Why I moved to Miami

I worked for a VoIP startup an hour north of Miami. They got bought for $300M.<p>I got to live in one of the owner&#x27;s mansions, by myself. It had nine bathrooms.<p>Oddly enough, you hear a lot of French there. From the Haitian taxi drivers to the Snow Birds from Quebec. You can buy good Quebecois beer at some stores.<p>Miami itself is pretty nice. Reminds me of Vancouver and San Diego. Not a big fan of Cuban food, but the nightlife is top-notch. Beach scene is cool if you like beaches. It&#x27;s pretty hot, but everything has crazy good A&#x2F;C. Can fly to the Bahamas&#x2F;Bermuda&#x2F;St. Barth&#x27;s whenever you want. Cheap flights up the East Coast too.<p>It helps to have a car, though they have a seemingly underused elevated public train. It&#x27;s a good place to bike, as there are essentially no hills.<p>Regarding taxes, I was paying essentially the same income tax + payroll tax in Florida as I do in British Columbia (though BC has pretty low taxes). Plus free healthcare in Canada. Gas, booze, smokes are basically half the price in Florida as Canada though.<p>On the bad side...<p>Peeps are a little shallow, though there is an okay arts community. Not exactly an intellectual climate. I&#x27;m sure it can be found, but I didn&#x27;t.<p>Palm Beach is a weird fucking place. Richest zip code in America (or was at the time I was there). West Palm Beach was the per-capita murder capital of America. Cops on the bridges to keep the homies out. Lots of boarded-up shops in West Palm during the height of the boom in 2008. Didn&#x27;t make sense.<p>There were three murders (of rich white people) that I heard of during the year I was there. The locals are poorly educated, but there are lots of bright imports from around America that make it interesting.<p>So if you like your artsy, intellectual coffee-shop community of San Fran or Seattle, Miami might not be for you. But if you like clubbing at nights and laid-back days, it&#x27;s pretty good.

The whole Silicon Valley advantage is fading. I went there back in 1997 when it was very hard to find technical jobs in my country (Canada) because a lot of those kinds of jobs gravitated to head office cities for large companies, and many Canadian companies were subsidiaries of large American companies. In Silicon Valley, I learned that most startups fail or are acquired within in a year or so. It&#x27;s like a lottery. Then I headed to London England, found a job fairly easily and lived there for 10 years or so. Not long ago I returned to Canada, Vancouver this time, and found it loaded with startups and other tech businesses that were more established. Another Canadian city that I am familiar with is Waterloo Ontario and it is in a similar condition. I&#x27;m told that Toronto is also overflowing with opportunities both startup and more established stuff. If you are going to play the startup lottery, why not do it among folks you know.<p>And in case you are wondering what this has to do with Miami, I agree with the OP, just stay home and build your business (startup or otherwise) right there. You still have a ticket in the startup lottery if that is the way you want to go, but just like in SV itself, most of those startups don&#x27;t last very long.<p>However, unlike SV, if you stay where you are then you have a better chance of building a normal business that grows incrementally by serving profitable customers, reinvesting profits, and taking a longer term view.<p>Readers of HN should be very aware that there are startups all over the place, and not just in American cities but in most countries of the world. Silicon Valley just isn&#x27;t as special as it once was because computers and tech and Internet connectivity is now virtually everywhere that there are cities.

I&#x27;m not sure if others have experienced this, but my brain doesn&#x27;t function very well in tropical heat and humidity. It just seems to slow down, and mental games don&#x27;t seem as interesting. It may be that I&#x27;ve been conditioned by many episodes of tropical vacations growing up, but whatever the reason, I can&#x27;t (and indeed, don&#x27;t really want to) code below about 30 degrees latitude.

I was born and raised in Miami and my family still lives there so I visit quite often. I moved to the Bay Area not too long ago (3 years) for work and IMO it&#x27;s no comparison.<p>Miami is a great place to live if your priorities are partying. There are excellent night clubs and beautiful men and women everywhere.<p>The Bay Area holds an advantage over almost every point the OP made.<p>Rent is ~$2k for a 2 bedroom 2 bath if you want to live in a nice area in Coral Gables that isn&#x27;t full of roaches, or was built in the 1940s and has dwarf-sized rooms. Rent is about the same in the peninsula. If you want to purchase it&#x27;s a whole different story however. What costs ~$1m here is ~$300k there and probably in a lot better shape.<p>Food is a push. I must say the Bay Area probably offers a larger variety of food. Miami is mostly all Caribbean and Central&#x2F;South American food which is excellent but not as varied as the Indian, Mediterranean, Afghan, Thai you see out here.<p>The neighborhoods are even more awesome here in the Bay Area. I say this because the strangers I meet on the street are a lot nicer than the strangers in Miami. There&#x27;s a unique, wonderful, and rich history to the cities and towns in the Bay Area and there are a lot of neat places to explore like the Open Space preserves out West or the forrest in Santa Cruz. The only mountains in Florida are the smelly trash ones.<p>The Developer ecosystem pales in comparison. It&#x27;s not even close and it won&#x27;t be for a while. There are very little tech companies out there and no real major players. While it&#x27;s very nice to see it blooming the reality is that it&#x27;s still in its infancy and if you&#x27;re moving out there just for the tech you&#x27;re doing it wrong.<p>The weather. It&#x27;s just terrible. It&#x27;s like a sauna all the time. It feels like you&#x27;re breathing in liquid water sometimes and it&#x27;s difficult to make it from your house to your car (which will be a scorching inferno) without sweating.<p>The only great things Miami has that I truly miss is the water; it is beautiful and warm.

I just moved from SF to Miami Beach a month ago. I loved SF but if you have the ability to work from home as I do, financially it does not make sense to stay. I honestly would have preferred to move to Honolulu over here but the only area I liked (Tantalus&#x2F;roundtop&#x2F;pacheights) really didn&#x27;t (at the time) have any nice houses for sale that were under 5 million.<p>Also, while the cost of living is way down here, so is the income you will get from working a local job. I talked with a few people and there is scant a developer pulling in over 90k here. Compare that to SF where 100k salaries are the norm and it all evens out.<p>With that said, I like MB&#x2F;Miami. The tech scene is in its infancy though. I don&#x27;t believe there is any real institutional venture funds here. Basically, raising a &#x27;A&#x27; round is going to be very difficult. You might be able to pull it off with latin american based VC but it will be a struggle.<p>I will say that the people I have met so far out here have been very nice and welcoming and there is a very good vibe. I am looking forward to building things out here.

I love&#x2F;hate Miami.<p>Pros:<p><pre><code> No state income tax. (A HUGE advantage) Lots of business. Some of the nicest people you&#x27;ll ever meet. Stunning winter weather. Gorgeous beaches&#x2F;parks&#x2F;neighborhoods. International culture. Walkable neighborhoods near downtown. Some of the best restaurants I&#x27;ve ever been to. Emerging startup scene. Vibrant arts&#x2F;design&#x2F;culture scene. Year round biking&#x2F;jogging&#x2F;swimming&#x2F;etc. Lots of money (including international). Can fly non-stop anywhere. Decent mass transit. Lots of wonderful highrise communities in town. </code></pre> Cons:<p><pre><code> Horrendous traffic. The worst drivers I&#x27;ve ever seen. Everything generally overpriced. Some of the rudest people you&#x27;ll ever meet. Generally horrible service. Lots of blight. Hot summers (but oddly, no worse than most of the northeast). Lots of competition for living&#x2F;shopping&#x2F;going out&#x2F;etc. Too much crime&#x2F;not enough enforcement. Party scene is played out (Too loud, not as pretty as you think you are)</code></pre>

Lower Florida Keys resident here. I still own a place in Orlando which I have only visited once in the 6 years I&#x27;ve been gone. I got tired of hearing gunshots in the middle of the night. Between that and the chaotic (and plentiful) highway drivers, you couldn&#x27;t possibly pay me to live in most (any?) large cities in mainland Florida. Despite being only 120 miles from Miami, I&#x27;ve still never visited, unless you count traffic jams when trying to get through it.<p>Once you get away from the urban nightmares, Florida isn&#x27;t so bad though. Admittedly not everyone likes the climate, but I run a few miles every morning, even in the summer, and getting on a boat helps to cool off. No malls or dance clubs, and almost no big-box stores or fast food. But we do have Amazon Prime and a fishing pole.

I made the decision a long time ago that people come first. Comparing the people of San Francisco to those of Miami, well, in this case you get what you pay for. I feel like a rock star wild man anywhere else. In San Francisco I feel like I&#x27;m surrounded by people smarter, more creative, and better at life than me. That&#x27;s worth every penny.<p>I&#x27;ll take a hovel in SF over a mansion in Miami any day.<p>Besides, the defense of Miami in this article stinks of all that is wrong with America - that it&#x27;s filled with great places to consume. Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I love my fancy hipster bars, restaurants, and shops - but those aren&#x27;t what makes SF the best city for me.

Are we seeing more quality of life decisions being a bigger and bigger factor in startups? I&#x27;ve met with at least 3 nyc startups that are moving to Miami in the last few weeks because their runway is twice as long here. Although I know they aren&#x27;t going to stay here permanently, I do like the idea that new blood is coming into the area. New blood equals new ideas which in turn leads to even more new startups.

I spent a few years in Texas -- another zero income tax state, before moving back to the Midwest.<p>Something to consider is whether or not you&#x27;ve got kids. Right now my family lives in an affordable neighborhood with a tolerant culture and excellent public schools that my two kids attend. In Texas, it seemed more like getting a good secular education for your kids was something that you had to pay a lot for, one way or the other -- either living in a super affluent neighborhood or finding private schools. Financially, I think that I may actually come out ahead living in one of the so-called &quot;education states.&quot;<p>Granted, my cultural biases show themselves in this post.

In light of the current (and ongoing) discussion on editorializing titles on HN:<p>The article title “Why I moved to Miami &amp; you should too” is <i>very</i> different from the HN submission “Before moving your startup to NYC or SFO”.<p>I don’t always agree with HN moderators’ title changes, but in this case, I can see why the title would be reversed (it hasn’t been yet, as of me writing this.)

Yeah, but I&#x27;ll take the weather in Redwood City (mid peninsula) over the oppressive heat and humidity (and cockroaches and mosquitos) of Florida any day. For reference: I&#x27;ve lived both places.

Can someone explain to my why its an advantage to live in a state with zero income tax? Does it really matter how the state makes its money. If it does not come from your paycheck directly they get it other ways.<p>For instance in Florida you pay ~2% property tax on your assessed value and in california you pay ~1% on your purchased value. If you bought property at 500k and its appreciated to 1 million in CA you pay 5k in FL you pay 20k.

I&#x27;m now working for a San Jose startup from North Carolina ... and not from RTP, but from a much less tech-focused area. My wife&#x27;s family lives here and that&#x27;s great for our daughter. Our house here costs 20% what an equivalent house would have in San Mateo, my bay area home from 1995 to 2013.<p>This place has a nice downtown, a pretty diverse population (a lot of medical research and university action). The food&#x27;s pretty good and somewhat varied (no Shalimar Pakistani unfortunately, I miss my Saag Gosht).<p>I miss the bay area but can now get back at least every two months or so to see old friends. If you can swing it, give it a try.

One of the main problems w&#x2F; Florida is you&#x27;re living among Floridians.

There are so many great places to live outside of SF and NYC. For the price of my old Bay Area rental, I rented the upper half of a gorgeous house in the Old Town of Park City, Utah. I was a 35 minute commute from Salt Lake (half of my SFBA commute) and my front doorstep was two short blocks from the ski lift. I could walk or ride my bike to everything that I needed. Sundance screenings were half a block away. In the summer, I could come home after work and still get a two hour mountain bike ride in, with the trails one block away. In the winter, I could ski all weekend or even get in some night runs after work at PCMR. Northern Utah has a thriving tech&#x2F;startup community so there&#x27;s plenty of local support.<p>Sadly, I left Utah to follow my wife&#x27;s (military) career to Tacoma, WA. When she retires in 9 years, you can bet that we&#x27;ll head back.

This is what all job postings should look like. That was amazing and it got me hooked until the end. If you are a Ruby developer looking for a new gig and was not surprisingly convinced at the end of that read, I don&#x27;t know how job postings could possibly improve.

I definitely sympathize with the tax burden component. Here in New York, I only end up taking home half what I&#x27;m paid which is especially frustrating for a contractor who could theoretically be working remotely.

i went to college in central florida, and now reside in NYC paying $2800 for a small studio. it&#x27;s been nearly a decade of putting up with expensive rent, lines, loud headache inducing noises everywhere, occasional first encounter with a rat on sidewalk, and yet, no plans to move out.<p>some reasons to to like nyc: it&#x27;s no Tokyo, but it&#x27;s actually pretty big. each neighborhood has its own vibe, and there are dozens of those in manhattan alone. The food is simply unbeatable. 2000 restaurants at any given time with new ones opening up every week. I&#x27;m having a hard time visiting all the good restaurants in my neighborhood alone. it&#x27;s not too big where there is still a neighborhood feel (i&#x27;m super friendly with small business owners and personnel in local shops, my neighbors). in my experience [majority of] people have been very nice and open. i keep meeting people from all over the world every weekend. i have friends that are starting and running businesses that give me energy to go on. shit ton of good jobs. models. rich history on every block.. great for photography hobby, looks awesome in winter with all the snow.. looks awesome in the fall with all the leaves.. looks awesome in the spring with blooming spring blossoms.. easy to meet intellectual people.. models. lots of healthy living options, some nyc areas have turned into shopping malls, but the city still has an edge. to name a few.. i love going to miami to relax and party, but can&#x27;t imagine actually living there. possibly when i&#x27;m ready to &quot;slow down&quot; whatever that means?

&quot;Lastly the weather is unparalleled from Nov thru March.&quot; Yeah and it&#x27;s fucking gawdawful for the rest of the year. You can put on more clothes when it&#x27;s cold but you can&#x27;t put on more cold when it&#x27;s hot. But you do get warm water for 6 months of the year. To each their own. Just don&#x27;t tell me I&#x27;m stupid for picking mine. Tell me what&#x27;s better. Fucking Hot and Humid is not a reason.

Taxes here in the states are overall disgusting, though you don&#x27;t realize it until your salary inches upwards. When your making 40K to 55K here in the states the amount of taxes taken seems like a fair share. Though when you almost double that you wonder what&#x27;s the point of making more money on paper as in your pocket you only make 60 to 65 percent of of your earnings - WTH?

The grass is not always greener on the other side. Having been all over the country, FL has its pros and cons like anyplace else.<p>FL is not that cheap anymore. Car insurance and home insurance are a fortune, some of the highest in the country. You also have to drive everywhere. Traffic in Miami is downright brutal both weekday and weekend. Plus, you have a lot of immigrants that do not know how to drive. If you like to ride motorcycles, dont.<p>The work ethic in Florida is probably one of the worst in the country. In NY and Cali it would take about 10-15 interviews to find a relatively qualified candidate. In FL it is roughly 1:25-30 candidates. Mostly because of DUI felonies or drug test failures.<p>Miami is the gateway to South America and other 3rd world countries so if you do not like Spanish culture don&#x27;t bother. As a white person, you are a minority in South FL. Crime in Miami is some of the highest in the country and having a CCW permit is the norm, not the exception. FL is still very much the wild wild west.<p>South FL has a great scene for artists, graphic designers and retailers but still have a very hard time attracting exceptional programmers due to the hot weather and low salaries. If you have children do not bother with the public schools, you will have to go private.<p>FL is a great place for a startup due to the lack of taxes and cheap labor available. However, if you are not a principal of the company go elsewhere.<p>Also, if you are dealing with a person or company and do not put anything in writing...RUN. In NY and CA people are very upfront and comfortable with contracts. Not so in FL. If you say the word contract they look at you like you offended them. FL has the Homestead Act and because of that you get a lot of the felons and riff raff who move to FL to start again and pump the money into their homes. Very shady environment.<p>Talent sticks with other talent and success leaves footprints.<p>There are a lot of other great places to work, live and build a business.

Local Miami resident here and I&#x27;m glad to see the startup community is finally getting some investment. I moved from DC 2 years ago and the only jobs I found were enterprise .NET&#x2F;Java position about 30-60 min away from Miami in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. I really enjoy living in Miami, but it&#x27;s difficult to find a well paying job here, good devs will make about $90K. The reason is there&#x27;s just not enough demand for the skillset. Hopefully that will change once the startup community here matures. One note about cost of living, compared to other cities the cost of living in Miami (proper or Miami Beach) is on par with any other large metro area (excluding NYC and SF of course). This coupled with the lower salaries makes moving to Miami a tough sell.

I was pleasantly surprised to wake up to a HN post on Miami!<p>I find the tech scene pretty miserable here but then again I&#x27;ve worked from home for almost 10 years and I&#x27;m terrible at networking events. So it could just be my self-imposed social prison! I live further south (Pinecrest), a little further away from our &quot;tech hubs&quot; in downtown and midtown.<p>If you&#x27;re in Miami and are looking for any events, Startup Digest does a good job of showing you what&#x27;s happening each week: <a href="https://www.startupdigest.com/digests/miami" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.startupdigest.com&#x2F;digests&#x2F;miami</a><p>I&#x27;d love to meet some HN minded brethren though.. Maybe we should try and do an HN Meetup, anyone else interested?<p>Shoot me an email.

This guy was definitely lucky to find a well paying job. I grew up here and haven&#x27;t been able to find a proper paying job. No competition for salary over here, leaves me very underpaid. All the nice areas in Miami require a higher salary that most companies here aren&#x27;t willing to pay.<p>A lot of assholes here also, get used to people staring at you in your car or on the street. The women are the hottest I&#x27;ve seen in any state. Most people here are so into fitness that its hard not to want to look good and take care of yourself.

Nashville, my friends. No state income tax in Tennessee either. One of the fastest growing cities and the center of health care services in the US, with HCIT not far behind.

So the piece on Miami started by saying that there is no income tax. It&#x27;s true. And there&#x27;s also very little of the things that get paid for by income taxes in other states. Like decent public education. Which might be fine for twenty-something web developers just looking for a life of self-gratification and night clubbing. But as a place to raise a family and&#x2F;or attract qualified (educated) employees from other regions, maybe not so much.

Auston, what is it about your blog that it won&#x27;t pinch-zoom on my iPad in either Chrome or Safari? Is there an HTML5 directive that can turn off pinch-zoom? I tried &quot;request desktop site&quot; but it didn&#x27;t make any difference. It resizes fine on desktop Chrome.<p>Regarding Florida... a vast, beautiful and diverse region with massive immigration that has propelled it to #4 in population (and closing in on #3 New York). I fell in love with the place when my family visited cousins in Ft. Lauderdale.<p>Interesting to read about Silicon Valley and SF versus New York versus Miami and other urban centers. I wonder whether it&#x27;s still advantageous in this day and age to spend the extra bucks and be in a hotspot of entrepreneurial activity. The online networking forums dwarf the old computer clubs and networking gatherings of yore. Granted, there&#x27;s still nothing like face to face for getting &quot;chemistry&quot; about someone, but is it worth spending an extra $200,000 for a house and an extra $25,000 a year in taxes? (actually these numbers are probably understated, depending on where you are)<p>Your blog describes the lifestyle preferences of a young, single person. Having a family changes everything and suddenly schools and stability of neighborhoods become much more important than diversity of cuisine (and once you have a kid, your restaurant fund is diverted to diapers anyway). From that perspective, I would think that southern Florida wins hands down over, say, San Francisco or Manhattan which are prohibitively expensive for raising families. I mean, people do it, but damn. It&#x27;s not like when my mother was growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and 40s and millions of families lived in the City, and millions of families bought modest homes all up and down the California coast. And Miami was a quiet city you went for two weeks in the wintertime.

I recently moved to Orlando from Hawaii for the cost benefits.<p>Pros:<p>- Florida was the hit the hardest by the housing collapse, so it&#x27;s like houses are having a 50% off sale.<p>- Lots to do. Many cities here like Orlando and Miami were built on tourism, so there&#x27;s a lot of interesting things to do compared with cities built for business as usual.<p>- Decent beaches and nice weather in season.<p>Cons:<p>- The state government seems extremely backwards&#x2F;frustrating. Even getting your driver&#x27;s license switched over requires ~7 documents. Florida representatives frequently say stupid things, so you get to see comedians like Jon Stewart tear them apart on a regular basis.<p>- The weather. You have to put up with hurricanes and regular storms. My sinuses bug me a lot more here.<p>- Social life. If you&#x27;re more progressive&#x2F;liberal, you&#x27;ll have to get used to being the odd-man-out. You can also feel left out if you don&#x27;t speak Spanish in many places here.

I love Miami. Lots of great reasons to be there. But man I hate the pompous &quot;and why you should too.&quot;

Guys, the article is not about food juiciness. It&#x27;s about someone who loves their job and kicks it back with a spectacular ocean front view, which we don&#x27;t have in beloved Manhattan. Everybody who wants to argue should maybe take a quick vacation. Like to Miami. : )

It&#x27;s funny that you mention the food being a vegetarian... the food is way more awesome with meat in Miami :) Cubans are known for their pork, beef, and seafood. The 3$ meals you can get at a Cuban dive in Miami put almost everything I&#x27;ve found in Austin to shame.

Gainesville, FL, is the best spot for young tech entrepreneurs IMO. Much cheaper than Miami, very little traffic and crime, bike friendly, tons of startups. Gainesville is the Silicon Valley of FL, but with a more laid back and unpretentious atmosphere.

As a native born Miamian studying CS the University of Miami, this excites me. I grew up in Bal Harbour and around college time I knew leaving would be a mistake. Nothing compares to the Aventura&#x2F; South Beach&#x2F; Coral Gables environments. However, It&#x27;s been really hard to get into the tech community here, even though theres an amazing potential for startups in this city. I&#x27;m working on something myself but it seems as if theres no support and I always assumed I&#x27;d have to move to California or up north if I wanted to be a serious programmer, so this is great news!<p>P.S. If anyone needs an intern, I make a great cuban coffee! jacobmizraji@gmail.com

Almost all those things in his post can be made about CA as well. In southern CA, not only do you get great year round weather, but if you want to go skiing it&#x27;s just a couple hours drive.<p>We moved to CA for our family. We lived in the midwest, and there just wasn&#x27;t much to do. There are endless things to do out here. I imagine Miami is about the same in that regard.<p>One thing I think he left out is the political standings. I came from a blood red state. My way of thinking is more in line with a blue state. It is so much nicer to be around people who think similar to you.<p>As for the taxes, yeah that&#x27;s a pretty tasty difference. But I got to have my skiing &amp; mountains :)

&gt; Lastly, the weather in Florida is unparalleled from November to March. It&#x27;s usually pretty good the rest of the year too<p>Lies :P I&#x27;ve lived in Miami. March to November, it&#x27;s super-hot and super-humid. And it has hurricanes.

There are plenty of great places to build your startup. I don&#x27;t think SF is one of them, but I&#x27;d live on the street in SF before living in Miami (again).

Maimi is pretty cool. It&#x27;s too bad they&#x27;re going to be underwater and the city mostly uninhabitable in about 10 years.

Great article that proves: living in NY and SF is so many times cooler than in Miami that a person needs to write an Article on how good it is to live in Florida to welcome guys to open vacancies. Epic way to hire people, but I’m sure I’m the only one who’s read the Whole article, too good and too long.

My takeaway from most of these &quot;why I moved to X&quot; stories is generally not &quot;wow, that seems like a great place to live&quot;, but rather &quot;living in SF or NY sucks&quot;. (I happen to live in a town of about 200 people in the mountains of Washington State and couldn&#x27;t be happier)

Hell no: Hot weather is bad for productivity.<p>I lived in Florida for 5 years. Lived in St. Louis for 15. It&#x27;s not a myth, being in a hotter state makes you lazier, more tired, and decreases your productivity levels (unless you&#x27;re indoors 100% of the time). It&#x27;s the heat &amp; sun and the way it affects productivity and thinking, and blood distribution.<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/24/a-hotter-world-is-a-less-productive-world/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;wonkblog&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2012&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;a...</a><p><a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865562780/Hot-news-The-best-workplace-temperature-is-warm-or-cold.html?pg=all" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.deseretnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;865562780&#x2F;Hot-news-The-be...</a><p>For me at least, being in the heat would just drain me of my energy and focus. When I lived in Orlando, Florida my productivity just hit rock bottom. I didn&#x27;t want to do anything. Neither did anyone around me. My neighbors were all lazy, everyone was lazy, the parks had a lot less people than parks up north. Every thing was just slower. Less people walked. Everyone was just inside. The sun is just intense since Florida&#x27;s closer to the equator, the heat is extreme during the summer and since there&#x27;s so much humidity your body can&#x27;t cool itself off through sweat evaporation. Also, when you&#x27;re in the heat your body sends more blood to circulate in your skin and uses a lot more energy to keep itself cool. And even simple things like going outside to check my mail would just be a burning pain. I&#x27;m serious, we all stayed indoors. We were like prisoners. Miami is even worse. And Key West was just... a boiling oven.<p>Compare the productivity levels, development, &amp; innovation of colder countries with warmer countries. Is it really a surprise that so many 3rd world countries are hot countries near the equator (with very little availability of air conditioning)?<p>&quot;According to this theory, about 70% of the economic development of a country can be predicted from the distance between that country and the equator. In other words, the further from the equator the more developed a country tends to be.&quot; - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_determinism" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Environmental_determinism</a><p>After my Florida experience I&#x27;m staying away from the south. Some people love it there though.

Burn Notice already sold me on Miami. If only all my friends and family didn&#x27;t live in Canada!

If anyone is interested in joining our growing bitcoin group in Miami, you can join us here <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/MiamiInternationalBitcoin/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;MiamiInternationalBitcoin&#x2F;</a>

Well having spent a lot of time in both places, I must say I really dig Miami. It&#x27;s the right mix of laid back and intensity for me, and San Fran summers are too cold. Plus, my Don Johnson outfits don&#x27;t fit in nearly as well in SF.

Minor editorial note: SFO is the airport, SF is the normal abbreviation for the city.

I&#x27;m a little surprised Latinas wasn&#x27;t on the list actually.

Miami is a complete shithole...grew up there and lived there 15 years.<p>Now living in a major western european city for 4 years and almost everything about europe blows the states out of the water

It often happens that someone outside new york talks about the amaaaazing food in their city. I used to laugh, or correct them. Nowadays I just feel pity.<p>Nothing compares to the food of new york city. Absolutely nothing. Don&#x27;t even fucking try.<p>&quot;I live within walking distance of two zagat top 10 rated restaurants.&quot; There are sixty restaurants within walking distance of my apartment and they&#x27;re all better than anything in miami. Fuck, 5 of them are run by Top Chef winners. And there are 10 more that are better than those because the food network doesn&#x27;t even get the top talent.

I love when people talk about a great developer ecosystem in their city of choice. It just rubs it in for how weak it is in Philadelphia.

Plus, now that Dexter is gone...

How&#x27;s the crime rate in Miami?

native german from boring berlin. just fascinated by the stories here in the comments -.-

looks tempting enough.

Why live in amerika when we have asia?