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silrana
2011-07-12 09:19 pm UTC (link)

Living in Florida, I've gotten used to bizarre geography in the media. Tourists are frequently baffled to discover that Disney World, Daytona Beach and Miami aren't all within a ten minute drive of each other, because that's how it looks on TV and movies. People who work at the Disney hotel reservation phone line will tell you that they constantly get requests for rooms with an oceanfront view.

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	full_metal_ox 2011-07-13 12:35 am UTC (link)
	And have you ever seen cattle ranching--an industry in which the Sunshine State is second only to Texas--used as an offhand bit of Florida local color? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	silrana 2011-07-13 02:11 am UTC (link)
	Of course not. We're wall to wall orange groves, everyone knows that. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

full_metal_ox
2011-07-15 01:47 am UTC (link)

And where are the interminable roadside stretches of scrub forest? And the curtains of Spanish moss, a plant not exclusive to the Spooky Voodoo-Haunted Louisiana Bayou (which is an unfortunate trope package all its own, of course.)

And I would pass out from sheer delight to see big honking school-bus-yellow grasshoppers--with pink wings, yet!--as a bit of Florida local color.

(I'm not a Floridian, but I have a lot of family there.)

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silrana
2011-07-15 04:35 pm UTC (link)

Burn Notice, which is set in Miami, comes to mind as one of the very few that gets it right. Outside-the-city scenes actually haves the roads with scrub pines and mangy brush that you see so often.

Of course, you usually don't see much Spanish Moss except in rural and wilder areas, because any native or longtime resident knows to cut it out of their trees. It is a parasite that eventually kills the host tree, so you don't see it much in the burbs. Well, except in the yards of the northern transplants who think it looks romantic.

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