Dave Barry: A warm Miami welcome for our New York friends relocating to the Sunshine State

On a recent evening my wife and I went to Coconut Grove to have dinner, and as we were walking to the restaurant we came across a woman in distress. She was trying to get her car out of a parking space, but it had been blocked in by a car that had been parked by — and here I shall choose my words carefully — a complete jerkwad.

The woman, with directions from her friend, had been trying for some time to maneuver the car out of there, but the other car was parked so inconsiderately that it looked impossible.

My wife, a “can do” kind of person who does not mind getting involved, immediately swung into action.

“My husband can get you out,” she said. “He’s an excellent parker.”

Not to toot my own horn, but I am a pretty good parker. One time, in France, I managed to park a manual-shift rental car on a steep hill in a space so tricky that even the French drivers, who have no respect whatsoever for the laws of physics, did not attempt it. They’re probably still talking about my feat over there, in French.

So with my wife having put my manhood on the line, I got into the driver’s seat and, after making 17 million maneuvers, each one moving the car roughly the length of a standard amoeba, I managed to get the woman’s car out of there. If there had been another coat of paint on that car, it would not have made it.

The woman was very grateful. I, as a parker as well as a man, was deeply relieved. It was an emotional moment, reminiscent of the time US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger heroically landed that plane in the Hudson River, except with all due respect to Chesley, he was under less pressure to perform.

But I’m not telling you this because I think I deserve a medal. I’m telling you this because I think I deserve a statue.

No, I’m telling you this because of something everybody noticed about the car that had been parked so thoughtlessly.

It had New York license plates.

We all commented on this.

“Huh,” we commented, while giving each other Significant Looks.

I do not mean to suggest here that all New Yorkers are thoughtless jerkwads. Au contraire, as the French say when they are not talking about my parking feat. Plenty of New Yorkers are nice. Loud, but nice. I myself was once a New Yorker. I was even, briefly, a Jets fan, although I have petitioned the courts to have that expunged from my record.

Nor am I suggesting that New Yorkers, as a group, are worse drivers than Floridians. Far from it. I have argued for decades — feel free to Google me on this — that Florida drivers, and especially Miami drivers, are the worst drivers in the United States, if not the world. I am confident that if we ever encounter alien life, even if it is a one-celled fungus, it will be better at driving than Miamians are.

No, my point is not about driving. My point — and the reason we went “Huh” when we saw the license plate — is that lately there is a growing resentment among Miamians toward New Yorkers.

There has always been some friction, of course. For many years New Yorkers have been coming to Miami to vacation and inform us, loudly, about the many ways in which our city is inferior to New York. You know: Our bagels suck, our pizza sucks, our Chinese food sucks, our airport sucks, our newspapers suck, we have no culture, our politicians are idiots, everybody down here is talking in Spanish, you can’t get those delicious New York street-vendor hotdogs that have been cooking in the same water since Ed Koch was mayor, etc.

This whining was annoying, but it was also temporary, because the New Yorkers went home after their vacations. Now, however, many of them are staying. That’s right: They have decided, for some crazy reason, to leave the earthly paradise that is New York and move here permanently, despite our many defects. They are snapping up Miami real estate the way the “Jaws” shark snapped up teenaged swimmers. This is good if you want to sell your house, but bad if you want to buy a house and you find yourself bidding against a New Yorker, because they can be aggressive:

SELLER: Our asking price is $450,000.

YOU: I think I can swing that.

NEW YORKER: I’ll give you three million dollars.

SELLER: Sold!

NEW YORKER: What the heck, make it five million.

So we’re seeing more and more New Yorkers in our neighborhoods, restaurants, stores and parking spaces, and they’re upsetting the delicate social balance of Miami, where people from many different places of origin have traditionally coexisted in peace and harmony.

I am of course joking. We Miamians have traditionally coexisted the way the Sharks and Jets coexist in “West Side Story,” except we possess a wider range of weapons.

So it was already tense down here, and I’m concerned that with all these incoming New Yorkers, it’s going to get even tenser. I’m especially worried about what will happen when we get into hurricane season, which starts on June 1 and, because of global climate change, ends sometime around Valentine’s Day.

If we get hit by a major storm, there is a very real danger that the newcomers will panic. They will not have the experience and knowledge to do what we locals do during a hurricane, which is... OK, we also panic. But we panic in a proven, time-tested way.

As a veteran Miamian, I thought it would be nice of me to share the hurricane-preparation knowledge I’ve acquired over the years with our new neighbors from New York, as well as the tech people who have moved here from Silicon Valley to make “NFTs,” or whatever the hell it is that they do. So I have put together this helpful guide:

WHAT TO DO WHEN A HURRICANE IS COMING

1. Go to Publix and buy a large quantity of emergency food, including at least 25 pounds of canned cocktail wieners for each member of your household. Also buy as many large plastic jugs of water as you can get your hands on, even if this means stealing them from other shoppers’ carts.

2. When you get home, begin snacking on your emergency food immediately. Your goal is to finish it before the hurricane arrives; this will make your body heavier and thus less likely to be carried away by the high winds.

3. Put the water jugs in a storage closet and forget about them until they start leaking several years from now.

4. Go to Home Depot and buy plywood. Never mind how much or why. This is a cherished South Florida hurricane tradition so JUST DO IT.

5. Go back to Publix and buy ice because you forgot to get ice on the first trip you IDIOT.

6. Check around your property for objects that could, in hurricane winds, become deadly missiles. These include coconuts, rocks, trees, spears, missiles, and the plywood you bought back in Step 4. Collect these items and, under the cover of darkness, throw them onto your neighbor’s property.

7. If you have lizards on your property, anchor them all securely to the ground with a Lizard Tie-Down Kit, which is available at Home Depot, so you will need to go back there. And if you think it’s stupid to tie down your lizards, you obviously have never been in a Category 5 storm with a fully mature iguana hurtling toward you at upwards of 140 miles per hour. This has happened to many South Floridians. It’s one reason why we drive the way we do.

8. Go back to Publix or Home Depot and buy batteries. You will definitely lose electrical power during the hurricane, despite the fact that FPL has crews working around the clock making TV commercials about what a swell company FPL is. In addition to buying batteries, before the storm arrives you should fill your bathtub with electricity. To do this you will need rubber gloves, which you can get at Publix or Home Depot.

When you’ve completed these simple steps, you’ll be fully prepared for the hurricane. Now all you have to do is relax, chew your emergency food and watch the TV weather people standing on the beach and telling you that it’s very dangerous to stand on the beach.

If, during the storm, an emergency arises and you need help or advice, do not hesitate to call on one of your experienced South Florida neighbors. You’ll have to use your phone to reach us, because we won’t be here. We’ll be in New York. We’ve heard the bagels are excellent.