It's night/day and that's my point. Central Florida is totally different than Tampa. Tons more rednecks up there. Send me a PM when you get to Tampa and I'll show you around.

Well that doesn't seem very "friendly" to me. Frankly I find it shameful, mean spirited and small minded.

There is a large gay population all over Florida. South Florida in particular, but Orlando, Tampa etc also have a very open and active gay culture. Despite shit like I'm reading here (the original article, not others posts), most people simply don't make that big a fuss over it.

I grew up in Florida in a school district that included a lot of kids from the sticks. These kids wore rebel flag hats, said "Nigger" all the time, hated the Mexican field workers with a passion, and anybody else their racists parents taught them too. A lot of that has gone away now, but you can still find it in more rural parts of the state. It gets more rednecky up around the panhandle, and central Florida imo.

Once you get to the SE side of Florda there is a huge Jewish population, and much of the "white flight" from Miami went up to West Palm, Boca etc to get away from the crime (at the time) and keep tucked away where they feel nice and safe. Get down to Miami and it's just a big international city. I actually love Miami for this reason. Yes the latino culture is predominant, but it's not like people make it out to be. There are all kinds of people including a huge gay population. Key West is laid back, and the gay population down there is also an integral part of the town. Gay pride parades with drags queens and gay shops all up and down the main strip. It's light years away from Tallahassee, Orlando or Gainsville for instance.

Ultimately Florida is pretty diverse when you make your way through the state. The narrow mindedness is still rooted down in the rural areas, but those dipshits exist all over America. IMO Florida is more like Southern New York now more than anything these days. A far cry from the swampy redneck shitheads that used to be the majority back in the day.

Believe it or not I was online back then, albeit it for a short while. Although I spoke to people around the world, it was primarily through a server via General Electric named "GEnie." It was purely text back then of course, with a dial up modem. I had access to 40 "Channels" that were essentially chat rooms. There was a reference to a "CB handle" (as in trucker) for the user name. I can't remember exactly what they called it. Since my Father worked for the company we were the testers before they began to sell the product. I think not soon after CompuServe came around and basically created something bigger and better than GEnie.

Prior to that, as a yute, I remember my Father had the really old Modem where you took the phone and placed it in the female end before dialing. We would "Call" the computer in Maryland (we lived in Virginia) and it would spit out info through the printer (no monitor.) There was a program I remember that gave you stats on how much time you spent sleeping, eating, on the toilet etc, based on the age you put in. All very primitive now, but back then it was a big deal. I was around 11 or so I think...