Ft. Lauderdale Review & Experiences

After my adventure in DC, and spending a very enjoyable time with Mark going rock climbing and hanging out, I flew into Ft. Lauderdale for a few days.  I should say that right from the start, my expectations were prettily heavily biased, but not just one direction, both — a butterfly spread, as it were, were I trading.  The positive bias came directly from all of the hotties I saw in the airport, and boarding the plane, and every other time in every airport with a Ft. Lauderdale flight/gate.

Attention at gate D6, we are now boarding all hotties on flight 69 to Ft. Lauderdale

Or maybe that was a dream…

The negative bias came from 3 people in my age range {19, 32, 26} who, right away, told me that “Ft. Lauderdale sucks”, and they couldn’t wait to leave.  Oddly enough, after 2.5 days, it wasn’t until near the end that I met two girls who loved it there, both of whom I asked out.  One was a super-hot Hooters girl (check), the other was a cutie at a rock climbing facility.

That said, here’s what I noticed.

  1. You have to drive to get anywhere.  I mean anywhere.  No walking.  This is a 100% driving city.  I had to drive across the street to pick up and do laundry — there was no way to cross it walking without getting run over and/or dropping my underwear, neither of which I was keen on doing.
  2. That brings me to my largest complaint.  The median ROAD SEPARATORS!!  How can I drive across the street to pick up laundry when there’s a separator preventing it?  So I had to turn right, drive a quarter mile, then pull a U-turn, just get across the street!
  3. Logically, I can see what they are thinking, “it prevents accidents and improves flow”, but how can it improve flow when now each side is carrying 2x the traffic it normally would.  This means the roads are wider, with every business requiring its own dedicated on and off-ramp.  Crazy!
  4. Obviously, there’s now an unjustifiably high amount of pollution.  I thought that I would have an easier time breathing in FL, humidity lowering the need for my sinuses to overwork, but the opposite happened.  And when I went running, I tried breathing through my mouth, but it felt like I was moving mud through my lungs — a feeling that hasn’t persisted when I visited Tallahassee.
  5. So everyone sits in their car, meaning, it was actually super hard to see hot girls.  That was my primary motivator!!  By an large, until I stopped somewhere and got involved in an activity, I was by myself.  Like super by-myself.  Not like NYC, DC, or Cambridge, where I could walk and start socializing.
  6. I thought people were pretty nice, which is in stark difference to what I was told, or maybe my personal bar for tolerable behavior is just set soooo loww after Cambridge.
  7. Food is delicious, but expensive.  In fact, most services seemed to be pretty expensive.  In contrast, there was lots of property for sale, or lease, empty, waiting to be taken, so property was relatively cheap (at least in comparison to NYC).  Also unlike NYC, where services and food are super cheap.

 

In short, it felt like I was back in Battle Creek, only warmer.  It also felt like I wasn’t driving in a city per se, as much as driving around in a giant parking lot, where buildings had sprung up randomly upon.  I guess it’s the ratio of blacktop to tree|buildings.  As for whether it’s a good city to run a startup from, clearly there were a number of internet startups floating around with large office spaces (i.e. Saveology), but a major question is the ability to find and require talent from the area, a question that I wasn’t able to find out the answer to offhand.  Finally, how a girl responds to me socially when I ask her out is a major part of my metrics.  I think it wraps up a number of features (such as being considerate, treating someone like a person, being able to socially form friendships) into one relevant one.  So for the girls I asked out, though both declined, both responded pleasantly.  One was flattered but had a boyfriend she was living with, and the other already had plans for the evening but told me she would have definitely said “yes”, and to ask her again next time I was in town, that she’d “be here”.

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