The thought got here to Pete Melfi, a radio character turned podcaster in St. Augustine, Fla., final 12 months after he organized “the laziest race within the historical past of races,” a .5-kilometer beer run, and the individuals had a grand outdated time.
Wouldn’t or not it’s enjoyable, Mr. Melfi thought, to carry one other race, this time with an enormous after-party? And what if the theme was none apart from the meme that launched many hundreds of headlines about his dwelling state: Florida Man?
His wild thought morphed into an all-day competitors with a sequence of zany occasions: A mullet contest. A “mud duel” with pool noodles. An “evading arrest” impediment course, with actual sheriff’s deputies pursuing the contestants. (However, to be clear, there have been no precise arrests within the race. {The handcuffs} got here from a intercourse toy store.)
“We perceive that Florida is bizarre,” Mr. Melfi stated. “We embrace it.”
If the remainder of the nation — hell, the remainder of the world — goes to make Florida the punchline, then those that name it dwelling would possibly as properly be in on the joke. Don’t overthink it.
However Florida Man has been a cultural phenomenon for therefore lengthy that some in Florida and past have spent fairly a little bit of time desirous about what it means, the right way to problem it and what it says in regards to the state’s identification. Perhaps the video games in St. Augustine may be an excuse to discover the evolution of the meme — and of Florida itself.
“Florida has at all times been, to me, such an necessary barometer of the place the nation is headed,” stated Julio Capó Jr., a historian at Florida Worldwide College in Miami, who has written that viewing the state and its folks “in caricature kind” is a centuries-old behavior. “But there are only a few makes an attempt to take the state critically — to know its previous, its current and far much less its future.”
On the peak of the meme’s reputation, within the mid to late 2010s, everybody, it appeared, mocked outlandish and unfortunate tales fished from the state’s bottomless trove of police experiences and mug photographs. The @_FloridaMan account on Twitter, now generally known as X, attracted lots of of hundreds of followers. The Florida Man Birthday Problem inspired folks to enter their start date and “Florida Man” to see what weird headline that printed on their birthday popped up.
However questions quickly arose about thrusting common folks into the tough public glare, particularly in the event that they have been affected by habit, psychological sickness or poverty. Different states had freakish incidents, too — if fewer involving alligators. Why choose on Florida?
The author Lauren Groff, who moved to the state 18 years in the past, recalled one other Florida meme, during which somebody saws the dangling state off the map.
“It’s an enormous and extremely advanced state that has been lowered to one thing deeply foolish,” she stated.
The prevailing idea for the way Florida Man grew to become widespread goes like this: The absurdity of the state’s 2000 presidential recount turned Florida into the butt of late-night jokes. The state’s robust public-records legal guidelines made it straightforward for anybody to acquire police experiences. The web and social media exploded it right into a sensation.
However Ira P. Robbins, a regulation professor at American College, present in 2021 that different states had simply as broad or broader entry to public information than Florida. “Why don’t we’ve got New Mexico Man or New York Man or Massachusetts Man?” he stated in an interview.
Craig Pittman, the creator of “Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Remainder of the Nation,” famous that Florida has produced bizarre information since earlier than it grew to become a state in 1845. “Once we have been a territory, we have been generally known as a rogues’ paradise,” he stated. “Half the folks have been scalawags and robbers, and the opposite half have been their penniless victims.”
However now, many newspapers have stopped publishing mug photographs. The proprietor of the @_FloridaMan account retired it in 2019, citing unease with mocking folks’s conduct on what is usually one of many worst days of their lives. In his publication highlighting oddball tales from across the state, Mr. Pittman doesn’t embody any about Floridians who’ve been involuntarily dedicated for psychiatric care or who’re clearly affected by habit.
But none of this has spelled the tip of Florida Man. The phrase has entered the political lexicon, reworking from a generic time period for a nonpublic particular person — Florida Man as John Doe — to a stand-in for former President Donald J. Trump. “Florida Man Makes Announcement,” The New York Submit riffed in 2022, when Mr. Trump declared his re-election marketing campaign.
Whereas that exact Florida Man lives in a gilded Palm Seashore compound, common Floridians do face actual struggles that outsiders, together with some who’ve flocked to the state lately, could not grasp, stated Tyler Gillespie, a author in St. Petersburg. Their angle is, “‘We will sort of do no matter we would like and we will depart,’” he stated of the newcomers.
“My household’s right here, so I’m fairly rooted,” Mr. Gillespie stated. “However there’s hardly anyplace reasonably priced to dwell.”
Incongruous as it could appear, St. Augustine, the place Mr. Melfi lives and arranged the Florida Man Video games, is the oldest repeatedly settled metropolis within the nation and a spot steeped in historical past.
The primary-ever Florida Man Video games have been held on the fairgrounds of a historic district, with tickets going for $55 a pop on Saturday. Sponsored by a Florida attire firm and others, together with a automobile dealership and a health club, the competitors awarded $5,000 to 1 successful staff, based mostly on its efficiency in occasions all through the day.
A whole bunch of individuals got here to revel within the laid-back Florida-ness of all of it. Shirtless overalls. “Merica” hats. Mullets! Overthinking they weren’t — nor was this reporter, as soon as she settled in to observe.
A staff from north of Tampa, the Pink Eyed Gator Huggers, introduced a mascot: a 5-year-old inexperienced iguana named Mikey. “What’s extra Florida than a stinkin’ iguana?” stated C.J. Mays, Mikey’s proprietor, as she petted its again.
Contestants wolfed down an enormous pile of pork utilizing their naked arms. “Every little thing I do is for Florida and America!” Dylan Mullaney of Jacksonville exclaimed as he consumed.
Ladies wearing pinup fashion competed for the title of “Florida Ma’am,” together with one sporting beer cans as hair rollers. Organizers have been pressured to improvise for the mud duel after somebody “slashed” the plastic pool during which it was to happen, Mr. Melfi stated.
“I heard they’d New York plates on their automobile,” he joked about whoever was accountable.
The shenanigans have been made for Instagram and TikTok, the platforms that unfold phrase in regards to the occasion within the first place. The emcee was a TikTok character. One of many groups featured a man recognized for holding an enormous American flag as a hurricane blew in.
Among the many rivals — all of them males, most of them white — was Joshua Barr, a 37-year-old from Citrus County, whose three-person staff was named the Cooter Commandos, in homage to a neighborhood river turtle. Every staff member created an over-the-top persona to advertise the staff on social media. Mr. Ryan’s was Captain Cooter, “based mostly off early ’90s wrestling, W.W.E., somewhat little bit of ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage,” he stated. To compete, he wore a flashy tank prime and cutoffs.
“You’ve received to lean into the joke and lean into the absurdity of it,” he stated.
Mr. Ryan’s Florida, he stated, concerned rising up using his bicycle and being in nature. Considered one of his staff members has been his good friend since first grade.
Lately, a whole lot of new folks have moved into Citrus County, on the state’s west central coast, he stated, stirring some resentment amongst locals who “don’t need Northerners transferring there — they need issues to remain how they’re.”
“We’re, like, simply getting our first Chick-fil-A and Goal and Starbucks,” he stated.
Mandy Millam, 37, whose husband was additionally one of many Cooters, stated folks from outdoors of the state nonetheless misunderstand it too usually.
“Florida has a wild coronary heart,” she stated. “We now have wild nature. However folks understand us as having wild abandon. We don’t cross that line as a lot as folks assume we do.”
She added: “I like this place a lot.”
