They rose up by the dozens from across Florida, caricatured competitors in tank tops and cutoff shorts, for a showdown that treats evading police and wrestling over beer like Olympic sports.
Promoted as “the most insane athletic showdown on Earth,” the Florida Man Games poke fun at the state’s reputation for bizarre stories that involve brawling, drinking, gunfire, reptile wrangling and other antics carrying a risk of time in jail or intensive care.
Several thousand people paid to come cheer a dozen teams at the debut event set for yesterday in St Augustine, with contests and sideshows inspired by real events from the US’ most surreal state.
Photo: Tyler Watts via AP
“I have an absolute disregard for self-preservation. I will do anything,” said Larry Donnelly, 42, who owns a St Augustine pressure-washing business and serves as captain of the five-man team Hanky Spanky. “When I was in the military, I did a little alligator wrestling.”
To train for the games, Donnelly rode a bicycle around his neighborhood with a second bike strapped to his back.
His event: a race requiring competitors to switch between bikes while toting a catalytic converter and a handful of copper pipes, common items in Florida theft stories.
Other events involve contenders wrestling sumo-style while holding pitchers of beer, or running from actual sheriff’s deputies while jumping fences and avoiding obstacles.
Some signed up to duel with aquatic noodles over a mud-filled pool, while others faced a scramble to grab cash flying in simulated hurricane winds.
Florida Man Games organizer Pete Melfi said he was stunned to find nobody else had beaten him to the ripped-from-headlines idea for a spoof sporting event.
He said he expected more than 5,000 spectators paying US$45 or more per ticket to join the fun at the city’s Francis Field.
“We kind of give a person an opportunity to live a day in the life of Florida man without ending up in a cop car,” said Melfi, who runs the St. Augustine media outlet The 904 Now.
He had to tone down some racier aspects of the Florida Man mythos to obtain a permit.
“There’s typically drugs and nudity,” he said. “But the city frowned on it when I asked for drugs and nudity.”
The “Florida Man” phenomenon seeped into the nation’s conscience thanks in part to a Twitter account that started in 2013 with the handle @_FloridaMan. The account touted “real-life stories of the world’s worst superhero,” sharing news headlines such as “Florida Man Bites Dog to ‘Establish Dominance’” and “Florida Man Tried to Pay for McDonald’s With Weed.”
Florida’s claim to being the strangest state goes back much further, said Craig Pittman, a Florida journalist who wrote the book Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country.
He said that the first flag to fly over its state Capitol in 1845 bore the motto “Let Us Alone.”
Apparently nobody listened. Florida today has 22 million residents, the third-largest population of any US state. They all share roads, beaches and timeshares with more than 130 million tourists per year.
“You cram that many people together, they’re bound to start running into each other’s cars and chasing each other with machetes,” Pittman said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS