The State of.... South Florida??

[AlphaSigOU]

Originally Posted by MsDGP007

LOL...Wow. I lived in Daytona Beach for 1 and 1/2 years and Miami for six (well I was split between Miramar...which is technically in Broward and North Miami Beach). I came up to Southwestern Pennsylvania in Dec. Whew! Am I glad I made it out boy!

Not quite... The 'Not Much Better' city limits generally extend east of I-95 in northern Miami-Dade County from about 151st Street to the county line at 215th Street. Miramar is entirely within Broward County; its southern border is the Miami-Dade/Broward county line at NW 215th Street/SW 41st Ave. Carol City (or whatever the new independent city name is now) occupies the Miami-Dade side south of the county line to about Red Road (NW 57th Ave).

I grew up in both Hialeah and North Miami (GO PIONEERS!); at the time I was in high school in North Miami, the neighborhood and consequently the school population was predominantly white and Jewish; we had bagel sales, not bake sales. Many Yiddish slang words still pepper my conversation from time to time. (And I'm a lapsed Roman Catholic.)

I also lived in Miramar off Douglas Road; the balcony of our condo overlooked the 8th green and 9th tee of the Miramar golf course.

Fast forward about 10 years later and I could already see the demographics changing to a largely Haitian population. Much of western and southwestern Miami-Dade County was 'La Saguecera' (a Spanish phonetic corruption of 'southwest'), where rapid-fire Cuban-accented Spanish is the lingua franca. I'm fluent in both English and Spanish (though I speak it with a Venezuelan accent); but it takes me a second or two to shift gears and think and speak in Spanish whenever someone speaks to me in Spanish. When I start looking lost, they usually speak a little slower.

I haven't been back to South Florida except to visit or attend class reunions in over 25 years. I'm now a 'naturalized' citizen of the Republic of Texas.

I gotta agree; Miami's and South Florida's no longer for me. If I decide to return to Florida permanently it's probably around the Space Coast or northeast Florida area by St. Augustine.