Admit it - what do you miss? (Pembroke Pines, Margate: real estate, high crime)

[StilltheSame]

These boards list a lot of negatives about SFL - and there are negatives, but to those who have relocated out of the area - where did you go? What do you love about your new area? What do you miss about SFL? I will start -

Where did you go - Minneapolis
What do you love about the new area - the commute and civility
What do you miss about SFL - my friends, the familiarity of everything, latin and caribbean food.

[harry chickpea]

south Florida specific:
Tunies
Penn Dutch
Pearls (the art store)
Brandsmart bargains
Longer winter days
Fresh mangoes, passionfruit and bananas
Flyovers of the blimps and WWII era bombers
Bulk pickup day and roadside treasures
Royal Poinciana and other tropical blooms

Generic from moving from city to country
Friends
A great honest car mechanic
The ease of biking to a store or bank
Chinese takeout and pizza delivery
The short drives to stores and a variety of restaurants

Honestly, most of the stuff we enjoyed about the area either died out or left before we did. We felt more like post-disaster survivors than residents towards the end of our living there.

Stuff we enjoyed in the area while it was available
Our own fresh oranges and grapefruits (before the canker cuttings)
Inexpensive Winn Dixie stores
Inexpensive tomatoes from Homestead (thanks alot for nuttin' NAFTA)
Five different small movie theatres within a mile.
Drives through the country down to Homestead and the Keys
The Margate farmer's market
The totally empty Sawgrass Expressway
Wild Oats
The empty fields with cattle in many developing areas
An interesting and challenging job in a company that got sold

[Kalbo]

Now in Las Vegas miss all the fruit trees we had in our yard, the afternoon thunder storms, and of course the water.

[johnnypockets]

I moved to Charleston SC. I love Charleston but the thing I miss is 24hour Walgreens and CVS.

[trekker954]

Kalbo:

I moved here last September and wow, these thunder and lightening storms do rock. Awesome!!!!

[bocamom]

I really miss the clean beaches, the bleached out old florida feel on US-1, and the pleasure of playing all day in the sun without worrying about skin cancer

i miss the old boca mall with its waterbed city, jeffersons, import stores, dive bar, and belgian wafel

i miss the way boca used to be a working class town with a few wealthy neighborhoods, i miss the way my university seemed to have actual intellectual leanings before it became a business, i miss running all over the beach and town with my friends as early as 7 years old with no need for parental supervision

i miss soft natural sand and big beautiful shells

i miss the cute little lizards that used to live here before the brazilian ones took over

i miss eating my favorite food, fish, without worrying about the pollutants

i miss la vielle maison and la finestra

and clear blue water, i miss that more than the rest

i still live on the beach, but the water is murky brown more days than blue-green, and the sand is infiltrated with plastic trash and plastic particles, the neighborhood i grew up (mizner park area) in is so manicured and artificial, like a scene from generic european epcot without so much as a nod to the actual culture and history of florida - which does exist, it is just that people moved here and didn't bother to learn about it

i miss affordability

come on people, please take better care of florida. it doesn't deserve to be ruined. this is a paradise for animals other than us and they are being pressured to extinction

i miss people who cared about that sort of thing

i miss the days when the nuclear power plants released daily reports so i could keep tabs on what was going on and people knew about the four large nuclear reactors in our midst and tried to conserve energy and didn't live in 4000 sq feet air conditioned houses

pardon me, my air conditioning is broken and i'm feeling morose, not about my own discomfort, it is even beyond that. i am wishing all the air conditioning would break, and that people would leave. i would be willing to live without if it meant you had to as well

i am wanting to publicize the brown waters, the 1/2 billion gallons a day of sewage being flushed into the ocean, the fish and reptiles dn amphibians that are going intersex from environmental estrogens

i want to write reviews on every hotel site that is on a dirty beach telling people to take theor money elsewhere and let south florida be

jsut let it be or fix it people, but

i can't take it

just stop this senseless beating

it breaks this heart

enough

next time you are at mizner park stick a pin in the stone pillars, all the detailing is styrofoam stuff, plastic coated plastic, the plants are not native, they are chemically laden manicured things

and i really, really, really miss my friends all being healthy. i have seen so many young and vibrant people die of cancer in the last ten years

i miss not knowing what it looks like for a young mother to die of breast cancer. and i miss not being constantly reminded of the knowledge that this is a disease that exists and the intersection of xenoestrogens and epigenetics, and that this land and water is soaked with toxins

i miss being able to look at real estate without calling an environmental engineer to find out the issues with each parcel of land and finding problems with them all

if you can leave, you should

[harttogo]

Wow bocamom, quite a post for our responsibility to the environment. In the early sixty`s there was almost no development west of 441. Politicians promised to never allow construction west of 441 because we had to protect the everglades and water supply, but the master land use plan would be amended by the county commission for every new development and further expansion would continue westward. In the early 70`s, Pembroke Pines Mayor Flannigan said he was going to develop Pembroke Pines all the way to 27. I thought no way, the county would never allow such relentless sprawl and subversion of the river of grass. Oh Silly me. I went to County commission meetings advocating the preservation of open green space,to make our area pedestrian and bicycle friendly, and to use hybrid buses. Well, at least they thanked me "for my concerns" I went to county commission meetings to urge them not to amend the master land use plan for the Waldrep dairy pasture. Well, at least they thanked me "for my concern" I went to a meeting by county representatives. There the issue was manatee safety. There I urged them to advise the county commission not to approve the construction of 6000 more boat docks because of the deadly consequences to manatees. Well, at least they thanked me "for my concern" In my youth there was never any hazy days with that rust color on the horizon from auto emissions. We could get lobsters a 100 yards off Ft. Lauderdale beach,could fill a trash can with red snapper from a night on a drift fish boat. The reefs were beautiful and bountiful. I went fishing on the same drift fishing boat out of hillsboro outlet 20 years latter,the fishing was terrible, a few sailors choice, grunts,and a rare snapper found in only one spot per the boat captain. I only kept two snappers. When I gutted them there was toilet paper in their stomachs,They smelled of fecal matter. When we left the dock another fisherman told me the boat goes to the sewage outfall when the fishing is slow so at least the customers can say they caught something. This was in the late 70`s. I mostly blame the Broward County commission, city commissions and big land developers like Bergeron.

[Nolefan34]

bocamom>

Wow. I want to jump off of a bridge now after reading your post. This just gets back to how some people liked FL for what it was before it exploded in population, and some people prefer the bigger city feel it has today. Looking back, it was inevitable that South FL would explode like this just like it was inevitable that Southern California would explode. We live in a highly desirable area where tons of people wanted to move. We had a low cost of living and low taxes, so all of these people flocked down here to build a bigger home on more land. That drove up prices of everything and the population exploded over the years. Now we are where we are at, a high cost of living, high crime, high traffic, etc. But to be honest, just be glad we didn't become L.A. As bad as South FL is now, our traffic isn't as bad as L.A. and our population in S. FL is about one-third of L.A.

[bocamom]

hmmmm. . . well, jumping off a bridge isn't the ideal. i would prefer to inspire people to get involved in figuring out better solutions for wastewater management given the population growth we continue to experience whether we like it or not. unsustainability isn't good no matter what we prefer.

If you jump off the bridge, that's just more extra nutrients in the ocean

[Damemeow]

The things I miss aren't nearly as noble. I miss Publix, I miss palm trees and ocean breezes and the super brightness of SoFL (I swear every building in downtown Charlotte is gray or brown)... and how the sunlight in SoFL illuminates everything in a way that just doesn't happen anywhere else. I miss tropical thunderstorms and how the Cuban, Caribbean and Haitian influences (among others) shape the food and culture. I miss lizards and peabody ducks, I miss that so many of the people I would meet were slightly cracked, but how somehow that was ok 'cause its Florida...I miss the sunsets and the open sky...I miss the fact that nobody does down time like Floridians. I miss pretty much having one wardrobe year round and I hate having to wear coats. Oh, and really good Chinese food.. I miss that alot.