Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles

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University Press of Florida

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Florida A&M University, Tallahassee

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers

Florida International University, Miami

Florida State University, Tallahassee

New College of Florida, Sarasota

University of Central Florida, Orlando

University of Florida, Gainesville

University of North Florida, Jacksonville

University of South Florida, Tampa

University of West Florida, Pensacola

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University Press of Florida

Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton

Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Travels among

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Mud Boggers,

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Furries, Ufologists,

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Nudists, and

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Other Lovers of

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Unconventional

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Lifestyles

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Copyright 2013 by Lynn Waddell

All rights reserved

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Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter

Natures Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship

Council (FSC). It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste

and is acid-free

This book may be available in an electronic edition.

18 17 16 15 14 13 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

University Press of Florida

15 Northwest 15th Street

Gainesville, FL 32611-2079

http://www.upf.com

To Mom and James

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tn 2. The King of Trampa 35

oC 3. Sisters of Steel 64

4. The Other Wild Kingdom 91

5. Radical Rednecks 120

6. Spirits, Fairies, and a Blow-Up Mary 141

7. Swing State 171

8. Alien Riviera 185

9. Showtown’s Last Showman 200

10. Fringe on Fringe 225

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Strands of Fringe: Notes 259

Strands of Fringe: Selected Readings 265

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In 1998 I found myself standing fully clothed amid a herd of one hun-

dred sweaty, shirtless and, in too many cases, bottomless men at a

dumpy nudist campground in the wilds of Pasco County. Many were

videotaping every jiggle and crevice of the Miss Nude Florida contes-

tant on a makeshift stage. What a shot she was giving them. There in

the bright, hot Florida sun, skin gleaming with oil, the nubile woman

doubled over, rear to the crowd, showing everything but her uterus.

I’m no prude. I was a casino-beat newspaper reporter in Las Vegas

for five years. I was the script researcher for the motion-picture flop

Showgirls
and combed the seediest of strip clubs searching for a dancer

who wanted to be on a casino stage. But I was a little stunned, not to

mention creeped out, by the tongue-lolling amateur pornographers. I

had naively thought this was a nudist community in the purist sense,

which is why I showed up to write about the contest for Tampa’s alter-

native newspaper, then called the
Weekly
Planet
. On paper at least, I

found the event absurdly ironic given that nudism is touted to be about

accepting your body as it is, thin or fat, smooth or wrinkled. Not that

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I had ever visited a nudist environ, but I had envisioned nudists more

as scrawny men with graying hippie beards (of which there were some)

and patchouli-lathered women with sagging breasts (of which there

were none), kind of a throwback to the 1960s communes, the type of

people who would neither enter a beautiful-body contest nor, if they

did, win one.

Yet I was here, less than an hour from Disney World’s Cinderella

Castle and family-friendly beaches where children ride SpongeBob

SquarePants® boogie boards, watching young women giving vaginal

displays in broad daylight to a horde of horny nude men. Vegas sud-

denly seemed tame.

Such were my early days in exploring the subcultures, the fringe,

of Florida. I spent three years writing for that alternative paper, in-

terviewing everyone from a madam to a retired circus clown. In the

ten years that followed, I freelanced, which means, if one is to sur-

vive, taking on diverse assignments. I retraced the paths of 9-11 ter-

rorists for
Newsweek
, chased hurricanes for the
New
York
Times
, and yes, wrote buttery travel stories for state tourism guides. Along the

way I delighted in meeting oddball characters—a biker/hoarder with

sixty thousand comic books crammed into his tiny house, the Little

League mom who brings pet monkeys to her son’s games, the retiree

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who drives his Corvette eighty miles once a week to dance around in

women’s lingerie at an Ybor City nightclub. I came to realize Florida’s

uniqueness has less to do with its theme parks and beaches and more

to do with the unconventional lifestyles of those who live here.

The idea for this book came from the accumulation of my experi-

ences. Beyond sensational daily headlines, I want to introduce you to

unique lifestyles and guide you through places and events that you will

never read about in
Travel
&
Leisure
.

My use of the term “fringe” is not pejorative. These outside-the-

norm lifestyles are the decoration of Florida. On a map, the state even

looks like a fat piece of fringe dangling from the United States, divid-

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ing the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, and unraveling into the

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Caribbean.

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I spent more than two years traversing America’s slice of fringe for

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this book. I interviewed sideshow folks, people with pet lions, and

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Spiritualists who communicate with the dead. I rode through Florida

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muck on a 13-foot-tall swamp buggy and attended taboo events the

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descriptions of which will no doubt make my parents cringe. I also read

almost every book and article I could find on the subjects in this book.

Given the underground nature of some, I mined unconventional re-

sources such as chat rooms and online forums, many of which required

me to register. My e-mail spam filters went into overdrive.

The result of my reporting and research is this collection of ten vi-

gnettes, snapshots of the state’s more iconic fringe lifestyles. They

span a variety of subjects. Not every chapter’s subject is sexual; in fact,

most are G-rated. There is even one on Florida’s unusual religious tour-

ist attractions.

Given the wealth of fringe in Florida, this book is certainly not a

compendium of all. There are countless other subcultures and new ones

spawning all the time. By necessity, I established some parameters to

determine what to include, or rather what to omit. Each subculture de-

scribed in this book is distinct in some significant way from its cousins

in other states. The lifestyles either originated in Florida or dwarf ones

elsewhere in size or prominence. For instance, San Francisco and Bos-

ton are hot spots for fetishists who dress up like horses, but Florida is

home to the International Pony Play Competition.

Although the chapters touch on seemingly disparate topics, the Flo-

ridians throughout this book have much in common. In some cases

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their interests cross and even morph. They fully immerse in their life-

style and are not mere hobbyists. Most weren’t born in Florida and

didn’t pursue their fringe with gusto, if at all, until after moving to the

Sunshine State.

This brings up the question I’ve asked and have been asked through-

out this project: Why Florida? Why do inhibitions seem to disappear at

the state line?

The simplest answer is the state’s sunny and mild year-round

weather invites it. After all, it’s pretty hard to be a full-time nudist or

year-round biker in snowy Montana.

The full answer, though, is much more complex and elusive. Florida’s

diverse population, tourism propaganda, and the predisposition of its

residents may all play roles.

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Consider that more than two-thirds of Floridians weren’t born here.