Dave's Fiction Warehouse

At least the alligators are sincere A fter 13 years, we’ve decided to quit Florida. I don’t expect to miss it much.   I’ve realized I’m not a beach guy. I’m not a Jimmy Buffett guy. I hate theme parks and I hate I-95 and I’m not fond of the year-round bugs and humidity. I’ve never gotten used to the sodden air and sulfurous water. I will miss the alligators, but I won’t miss Florida Man – especially as personified by the overstuffed figures of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.  I know what you’re thinking: It took you 13 years to figure all that out?  Well, it hasn’t been all bad. The weather’s nice in February and March.  You can get fresh produce year-round. There’s no state income tax. We live in a neighborhood that’s pretty walkable and, in many important respects, nothing like The Fucking Villages.  We’re convenient to a somewhat moribund downtown. For local color, we boast a fair number of thieves, idlers, beggars and loons.  We’ve stayed this long ...

It's probably not art S ome miscreants have been spray-painting penises on the streets of our neighborhood. The Facebook reactions have been interesting. Some decry vandalism and the harmful effects on children who may pedal by. Others see vibrant guerrilla art, part of the rich tapestry of life in a supremely chill neighborhood.  I’m somewhere in the middle. Not really vandalism, since nothing is broken. And I doubt it’s going to corrupt anybody. I mean, they are supposed to be dicks, but the technique is so crude they could just as easily be abstract alligators or inexpertly rendered Amazon logos. If it’s art, it’s strictly seventh grade. We still don’t know the perpetrators, but I’m pretty sure we can rule out Banksy. As far as neighborhood color goes … yeah, whatever. I find the painted dicks about as cool as the fast-food trash we see so often in certain parks and corners of Springfield. Neither the dicks nor the trash represent an ethos so much as the absence of it. In any ca...