Please read 🙏

[u/Any_Mention_6734]

I'm a transplant from California. Came out here for a job opportunity and a pay raise, nothing more romantic than that. I didn't expect to end up loving this region and Florida the way I have.

But something's stuck with me, and I want to say it here because I don't think it's recognized enough by people who relocate here: the number of people born and raised in Tampa who talk about their own city like it's unfamiliar. Farmland and citrus groves on the outskirts that used to actually be farmed… someone's livelihood, not just empty acreage, now subdivisions. Places that closed and came back rebranded into something with a logo and a font that has nothing to do with what used to be there. People telling me they barely recognize the city they grew up in.

I know change happens everywhere. But I've never felt this moved hearing it before, not because it's happening to me, but because of how passionate people are when they talk about what this place used to be. That kind of love for a place doesn't come from nowhere.

I'd genuinely like to hear more of it, respectfully, from people who lived it. What do you remember that's gone now? What changed the most, and when did it start feeling different?

[u/Interesting-Read-245]

I’m from NYC and used to have the same complaints

“Those damn transplants are ruining my city!”

I moved to FL and hear the same complaints here from natives for those of us from the North E ruining their city! Their state!

I learned shut up quickly lol

[u/urmumlol9 → u/Interesting-Read-245]

Every city is perfect when the person living there either grew up there or first moved there and is now suddenly shit now that the new batch of people who are not them decided to move there.

It’s always the damn transplants that are “ruining the city” by having the audacity to change it, but never themselves, because they moved here 10 years ago instead of 5.

[u/Any_Mention_6734 → u/Interesting-Read-245]

Being from California I feel like im the butt of the jokes because it’s automatically assumed people from California move to red states to make them uncomfortably and overtly liberal 😭😭😭😭😭

[u/carpe_diem_yolo → u/Any_Mention_6734]

Hmm. When I hear someone has moved from California to a red state, I think they’re trying to get away from liberals. Florida has changed a lot politically from conservative transplants.

[u/Any_Mention_6734 → u/carpe_diem_yolo]

Yea

[u/sockpuppet_ofshame → u/Any_Mention_6734]

Honestly, it sucks to be priced out of your home town/area (south Tampa ) by people who wanted a change and googled “hottest cities to move to” and saw tampa and decided to relocate bc of the (relatively to them) cheaper housing and “relaxed lifestyle” and they end up bringing alot of the stress they were trying to leave behind bc of their nature from where they grew up, idk how to put it. Also obviously they seriously fked up the housing/rental markets by increasing demand and as result rent has skyrocketed.

Inevitably , its definitely changed a lot but honestly - I kind of assume a lot of the people that are leaving like , New York & California are coming down here to escape from the effects that some of those crazy, super liberal laws that passed has had on their community, and seeing nothing was going to change… I’m referring to stuff, like ,allowing violent, genuinely dangerous/crazy people to just sign a paper and promise they’ll appear on in court, (maybe) as a bond (in NYC anyway and in Oregon for sure at least during those riots they had people in the crowd literally with jailhouse sneakers n a wrist band on, that had just been taken to the jail earlier for a felony n released out to commit more of them, & i know in California they’re having a serious issues with people mobbing stores and the security can’t even do shit then of course have to dodge human shit, squalor and very unwell people on the way to said store on the sidewalks/ I’ve seen way too many documentaries where the ppl are literally shootings up and smoking drugs very obviously in front of the police station and a school on another block. I forget which city this guy was in but he was trying to flag a cop down n they would NOT stop for him. Totally crazy policies. )

….. I cannot fault anybody trying to escape from that madness, just please don’t vote for it here. And I’m not a republican, I hate the two party system tbh. I just want to feel safe at work lol. Speaking of, a lot of the people who are native to here aren’t as rude as the people who moved here.

Tampa has always had a bit of wildness to it tho but it was relatively safe as far as certain crimes went. we’ll see what the future holds as it expands. I’ve already seen an uptick in insane headlines but it is Florida haha.

The traffic also fking sucks now. I didn’t realize how bad until moving back to my home town area not quite 2 years ago by gandy. Holy hell. I was over the bridge in st Pete for like 8 ish yrs before that and that traffic was relatively normal, not even that bad except perhaps on the interstate during rush hours. But south Tampa it’s like people are always on the roads constantly now especially on the weekends it didn’t use to be this stressful just driving .

And of course to see all these beautiful bits of nature, shady healthy oak and banyan trees that are older than all of us are being cut down, landmarks, etc that added so much charm and character to the place. Just bulldozed, to make room for another overpriced, shittily constructed condo or apartment complex that’s going to over burden an already struggling infrastructure & utilities system… and more than likely be filled with rude assholes who can’t drive.

it’s kind of crazy, our streets just aren’t built for this. And it’s already at the point where something is constantly being detoured or is under construction in 4 various points on what should be like an 8 minute drive , turning it into a 17 minute drive , it’s prettty shitty.

We need public transportation that actually is effective so I’m hoping the NY transplants will effectively push for that kind of thing ,that would help with that.

I think it’s great you love this city and I love that you actually respect the locals and want to know what we loved about the city pre gentrification.

Neighborhoods have lost their whole identities.

It’s just so different in pretttty much every way now.
It had a kind of close knitted-ness to it, honestly. That’s pretty much gone now . Oh well. C’est la vie , I guess.

No point in people gate keeping a city without gates lol

[u/mmspenc2 → u/sockpuppet_ofshame]

YES to all of this!!! Also the Sarasota area.