. It looks like an Earthworm.
[The man stops laughing]

Florida Man Inchoate #5 & #6

At the original Hooters in Clearwater, I saw a father and son team. Both wore puka shell necklaces, both wore faded Jimmy Buffet t-shirts, and both men struck out with their waitress. It’s a family restaurant.

Florida Man Inchoate #7

At an arcade near Tarpon Springs, I saw a man offer his suggestion for improving dry birthday cake.

“Just add a little beer,” he told his wife.

Then the man added a little beer to the birthday cake and cleaned his plate.

Florida Man Inchoate #8

At a Walmart in Spring Hill, I saw a man making mixed drinks in red solo cups on the hood of his Chevy Camaro.

Florida Man Inchoate #9

This one comes compliments of Caroline, my sister-in-law. While getting a blood transfusion, Caroline met a woman who was undergoing chemotherapy to treat her cancer.

“Turns out, she was doing lots of cocaine,” Caroline told me. “The nurse was like, does your doctor know you’re doing coke and chemo?”

“Those two don’t mix?” I asked Caroline.

“No, Michael, those two don’t mix.”

“Well, why was she mixing them?”

“For the energy. That’s what she said.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I mean, I believe the coke gave her energy,” Caroline explained. “And chemo does take it out of you. But I don’t think she discovered the coke and chemo combo on WebMd. My guess is she was a cokehead who started chemo.”

“So, probably not something the doctor ordered?”

“No! And when the nurse asked if her doctor knew, she said it was ‘none of his fucking business.’ People are nuts, and the nuttiest ones all live in Florida.”

On the other hand

One theory about the Florida Man phenomenon is that Florida’s progressive public records laws make it possible to uncover a motherlode of bizarro human interest stories that fly under the radar in other states that aren’t as press-friendly. A piece in the Miami New Times explains the Sunshine state’s history with so-called “sunshine” laws:

Since 1909, Florida has had a proud tradition that all government business is public business and therefore should be available to the public. That means all records, including photos and videos, produced by a public agency are easily accessible with a few narrow and obvious exceptions. Public officials are also required to open all of their meetings — even unofficial ones — to the public.

Later in the piece, the Miami New Times goes on to explain how Florida’s laws give the state’s journalists an edge in their day-to-day efforts to source bizarro human interest stories.

As journalists, all we have to do in most cases is call the police department and ask for an arrest report, and the cops are required to give it to us. Nowadays a lot of cops simply email the reports, and some departments even post arrest records online. Some of the more dedicated weird-Florida-news reporters go through batches of arrest reports at a time.

Once you have the report, you pretty much have something to base a story (though always keep in mind that when you see the words “according to arrest report” absent other sourcing, you are just reading the police's version of events).

Easy access to public records, according to Miami New Times writer Kyle Munzenrieder, is one important reason why you’re unlikely to read about “a man in a dog costume caught making love to a Hello Kitty doll in a mall bathroom” anywhere else but Florida.

Which brings me to California. We’ve got 40 million people, and trust me when I tell you, many of them are true weirdos. We also have a lot of malls. Odds are, at least one of those weirdos donned a dog costume to knock boots with a Hello Kitty doll in a mall bathroom.

Actually, the odds are excellent that similar incidents have occurred in New York, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. To paraphrase the rocking philosopher kings Bill & Ted, strange things are afoot all across America.

But there is no such thing as California Man, or New York Man, or Texas Man. I won’t go so far to say that Florida gets a bad rap. Rather, I think Florida has the reputation it deserves. The rest of us, I’m afraid, live in glass houses, where we throw Florida-shaped stones across a social media hellscape.

Florida Man and my media diet

Here’s a boring fact about me. I spend a lot time thinking about the various food groups that make up the media diet. I do this because, over the years, I’ve found that the media I consume indirectly impacts my mental health. A sad story won’t necessarily make me sad, just as happy story won’t necessarily make me happy. But low quality stories—the kinds that are stripped of context, devoid of insight, and packaged with addictive additives and unnatural chemical flavors—fuck me up, especially if I consume them “at scale,” as the Tech Bros who disrupted media, like to say.

As far as my media diet is concerned, an individual Florida Man story can go either way. They’re always sweet, but a Florida Man story can be a whole food, like an orange, or junk food, like an Orange Fanta with a Skittles chaser. In moderation, an Orange Fanta and a bag Skittles can be a delight. Maybe that’s why I get so geeked up for our trips to Florida. For me, those trips are as close as I’ll come to walking inside the pages of a Carl Hiaasen novel.

At scale, however, the Florida Man genre is junk food. If I consume too many empty Florida Man calories, I’m at risk for Media Diabetes, a disease that makes me feel superior to the stories I consume. I know that sounds harmless, but overtime, Media Diabetes destroys your humanity and turns your online persona into a dick-shaped troll.

I mention this because I just served up nine dishes of Florida Man Inchoate for your media dining pleasure. They tasted sweet, and maybe they gave you a sugar high, but I’m skeptical of their nutritional value.

In retrospect, I could’ve done more with my subjects in this story. For example, I could’ve asked the man in the Wawa parking lot if there was something wrong with his dick and if he needed me to get him to a urologist. If he had said yes to both questions, I’m sure that would’ve led to a funny story that was bursting with humanity and rich with insights. Or, I could’ve bellied up to the Chevy Camaro bar in Spring Hill and asked the bartender to tell me his story. That would’ve been something, I’m sure. Or, I could’ve engaged the budget-conscious gun enthusiast at Busch Gardens in a conversation. I would’ve learned something, right? Yes, I’m sure I would’ve learned something.

But I didn’t take any of those opportunities to unearth a true human interest story. Maybe that was prudent; talking to strangers isn’t for amateurs, and it can be dangerous. Or, maybe I was just on vacation in Florida, where all 21 million human interest stories look hilarious, as long as you keep your distance.

If you’re new here, please👇

If you’re a returning champ, please👇

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If you want more fun, stay and chat!

You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.

Are you a connoisseur of Florida Man stories? Please share your favorite!
Do you buy the explanations for why Florida Man is a genre and the weirdos in other states fly below the radar, or is there something truly strange happening in America’s wang?
What do you do to improve your media diet? Can you share any tips?
Carl Hiaasen novels are loaded with Florida Man stories. Ditto for Tim Dorsey novels. In fact, some of the funniest crime fiction comes out of Florida. Are you a fan? If so, can you share some recommendations?
Have you ever been to Florida? Tell us about your trip!

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