From there on out every interaction was tainted in some odd way, sometimes hard to put your finger on, like there was something in the water. I got the fuck out after a few days. Only redeaming quality was the street art.
JAX's problem is nearly everyone that lives there either
-isn't from Florida
-has never left the city
So you get this hodgepodge of cultures that are constantly clashing together. No one living in JAX really wants to be in JAX. Everyone ended up stuck there for whatever reason or they've never been able to escape the area. I met a lot of cool people there but the vast majority are shady. Then there is the whole gangland thing going on that's worse than anywhere else I've been. Other places I've been like that there are two-three major gangs and you know who's property you're on and it's easy to steer clear of trouble. JAX has like 2,000 different gangs with blood feuds between them. They're all right on top of each other so you might end up passing through 5 different territories just walking to the nearest store. If they've never seen you before they assume you're a cop even if you have hair down to your ass. JAX is the only city I've been in where the police will seize a drug dealer's car then put it back out on the street the next day with an undercover officer.
JAX also has this thing where you can be right in a major section of the city, take a turn down a road and next thing you know you're on a dirt road to nowhere. There are lots of pockets of woodland like that. Always a big dealer at the end of those dead end roads. So you can easily take a wrong turn and end up becoming gator food.
Downtown smells like chemicals and shit. Pretty much every area is dangerous or unfriendly to outsiders. Gated planned communities right next to business parks and the hood. Traffic worse than LA sometimes. You get the option of taking 1 of 3 suicide bridges home where you're going to be running 85mph+ with traffic watching every car around you bounce. People went over the railings into the river all of the time. Murders happening in broad daylight all of the time. When I lived there it had the highest murder rate in the country.
There is no reason to go there unless you want to check out the beach and pass on through. Or if you need a quick job to stack some cash. That's the one saving grace of the area. It doesn't cost that much to live there.
You're right. JAX is the largest city by land area in the entire United States. Technically, the entire county is considered part of the city. There is no way you could walk across it in a day. I used to leave my work place downtown at 8am and wouldn't get to my client's property on the beach until 10am. Some of the guys I worked with took the bus into work and talked about leaving at 5am in the morning to make it to the yard by 8am. I lived outside of the city proper. If I didn't leave by 5:30am I'd be an hour late. If I left at 5am I'd be an hour early. Traffic in JAX is a real mother fucker.
