Florida needs some new nicknames, and other things I learned as a newcomer
Gabrielle Lazor
After a summer covering Tampa Bay’s life and culture, our Tampa Bay Times intern proposes new nicknames for the area inspired by her wild experiences.
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Tampa Bay Times
I thought I had Florida pegged: Mickey Mouse, Miami and “Florida Man” stories. So what if I’d never been to the Tampa Bay area before?

I arrived in early June with neither an umbrella nor sunscreen. My internship at the Tampa Bay Times was about to begin, sun protection or not. Little did I know that roller coasters, Amalie Arena and the Gulf of Mexico would become my office.

Along the way, I became acclimated with some of the area’s pseudonyms: The Big Guava, the Sunset Capital, the Gunshine State, God’s Waiting Room. But after my summer-long quest to uncover the rhythms of Tampa Bay’s life and culture, I concluded that this state defies its own stereotypes.

Florida is due for some new nicknames. Surely we can do better than “God’s Waiting Room,” after what I’d call the Great Millennial Migration.

My credentials? I leave this slice of paradise with sun-burnt skin (damn you, SPF 15!) and a sincere fondness for the area. (Still no umbrella, though. I learned that real Floridians don’t use them anyways.) I started driving without turn signals and discovered free beach parking, unofficial marks of “local status.”

Here are my formal proposals for new nicknames inspired by experiences that are too good to go untold. I’m keeping my free beach parking spot a secret, though.

People Watchers’ Paradise

They roam among us, wild and untamed — and I’m not talking about alligators.

By the second week of my internship, I invaded their natural habitat, a realm of princesses, pixie dust and impending debt.

I’m talking about the Disney adult.

The species has evolved, crossbreeding with content creators. I found myself amid bippity-boppity-beautified influencers and all their tripods when Disney hosted a three-day media event before debuting Splash Mountain’s replacement, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.

On the first night, Disney treated us to an exclusive viewing of Epcot’s firework show in front of the World Showcase Lagoon. Sitting on the concrete felt glorious after racking up more than 20,000 steps that day. The fireworks were bright, but the real entertainment came from watching the content creators.

It was a people watcher’s paradise.

I scooted to the left as a family of influencers encroached on my spot. The mom had a hot pink spiky mohawk, and the dad was arching back with a selfie stick in hand as they instructed their kids to smile and spread their arms wide. I scooted again.

Then it was another family’s turn. The new mom, wearing a white babydoll dress and wedges, asked Hot Pink Mohawk Mom to take a video of their family watching the fireworks. It was expertly choreographed. The daughter, dressed as Princess Tiana, perched on her father’s shoulders, the son stood between his parents, and the mom lovingly beamed up at her daughter.

Pink mohawk mom took shots from every angle. Finally, the daughter came down from her dad’s shoulders. But her mom wasn’t satisfied. She ordered her husband to hoist his daughter back up.

I felt smug in my sneakers and sweat-streaked face. I just know her feet were killing her.

The City of Anglers

Erika Almond was instructing me on how to pose with an American red snapper I just caught. My hands were too high, and I held the thing too low.

I was aboard Almond’s boat, reporting for my story about the Suncoast Ladies’ Classic. The day began at 6 a.m., sending me 65 miles into the Gulf of Mexico without cell service and the blind faith that these strangers wouldn’t keep sailing to Cuba.

Los Angeles claimed the “city of angels,” but Tampa Bay deserves a nod to its avid community of anglers.

I learned the sport lends itself to a lot of sex jokes. And that Almond prefers raunchy hip-hop and rap music. I swear, even the sea monsters 150 feet below could hear Lil Wayne songs booming from our vessel.

I had never fished a day in my life, but here I was barely recovering from my first catch of the day, a lane snapper. It would have been gorgeous if not for its stomach protruding from its mouth.

Apparently, fish can experience something called barotrauma, which is caused by pressure changes as the angler reels up its catch, leading to an expansion of gasses in the swim bladder that pushes its stomach out. Last summer, I ruptured my eardrum on a flight back from Belgium. Considering my belly stayed out of my esophagus, the half-deaf experience no longer seemed as agonizing.

Thankfully, the red snapper had all its organs intact. I forced myself silent, as Almond told me to plunge my thumb into its eye socket. I hooked my index and middle fingers under its gill cover, drove my thumb into the fish’s glassy orb of an eye and used my left hand to cradle its belly, sealing my lips to keep from squealing. Poor guy, he thought I was giving him breakfast.

The snapper was in my hands, but I was the fish out of water. Into the cooler it went. I later found my photo on the tournament’s Facebook page.

St. Creaturesburg

Forget chickens, never once would I have imagined asking “why did the peacock cross the road?” while walking in my neighborhood. That wasn’t even my oddest creature encounter while living in the ‘burg.

On that same offshore excursion with Almond, we headed in for the day around 4 p.m. by the grace of an impending thunderstorm. Fifteen miles closer to shore, the captain killed the motor so we could swim.

Thank goodness. I hadn’t used the bathroom all day. Somehow, removing my Tampa Bay Times press badge to squat in front of strangers while I left my stream of pee to the wind felt, I don’t know, unprofessional?

Everyone jumped overboard. Almond asked if I knew how to swim.

I did.

She asked if I was scared.

Uh, should I be?

I released my tangled hair from its elastic and stepped off the boat’s stern. I stared down into the crystalline azure and watched my feet tread. It felt like a scene from “Finding Nemo.”

The proverbial elephant began to lift from my bladder. Someone made a quip about “shark week.”

Hold up. I stopped peeing. Guess who was on her period?

Speaking of “Finding Nemo”: You know that scene where Bruce the shark gets a whiff of blood and loses all self-control? Journalists are friends, not food! Suddenly, I was scared.

Back on land, I searched “can sharks smell period blood?” Then I texted my mom I was alive. A post by the Florida Museum of Natural History put me at ease — barely: “Any bodily fluid released into the water is likely detectable by sharks. A shark’s sense of smell is powerful — it allows them to find prey from hundreds of yards away. Menstrual blood in the water could be detected by a shark, just like any urine or other bodily fluids. However, there is no positive evidence that menstruation is a factor in shark bites.”

I later learned we swam exactly where a great white shark attacked Almond’s boat in 2021.

That day was Almond’s first time in the water in more than three years.

Lia-bay-lity

You can learn a lot about a high school drop-out and thrice-married man during ten hours on a boat. Add a brewing Florida storm to the day, and consider yourselves trauma-bonded.

A gust of wind carried the scent of my conditioner to Captain Patrick Foley’s nose.

“Herbal Essences?” he guessed before scolding me for parabens. Scolded!

A storm from the north was heading right towards the billboard boat.

I could tell things were about to go down once Captain Ron Pennington folded up his beach chair and packed away his Bible verses. It wouldn’t be a Tampa Bay Times article testifying to Florida’s absurdity without mention of torrential rainfall, duh.

Between hurricanes, the low elevation and equally terrifying drivers, I don’t want to know what insurance bills look like here. Tampa Bay earns a title as one big “lia-bay-lity.”

The floating advertisement stays on the water rain or shine to fulfill contracts. Considering we were traveling at 4.5 knots, I highly doubted we would out-sail the impending deluge. But by the time Foley turned around — perhaps by some American Indian blessing — the ominous clouds had scattered.

Pennington could set up camp again.

Fret not, I didn’t make it out of here without a near-hurricane experience. Debby baptized me in true Florida fashion with buckets of rainfall just a few days after.