Hi, I’m John, the human behind Properly South Florida.
I’m a lifelong history nerd thanks to my Granny, who taught me early that the best stories rarely show up in textbooks. They live in footnotes, rumors, old maps, newspaper clippings, and the uncomfortable spaces between “official” versions of the past.
I love Fort Lauderdale. Not just the polished postcard version, but the layered, complicated, occasionally questionable place that existed long before bottle service and waterfront condos. I’m endlessly fascinated by the unspoken history lessons, the overlooked characters, and the cultural threads that quietly shaped what South Florida became.
Properly South Florida started as a way to document those stories. The myths. The legends. The strange origins. The cultural habits that somehow survived every reinvention of paradise.
Every article, deep dive, and tangent you read here is researched, written, and curated by me. No content farms. No ghostwriters. Just curiosity, archives, and a healthy respect for how weird and wonderful this place really is.
If South Florida has a backstory, I probably want to read it.
Fort Lauderdale’s median home price as of early 2026 sits around $658,000. Waterfront lots along the New River? Enter a different tax bracket entirely. South Florida real estate has always felt a little unhinged, but there was a moment in the mid-1920s when the whole thing didn’t just feel unhinged.Continue Reading
Before there were real estate developers, there were wreckers… and a good storm was more valuable than a good harvest. On the morning of October 4, 1873, a three-masted schooner called the Victor ran hard onto the outer reef roughly two miles off what would later become Fort Lauderdale Beach.Continue Reading
Before the luxury towers. Before the rooftop bars. Before the influencers and the Art Basel crowds and the $22 cocktails on Las Olas, South Florida ran on cocaine. Not metaphorically. Literally. In the late 1970s and through most of the 1980s, South Florida became the primary port of entry forContinue Reading
Prohibition didn’t make Americans stop drinking.It made them better planners. When the Volstead Act went into effect in 1920, Washington imagined a country sobering up out of respect for the law. South Florida imagined supply chains. You don’t ban a habit. You reroute it. And Broward County, quietly, was alreadyContinue Reading
If you want to understand Fort Lauderdale, don’t start with the skyline.Look down. Before the towers, before the drawbridges learned their choreography, before anyone thought “waterfront” meant brunch, the river was already making decisions. The New River didn’t wait for permission. It didn’t follow a polite, linear plan. It bent,Continue Reading
Every city has a founding myth.Fort Lauderdale has a founding rumor. Not the kind involving buried treasure or noble pioneers shaking hands at sunset. This one is quieter. Less ceremonial. It sounds like a boat idling just out of sight, a ledger that never quite balances, a shrug followed byContinue Reading