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Ahh, Florida Man strikes again
Patty Leon new

There is always something funny or unusual coming out of my home state of Florida. Just the other day, a “Florida Man,” washed ashore in Flagler County after he encountered some problems while trying to, “run to the Northern US or Bermuda,” on what appeared to be a giant floating hamster wheel. The man, Reza Baluci, said he was raising money to help the homeless, and raise funds for police and fire departments and the Coast Guard.

Turns out that guy has his own You Tube Page and website: https://www.runwithreza.org/

It’s a great website to visit when you want to start going down a Florida Man rabbit hole. Seems to me this guy has done more for his fellow humans, with his feet firmly panted here on Earth or in the water, than billionaire Jezz Bezos has done. 

But seriously there have been some truly weird headline throughout the years, some too funny to be believable, others too horrifying, yet true.

One of the first headlines I can recall was back in 2012: Florida Man chews off another man’s face. 

It sounded like something you might catch in a science fiction movie. But it was national news when cops shot and killed Rudy Eugene, dubbed the Miami Cannibal. Police found Eugene eating the flesh off a homeless man. He had eaten half his face off. At first police placed the blame on a new drug called “bath salts,” but toxicology results only showed cannabis in Eugene’s system. It remains a real mystery. The homeless man did survive and had to have 75 percent of his face reconstructed.

Or how about this doozy: Florida man arrested for throwing alligator through drive-thru window

This guy pulled up to a Wendy’s and when the server gave him his drink, he tossed a three-foot alligator into the restaurant and sped away. Wildlife officers captured the alligator and released it to the wild. The man was charge with assault with a deadly weapon. 

Occasionally you’ll get a Florida woman story like this one: Florida woman passes gas, pulls knife on offended man.

A woman farted while standing in line at a Dollar Store and then pulled a knife on a man who complained about her flatulence. Only in Florida!

Or this gem: Florida woman claim wind blew cocaine into her purse.

The woman was a passenger in a car that had been puled over by Fort Pierce Police. They smelled marijuana and during their police search the officer found separate bags of cocaine and marijuana inside the purse the woman had on her lap. When questioned about the drugs the woman told the cops, “It’s a windy day. It must have flown through the window and into my purse.”

Just this year a missing woman was found naked inside a Florida storm drain. The woman had been missing for three weeks. She told reporters she went swimming in the canal behind her boyfriend’s house and came across a tunnel. She went inside the canal tunnel and kept walking deeper and deeper inside and into other tunnels and she got lost. She eventually saw a light at the end of one tunnel and heard street noises and saw people so, she began yelling for help. The woman’s mother said her daughter has a history of mental illness and making bad decisions.

Speaking of bad decisions, one Florida Man set his own house on fire fearing that vampires were coming to get him. The man’s wife had called police earlier that day to complain about her husband’s mental health. She was hoping the police would commit her husband to a mental hospital. But when officers spoke with the husband, he was lucid and appeared well. Officers left. The man got pissed, beat his wife, broke windows with his cane and started a fire. Fortunately, his wife escaped the fire unharmed.

Of course, it was a Florid Man who recently plead guilty for fraudulently obtaining 3.9 million in COVID relief funds and using some of the money to buy himself a Lamborghini.

It was an elderly Haines City Florida Man who was charged with DUI for crashing his riding lawnmower into a police patrol car.

There are some good stories of Florida Man too like the man who jumped into the pond behind his house to save his dog Loki. The dog had been snatched up by a gator and this Good Samaritan dog owner wasn’t about to let Loki become lunch.

It’s gotten to the point where Florida Man is a popular meme, delivering nonsensical news that we somehow need, even if we didn’t know it.


-Patty Leon

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