The thought got here to Pete Melfi, a radio character turned podcaster in St. Augustine, Fla., final yr after he organized “the laziest race in the history of races,” a .5-kilometer beer run, and the individuals had a grand previous time.
Wouldn’t or not it’s enjoyable, Mr. Melfi thought, to carry one other race, this time with a giant after-party? And what if the theme was none apart from the meme that launched many 1000’s of headlines about his residence state: Florida Man?
His wild thought morphed into an all-day competitors with a sequence of zany occasions: A mullet contest. A “mud duel” with pool noodles. An “evading arrest” impediment course, with actual sheriff’s deputies pursuing the contestants. (But, to be clear, there have been no precise arrests within the race. The handcuffs got here from a intercourse toy store.)
“We understand that Florida is weird,” Mr. Melfi stated. “We embrace it.”
If the remainder of the nation — hell, the remainder of the world — goes to make Florida the punchline, then those that name it residence would possibly as properly be in on the joke. Don’t overthink it.
But Florida Man has been a cultural phenomenon for therefore lengthy that some in Florida and past have spent fairly a little bit of time interested by what it means, the right way to problem it and what it says concerning the state’s identification. Maybe the video games in St. Augustine may be an excuse to discover the evolution of the meme — and of Florida itself.
“Florida has always been, to me, such an important barometer of where the nation is headed,” stated Julio Capó Jr., a historian at Florida International University in Miami, who has written that viewing the state and its folks “in caricature form” is a centuries-old behavior. “Yet there are very few attempts to take the state seriously — to understand its past, its present and much less its future.”
At the height of the meme’s recognition, within the mid to late 2010s, everybody, it appeared, mocked outlandish and unfortunate tales fished from the state’s bottomless trove of police stories and mug photographs. The @_FloridaMan account on Twitter, now generally known as X, attracted tons of of 1000’s of followers. The Florida Man Birthday Challenge inspired folks to enter their start date and “Florida Man” to see what weird headline that revealed on their birthday popped up.
But questions quickly arose about thrusting common folks into the tough public glare, particularly in the event that they have been affected by dependancy, psychological sickness or poverty. Other states had freakish incidents, too — if fewer involving alligators. Why decide on Florida?
The author Lauren Groff, who moved to the state 18 years in the past, recalled one other Florida meme, by which somebody saws the dangling state off the map.
“It’s a giant and incredibly complex state that has been reduced to something deeply silly,” she stated.
The prevailing principle for the way Florida Man turned standard goes like this: The absurdity of the state’s 2000 presidential recount turned Florida into the butt of late-night jokes. The state’s sturdy public-records legal guidelines made it simple for anybody to acquire police stories. The web and social media exploded it right into a sensation.
But Ira P. Robbins, a legislation professor at American University, present in 2021 that different states had simply as broad or broader entry to public information than Florida. “Why don’t we have New Mexico Man or New York Man or Massachusetts Man?” he stated in an interview.
Craig Pittman, the writer of “Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country,” famous that Florida has produced bizarre news since earlier than it turned a state in 1845. “When we were a territory, we were known as a rogues’ paradise,” he stated. “Half the people were scalawags and robbers, and the other half were their penniless victims.”
But now, many newspapers have stopped publishing mug photographs. The proprietor of the @_FloridaMan account retired it in 2019, citing unease with mocking folks’s conduct on what is usually one of many worst days of their lives. In his publication highlighting oddball tales from across the state, Mr. Pittman doesn’t embrace any about Floridians who’ve been involuntarily dedicated for psychiatric care or who’re clearly affected by dependancy.
Yet none of this has spelled the top of Florida Man. The phrase has entered the political lexicon, remodeling from a generic time period for a nonpublic individual — Florida Man as John Doe — to a stand-in for former President Donald J. Trump. “Florida Man Makes Announcement,” The New York Post riffed in 2022, when Mr. Trump declared his re-election marketing campaign.
While that specific Florida Man lives in a gilded Palm Beach compound, common Floridians do face actual struggles that outsiders, together with some who’ve flocked to the state lately, could not grasp, stated Tyler Gillespie, a author in St. Petersburg. Their perspective is, “‘We can kind of do whatever we want and we can leave,’” he stated of the newcomers.
“My family’s here, so I’m pretty rooted,” Mr. Gillespie stated. “But there’s hardly anywhere affordable to live.”
Incongruous as it might appear, St. Augustine, the place Mr. Melfi lives and arranged the Florida Man Games, is the oldest constantly settled metropolis within the nation and a spot steeped in historical past.
The first-ever Florida Man Games have been held on the fairgrounds of a historic district, with tickets going for $55 a pop on Saturday. Sponsored by a Florida attire firm and others, together with a automobile dealership and a gymnasium, the competitors awarded $5,000 to at least one profitable group, primarily based on its efficiency in occasions all through the day.
Hundreds of individuals got here to revel within the laid-back Florida-ness of all of it. Shirtless overalls. “Merica” hats. Mullets! Overthinking they weren’t — nor was this reporter, as soon as she settled in to observe.
A group from north of Tampa, the Red Eyed Gator Huggers, introduced a mascot: a 5-year-old inexperienced iguana named Mikey. “What’s more Florida than a stinkin’ iguana?” stated C.J. Mays, Mikey’s proprietor, as she petted its again.
Contestants wolfed down an enormous pile of pork utilizing their naked palms. “Everything I do is for Florida and America!” Dylan Mullaney of Jacksonville exclaimed as he consumed.
Women wearing pinup model competed for the title of “Florida Ma’am,” together with one sporting beer cans as hair rollers. Organizers have been pressured to improvise for the mud duel after somebody “slashed” the plastic pool by which it was to happen, Mr. Melfi stated.
“I heard they had New York plates on their car,” he joked about whoever was accountable.
The shenanigans have been made for Instagram and TikTook, the platforms that unfold phrase concerning the occasion within the first place. The emcee was a TikTook character. One of the groups featured a man identified for holding a giant American flag as a hurricane blew in.
Among the opponents — all of them males, most of them white — was Joshua Barr, a 37-year-old from Citrus County, whose three-person group was named the Cooter Commandos, in homage to a neighborhood river turtle. Each group member created an over-the-top persona to advertise the group on social media. Mr. Ryan’s was Captain Cooter, “based off early ’90s wrestling, W.W.E., a little bit of ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage,” he stated. To compete, he wore a flashy tank prime and cutoffs.
“You’ve got to lean into the joke and lean into the absurdity of it,” he stated.
Mr. Ryan’s Florida, he stated, concerned rising up using his bicycle and being in nature. One of his group members has been his good friend since first grade.
In current years, a number of new folks have moved into Citrus County, on the state’s west central coast, he stated, stirring some resentment amongst locals who “don’t want Northerners moving there — they want things to stay how they are.”
“We’re, like, just getting our first Chick-fil-A and Target and Starbucks,” he stated.
Mandy Millam, 37, whose husband was additionally one of many Cooters, stated folks from exterior of the state nonetheless misunderstand it too usually.
“Florida has a wild heart,” she stated. “We have wild nature. But people perceive us as having wild abandon. We don’t cross that line as much as people think we do.”
She added: “I love this place so much.”
Source: www.nytimes.com