{"id":129060,"date":"2026-01-23T12:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T12:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/129060\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T12:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T12:03:08","slug":"this-actors-words-have-me-rethinking-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/129060\/","title":{"rendered":"This actor\u2019s words have me rethinking Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend sent me a piece from Elle<\/a>, an advice column written by the actor Jemima Kirke. She\u2019s British-American, chic in an effortless way. When I wear a Harley-Davidson tank top, for instance, I resemble a someone ejected from Quaker Steak and Lube. She wears one and looks like Jane Birkin.<\/p>\n

Kirke tackled a likewise chic reader question: \u201cWhich city do you think is better to live in when you\u2019re young and figuring s\u2014 out: Barcelona or Paris?\u201d<\/p>\n

She replied:<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Florida is really where you go if you don\u2019t know who you are or what you want. Nothing is normal over there and no matter how weird things get there\u2019s always something weirder right around the corner. It\u2019s a little bit like Wonderland in Alice in Wonderland. You fall down the rabbit hole, intending to find the exit but it\u2019s a disorienting place and eventually, you adapt. Not to the place, but to being disoriented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cue the bugged eyeballs, because I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve read a better description of the confounding act of existence here. Kirke, who has lived in Florida, distilled a specific resilience only made possible in a place like this.<\/p>\n

Like what? Like a jumble of contradictions. Like whimsy and grit. Like sunshine and rain at the same time. And I don\u2019t know about you, but I need permission to feel disoriented right now.<\/p>\n

Tampa is preparing for its goofy, joyous Gasparilla pirate invasion. Meanwhile, a city on America\u2019s other end is being invaded. Federal officers detain children, batter down doors, drag citizens through snow in their underwear and accost anyone who dares intervene.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re supposed to put on corsets and drink? Anyone with a remotely examined life knows such revelry comes with a plus-one of heaviness. Watching palm-sized video after video of malevolence while rays of light stream through tropic winter windows? It feels screwed up.<\/p>\n

We adapt to being disoriented.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no better place to marinate in confusion than Key West, land of wanderers and open containers. I spent a few days there this month for a writing workshop. I stayed at the Lighthouse Hotel, former home of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s mistress and an early LGBTQ+ guest house. On my trip, the desk clerk worked alongside Fenrir, an enormous white dog named for a Norse wolf. Fenrir was afraid of roller luggage.<\/p>\n

The hotel was across from the Hemingway house, a limestone fortress of literary history and polydactyl cats. That was down the street from the wine bar where I met a couple of boating roamers from Tarpon Springs. That was around the corner from the Green Parrot, the famous dive with the world\u2019s best pi\u00f1a colada if you don\u2019t mind the possibility of stray hair.<\/p>\n

And all that was a mile from Key West City Hall, where I took writing classes and where a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions rang out.<\/p>\n

The protesters<\/a> chanted for ICE to leave Key West, a famously diverse portal to the Caribbean. Locals have reported that the island\u2019s many Haitians, Cubans, Bahamians and more have stopped zipping to work<\/a> on e-bikes. High school students have been detained and deported. The Overseas Highway<\/a> is an immigrant snare. Officers arrested 11 people<\/a> in the airport Chili\u2019s; they were having a family reunion.<\/p>\n

\u201cConch Republic\u201d merch hangs in a million gift shops, but do people buying Gulf of America T-shirts know what that means? The symbolic secession, a token of Key West\u2019s defiant spiritual core as much as a tourist slogan, feels darkly ironic now. The whole concept of the Conch Republic sprang from 1982 protests over \u2014 you know it \u2014 a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint.<\/p>\n

Lest we forget, Florida is a place where people have always bucked the expectation to roll over and comply. It\u2019s not a place to disappear or disassociate, not even in its most idiosyncratic enclaves, not even on its most fun-filled pirate days. It\u2019s not a haven to block out chaos, to shove down rage and sadness in favor of sunnier, sillier things.<\/p>\n

Florida is the place to feel it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a state of mind I highly recommend,\u201d Kirke added to her thoughts. \u201cJust make sure to tell your friends you\u2019re going before you leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get Stephanie\u2019s newsletter<\/p>\n

For weekly bonus content and a look inside columns by Stephanie Hayes, sign up for the free Stephinitely newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A friend sent me a piece from Elle, an advice column written by the actor Jemima Kirke. She\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[63732,28,30,29,63733,63729,2559,63731,63730],"class_list":{"0":"post-129060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-ernest-hemingway","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-harley-davidson","13":"tag-jemima-kirke","14":"tag-key-west","15":"tag-mallory-square","16":"tag-quaker-steak-and-lube"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}