Sunshine Skyway Bridge Accident (1980) photo: Eric Mencher
A 1976 Buick Skylark belonging to Florida resident, Richard Hornbuckle, rests where it skidded to a stop just 14 inches from the edge of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which was struck by a freighter on May 9, 1980.
What's living in Florida like as a lesbian? Most (liberal) people I talk to balk when I say I'm considering moving there because they all think it's populated exclusively by bigoted swamp creatures, but I don't want to listen to stereotapes from people who've never lived there. I know what the politics are like there, but what about day-to-day living/homophobia?
I tell people this CONSTANTLY but nobody seems to grasp it: while Florida has very red areas (every state does), especially rurally and in the panhandle (which shouldn't even be part of FL imho), all of the actual cities (like Tampa, St. Pete, Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale) are very much blue and pretty fun to live in. they also all have LGBT+ (ofc the + is everywhere now) events and communities and parts of town etc. I love it here and have had practically zero issues being an extremely gnc lesbian here, except when I lived in Sarasota (red town with a lot of money - sucks ass) and got legally fired for being gay back in early 2020. that could've happened in a red town almost anywhere before it was illegal.
I've even had really fun, awesome experiences chatting (about what it's like to be a lesbian) with conservative white dudes in their gun store - more than once! actually if I'm being completely honest, I've had fewer sexist and homophobic experiences with conservative men in the past few years than with liberals. and yes, pretty much all the negative experiences with liberals were an obvious product of gender identity ideology. it's just so incredibly disappointing that I can reasonably expect a random conservative male I run into in the wild to be more normal about female homosexuality (including butchness!) than a liberal of either sex I run into in the wild. how the FUCK did that happen? I hate it here lmao
if yall haven't heard, we in south FL experienced ONCE IN FIVE THOUSAND YEARS rain this week, with it coming to a head today.
My wife's parents live 15 minutes away in her childhood home. It is flooded with 20 inches of water. Their home, their furniture, their stuff, lots of her and some of my stuff, all of it that they couldn't easily and quickly place up high is destroyed. Both of their cars are ruined, and floated down the street on top. They are in their 70s - and my MIL has terrible chronic pain in her hips - and by the end of this, they will have spent about 24 hours crouched in a bathtub. No one can rescue them as of now.
We are lucky. Our home is 14 inches elevated off the street. Our area flooded 14 inches. The rain stopped as the water was against the walls of the part of our house that was built later by the previous owner as an extension to the original - the part we use as a living room and literally just yesterday finished painting and decorating. Our back yard is a lake. We can't let the dogs out so they have to go potty inside. We can't go anywhere and no one can get to us, because the street is completely flooded.
There was life-threatening flash flooding of biblical proportion and tornados.
No one saw this coming. No one warned us.
This is a video my best friend sent me from a friend of hers. Her car is flooded, destroyed, so even when the flood goes down she's going to have to deal with that. The roof has partially collapsed and the building is flooded completely.
I'm posting because I have a feeling nobody's going to hear a word about this from the news.
Again, this is a once in FIVE FUCKING THOUSAND YEARS occurrence. And it's expected to rain again tomorrow.
Photos taken only after the floods receded enough that I could remove the towels and duct tape from my doors and go outside.
Edit: Sorry, it seems that meteorologist was wrong. Apparently it's only once in 1000-2000 years 😐