As a lifelong New Yorker, who lately moved to the Sunshine State, Steve Cuozzo’s piece on how a lot he hates Florida wasn’t offensive. It was hilarious.

“You’ll be again in 5 years,” Steve taunts.
Steve quotes the identical finance bro, Jason Mudrick, who will get talked about in each anti-Florida piece. Mudrick lives in New York and, like Steve, might be watching his pals make a wise transfer for greener, um, sandier pastures. Don’t be jealous, guys.

What are Steve’s issues with the sunshine state? Development would possibly find yourself blocking your view! As a result of that by no means occurs in New York. Local weather change will destroy the entire place! In keeping with Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, “New York has truly suffered extra hurricane harm than Miami within the final 10 years.” Whoops. Flood insurance coverage prices an excessive amount of! Florida has no state revenue tax. We’ll discover a technique to pay these insurance coverage costs.

After which Steve is apprehensive about gators. Gators! You suppose a former New Yorker will care about gators? Each few years the NYPD finds some dude holed up with a lion or one thing within the metropolis. Have you ever forgotten Antoinne Yates, discovered to be residing with a tiger, a bear cub and sure, a gator, in Harlem? I’ve seen rats the dimensions of gators within the NYC subway. For those who’ve reached “however gators,” to criticize Florida you’ve run out of ammo.

Steve has lengthy been one among my favourite meals writers and I get pleasure from following him on Instagram the place he’s . . . incessantly vacationing in Florida.

Florida man

There’s Steve on the Version in Miami. There he’s on the Colony on Palm Seashore. He manages to maintain his worry of gators very well-hidden. His captions don’t give away that he’s apprehensive concerning the ocean washing him away. “After 3 months in deep freeze, happiness is the Version Miami Seashore swimming pools.” “Lacking the Palm Seashore Colony Lodge, aka the Pink Paradise, after simply 4 days residence.”

What truly bugs Steve is that New York is in massive bother and many people have reached the top of the highway in combating for it to enhance whereas residing there. Politics matter. Steve’s governor performs footsie with the far-left that each Democrat fears proper now, whereas my governor is setting the trail for the remainder of his get together. However have you ever in contrast our flood insurance coverage prices?

I was a New York supremacist, like Steve. Nowhere else was adequate. However then the pandemic hit and New York had a few of the worst dealing with of it in all the world. Worse, New Yorkers thought they had been doing properly! They closed colleges longer than virtually anyplace. They put children useless final in all reopening plans. They proceed to masks toddlers even immediately. Toddlers! In June 2022! This isn’t the mark of a wholesome metropolis.

In October, Steve posted an image of Radio Metropolis Music Corridor, the tradition which Steve says Florida is missing in his piece, and captioned it “Modest prediction: the most important vacation season in NYC historical past coming proper up.” How did that prediction prove? Omicron hit and New York did what New York now does, closed up tight and pretended that might assist cease the unfold. It didn’t. The Rockettes’ ‘Christmas Spectacular’ was canceled. The ridiculous vaccine passport locked so many New Yorkers out of this “tradition” that Steve is so pleased with, together with 40% of Black New Yorkers and 60% of youngsters 17 and beneath. Even immediately, so many artwork venues in New York require masking. Preserve your tradition, I haven’t seen my masks in months.

It’s not simply COVID. Crime has spiraled uncontrolled. I do know lifelong New Yorkers who don’t take the subway anymore. Now that colleges are lastly open, the youngsters are again to getting a full-on leftist indoctrination. Us new Floridians noticed a saner path and we took it.

Anyway, Steve, if you wish to criticize Florida, from an angle you truly cowl, I’ll admit that my new state isn’t robust in Asian cuisines. We lack for flavorful hen and broccoli at our door earlier than we even dangle up the telephone. There’s nowhere to get soup dumplings. And in case you may put in a phrase for Xi’an Well-known Meals to open a south Florida location, these of us eager for their cumin lamb noodles would certain recognize that.

NYC you later, Steve

Look, I get it. I don’t need New York to suck both. It’s my hometown and I’ll all the time adore it.

However hating on Florida received’t convey again the town. New York must snap out of it. However even when the town all of a sudden reverts to kind, most new Floridians received’t return. Perhaps a number of single finance guys who didn’t get authorised for a membership at ZZ’s will probably be again with a story of Florida woe.

However shifting isn’t a straightforward resolution. Shifting with a household isn’t one thing any of us Florida-migrants took flippantly.

We root for New York to get well however we received’t be again. We’ve discovered paradise and we’re staying. We’ll see you on the Colony, Steve.