JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- For weeks now, in almost every press box I've been to this season, somebody has come up to me and said something along the lines of this:
How in the heck can there be a Super Bowl in that awful cowtown you live in?
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| Jacksonville has jazzed up its spans over the St. Johns River -- this one the Main Street Bridge -- for Super Bowl week. (AP) |
Sheer misery.
That way none of you northern fools would get the idea to move here. We're too crowded as it is. We don't want you anyway. We don't want you sharing in on the fact we have no state income tax.
My sleepy little suburb of a city is already fast becoming everything we don't want it to be. The traffic is getting bad (relatively speaking for people in the Washington D.C., area), the crime rates are rising and the cost of living is going up, too.
In a nutshell: It's becoming a northern city, or worse, Miami.
But let me tell you something. This is a great place to live. Despite all the nasty columns we'll see this week tearing the city to shreds, there is a lot to like about living here.
The best being that it's North Florida, not the Northern U.S.
Is it a great place to play host to a Super Bowl? In 10 years it will be. Not yet. There are not enough hotel rooms, not enough party venues and not enough quality restaurants to make happy the money people who come to these things.
And that's why Jacksonville is about to take a week-long beating at the hands of the curmudgeons known as my colleagues.
Residents of Jacksonville -- those of you who can read (just prepping you) -- should ready for a rapid-fire of written assaults aimed at the city. They'll use the usual clichés.
They'll tell you how there's nothing to do here.
