Erfaan Mahmoodi CP #5

I met Alex at Starbucks by Dirac, and we discussed our Floridian identities. Alex remarked that his connection was more local, being to his hometown of Madison; the interior Panhandle has more of a Georgian cultural and geographical feel than a Floridian one, as he elaborated. In contrast, as he would also say, my experience being able to frequently visit the beach fit in more with the stereotypical, or at least generally imagined, idea of a Floridian experience. I was thinking about memes that indicated connected Floridian identity, namely in regards to Publix. For Alex, Publix was not a place he experienced until he was around 13. He didn’t really understand the mass appeal of it, even after I brought up the store’s extremely popular sub sandwiches, and I proposed that nostalgic connections to it for people that grew up shopping there, and the founding of the chain having been in Florida, were the driving factors in Publix’ capturing of the Floridian spirit. Where we ended however was a conclusion that our state doesn’t have a particularly state-wide unifiying identity, and that the identities we see or feel are more presentations of different regions of the state. And a feeling of Floridian-ness doesn’t mean either of us want to stay: both of us want to go elsewhere for either climate or work (Alex has yet to see snow).