As Florida As It Gets

Florida is a beautiful place to raise a family, provided everyone understands how to announce a bear.

“That’s cool,” for example, is insufficient.

In As Florida As It Gets, Robert Urban, author of Lick the Spoon and Wisecracker, shares the stories that make living in the Sunshine State so difficult to explain to relatives elsewhere.

Rob grows a four-hundred-dollar tomato, drinks Miami coffee intended for six people, and discovers that a flying cockroach has never heard of the Marine Corps.

College football inspires religious devotion. So do boiled peanuts, the caviar of the South. Snowbirds return to their winter feeding grounds. The Fountain of Youth has a two-hour wait, and you still have to cook your own breakfast. Meanwhile, Rob is trying to get one decent family photograph without anyone falling into the pool.

Between the stories, comic field guides, quizzes, and survival tips address the questions Florida residents eventually face: Are you allowed to touch that alligator? Where did Florida Man come from? Have you eaten the hurricane supplies? What does your Publix sub order reveal about your personality?

There’s affection here for the neighbors who show up, the people who feed you, and the friends who offer encouragement while filming you getting a pig out of your pool.

For longtime Floridians, recent arrivals, visitors, and anyone who thought the headlines were exaggerated.

Florida, you beautiful lunatic. This one is for you.