Commentary

Welcome To Tallahassee, Lads And Lassies

We are in a recession. I know this because my hometown, Tallahassee, Fla., has launched a campaign to promote itself as a recession-proof tourist destination.

The release says "From alligators to artifacts, Seminoles to sinkholes and canopy roads to the Capitol Complex, Tallahassee offers historic and adventurous diversions to travelers en route to the white beaches and the magical castles of Florida."

Here are some of the local destinations Tally (via its Visitor and Convention Bureau) is touting: Herman, the restored Mastodon skeleton, at the Museum of Florida History; the site of Hernando de Soto's 1539 winter encampment; the hurricane simulator at the Mary Brogan Museum; the breathtaking panoramic scenery from the 22nd floor of the New Capitol.< p> For food: Andrew's Capital Grill & Bar, which has politically themed menu items; Another Broken Egg, a breakfast and lunch hot spot; Tallahassee Ale House & Sports Bar, an award-winning wings and raw bar; and Whataburger, since 1950 a hot-rod favorite.

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North Florida, which is at the tail end of the Appalachians, has a lot of topographic diversity and lot of botanic and riverine wonders with a subtle appeal. The problem with this PR effort is that none of these and other things Tallahassee and North Florida actually had--and may still have if they haven't been gentrified to death--are mentioned.

Instead, the tourism bureau is promoting inner-beltway things that every medium-sized city now has: the European bistro, the local art galleries, the gardens, the inevitable golf course and sports bar. I don't care how good it is, I'm not going to Florida to eat French onion soup. I can get that in Staten Island.

I am sensing that it's a self-esteem problem, as a therapist would say. Okay, my therapist--but let's not get into that. I sense that the Tallahassee tourism bureaucrats are unconsciously ashamed of being parochial. At some level they are ashamed, institutionally, of Tallahassee's cracker-ness, its sunburn, its "Gal Young 'Un" roots, its plantation past (there was an old plantation down the street from my house, on Old Plantation Road); its y'all-ness.

Interestingly, in a video on the tourism site, the owner of Chez Pierre, himself a transplant from France, looks into the camera and says, "Bon jour, y'all." But where are the people who actually say y'all? I'll tell you where: in Wakulla County. You'll have to go through them to see the real Florida.

What you can't get in Staten Island (and for all I know in Florida's panhandle nowadays, either) is Martha Ann's hushpuppies and fried butterfly shrimp, or oysters on a cracker at Posies, a place on a jetty over the Apalachicola River, washed down with near-frozen Bud, or mullet fried in corn meal and served with tartar sauce, creating a gustatory experience so sinfully rich you'll want to bring moist towelettes and a heart surgeon.

And how about the thrill seekers? Where's your pitch to them? You haven't lived until you've strapped on a pair of scuba tanks, humped into the pine forest, and slipped beneath the tannic waters in the middle of nowhere. Forget base jumping. For a death trip you've got to descend into emerald depths, and drift amid solemn abandoned TVs, among old trees lingering there on cones of silt like petrified tusks, and the occasional Model T.

History? Forget the museums. You can live a Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings novel 15 minutes outside of town at Wacissa, where, amid sagging farmhouses and country stores one finds the emerald headwater springs of the Wacissa River, where the same rope swing has been hanging above those limpid waters for at least 30 years.

It is painfully obvious that y'all people need to hire a local. Like me.

Editor's note: You want 'im, you got 'im.

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