We all know that Welling­ton is the cen­tre of the uni­verse, but did you know there’s a Welling­ton that’s the center of the uni­verse as well? Not so long ago, we got an email from Rick of Walk about Welling­ton. Yup, that’s right, there’s a Welling­ton in Flori­da, USA as well. We answered some ques­tions about our city for him, and thought it was only fair that he do the same for us…

Rick, your Welling­ton is small­er than my Welling­ton (57,163 vs 395,600). Hav­ing read my answers to your ques­tions, what appear to be some oth­er notice­able sim­i­lar­i­ties and/or dif­fer­ences?

Small­er? That’s what she said?

Based on your inter­view, my impres­sion of your Welling­ton is that it’s pop­u­lat­ed with free-spir­it­ed hip­pies who spend their time explor­ing the arts, a beau­ti­ful coast­line and writ­ing books about Hob­bits and oth­er myth­i­cal char­ac­ters. Did I get that right?

In com­par­i­son, I’d say that we’re a fam­i­ly friend­ly, small town ver­sion of your Welling­ton with a bit less art and few more hors­es run­ning around.

What does Welling­ton “do well”? That is, what is Welling­ton known for and why do peo­ple want to live there?

Welling­ton, Flori­da does ‘fam­i­lies’ well. It’s the kind of place that you grow up hat­ing (I was born and most­ly raised here), but that you might stick around lat­er in life because you get a fam­i­ly of your own and you real­ize that the town is actu­al­ly built for kids. Good schools, safe neigh­bor­hoods, low crime, plen­ty of ice cream shops for kids and a few good drink­ing holes for their par­ents…

I think our loca­tion is great becuase we’re a short dri­ve to incred­i­ble beach­es, the Ever­glades, nightlife and more.

What activ­i­ty or activ­i­ties are pop­u­lar local­ly?

Unique to Welling­ton is our large eques­tri­an com­mu­ni­ty and a num­ber events which are pret­ty inter­est­ing (even if you don’t care much for “big dumb ani­mals”). Polo is pop­u­lar. In sea­son, polo match­es occur in a few dif­fer­ent pop­u­lar venues includ­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Polo Club and Polo West. Polo is not as snooty as most think. The com­mu­ni­ty is actu­al­ly pret­ty laid back and polo is real­ly a drinking/social sport (for the spec­ta­tors and some of the play­ers).

Eques­tri­an shows and horse jump­ing are big too. the Win­ter Eques­tri­an Fes­ti­val ( — pret­ty good video here) is a big deal local­ly and fea­tures some incred­i­ble horse jump­ing events. To be hon­est, I’m not a big fan of hors­es at all and still attend these events because it’s pret­ty inter­est­ing to see.

Welling­ton is about a 20 minute dri­ve from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Any­thing relat­ed to the ocean is pret­ty pop­u­lar. We fish, surf, boat, dive, sun­tan and try to take full advan­tage of year-round warm weath­er and the ocean. Here are few pho­tos which may help paint this pic­ture.

The Peanut Island Sand­bar — A great local spot to pull up, have a brew and enjoy the weath­er.

Scu­ba Div­ing off Palm Beach

What’s the nightlife scene like? And what’s good to eat and drink there?

Since we’re a pret­ty small town, nightlife is lim­it­ed to a few good places to grab a pint and see live music. If you find your­self strand­ed in Welling­ton, I’d rec­om­mend head­ing east to Clema­tis Street in near­by West Palm Beach. Tweet at @aGuyOnClematis (he’s the local author­i­ty on Clema­tis) for rec­om­men­da­tions.

For food­ies, we’ve got some rockin’ cui­sine in Welling­ton. The high-end polo crowd helps to sup­port some incred­i­ble local restau­rants as well as all the major US restau­rant chains.

If you’re like me though, you’re drink­ing the local­ly-brewed @duesouthbrewing and eat­ing a good burg­er and fries at a local sports bar.

You men­tioned that there’s a lot of polo in your Welling­ton — what oth­er sport­ing activ­i­ties hap­pen there?

Polo and eques­tri­an are def­i­nite­ly our claim to fame. But golf is equal­ly as impor­tant. Young and old alike enjoy year-round great golf­ing con­di­tions on one of lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of cours­es in Welling­ton and around South Flori­da.

The World Adult Kick­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (WAKA) has been expand­ing like crazy here too. There are adult leagues all around. I’m con­vinced that this is the best beer drink­ing sport on  the plan­et. Is kick­ball a sport on your side?

More impor­tant­ly, for some­one who cares very lit­tle about sport — what else is there to do?

Hmm. Grow a fam­i­ly, attend a bar­rage of fam­i­ly-friend­ly events and get old? Seri­ous­ly though, we’re not a cul­tur­al hub at all in my opin­ion. Walk­A­boutWelling­ton is an events-based web­site and we rarely find good art­sy events to pro­mote. I wish it wasn’t the case…

What do Welling­ton, Flori­da locals also call them­selves?

Some of us call our­selves, “Wellies.” To be hon­est, I think Welling­to­ni­ans has a bit more class. I may copy that on this side if you don’t mind.

Can you teach us some local slang?

I wish we had some to teach.

Is there a secret hand­shake that only locals know about?

I’d say that the hand­shake of secre­tive back­room busi­ness deals, greed, decep­tion and cor­rup­tion is one that is known local­ly, although prob­a­bly not unique to Welling­ton, FL.

But since I don’t want to get polit­i­cal in this post, I think that the Rock­et Fist Bump is mak­ing head­way local­ly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_RTy-ajgd0

Have you ever tried this one? It’s a lot of fun at par­ties espe­cial­ly when you don’t decid­ed ahead of time who is going to be the rock­et and who the flame!

If I could only have one meal and one drink while in Welling­ton, what should they be?

I think that the meal and drink would be a fish taco and milk­shake from our Food Truck Inva­sion. Food trucks have become all-the-rage in Flori­da and real­ly through­out the USA. Food Truck Inva­sion is basi­cal­ly a group of about 20–30 food trucks which trav­el togeth­er and throw a week­ly par­ty in our area. The set up at the Welling­ton Amphithe­ater on Thurs­day nights and locals come out and eat glo­ri­fied car­ni­val food.

I’d say this is the one meal to expe­ri­ence because the food is great (con­sid­er­ing the fact that it comes from a truck) and more impor­tant­ly, the locals all come out to this. Our local Food Truck Inva­sion is great for meet­ing-up with friends, peo­ple watch­ing and check­ing our local live music.

You’ve got Vanil­la Ice and Bill Gates liv­ing in Welling­ton? Do you think they hang out togeth­er? Who else might we run into if we came to vis­it?

Yep, Vanil­la Ice has lived here for years and Bill just bough a house  a cou­ple months ago, although he has been com­ing here year­ly for eques­tri­an events for a while now.

I’m not sure if they hang out. If they do though, here’s how I imag­ine the con­ver­sa­tions go:

Vanil­la Ice: Hey Bill, I like what you would did with that Microsoft com­pa­ny of yours. And I like how you donate all that mon­ey to char­i­ty. You’re a Nin­ja!

Bill Gates: Thanks! The diver­si­ty of your career with music, act­ing, home remod­el­ing, etc is inspir­ing. You’ve proven time and time again that you can do any­thing you put your mind to.

Vanil­la Ice: Thanks. Smoke a doo­bie?

Bill Gates: Sure, but don’t tell my wife.

10 min­utes pass…

Vanil­la Ice: You hun­gry?

Bill Gates: Yep, let’s eat.

Anoth­er notable local is my boy “The Boss” Bruce Spring­steen. Rumor has it that he goes to my gym but I can’t con­firm that.

Com­ing from lib­er­al cir­cles here, a lot of peo­ple in Welling­ton here might have per­cep­tions that Flori­da is kin­da racist and home to some real­ly weird laws. Do we have it wrong?

Hmm, I didn’t real­ize that we had any weird laws so I looked into this. I’m not sure if I’d agree with racist but if you come to Flori­da and have sex with a Por­cu­pine or fart in pub­lic, it turns out that Jon­ny Law (that’s what we call the police) may give you a cita­tion.

In all seri­ous­ness, Flori­da is pret­ty diverse and includes extreme­ly lib­er­al and extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive pock­ets. In South Flori­da, we tend to be more lib­er­al. Cen­tral and North Flori­da are def­i­nite­ly more con­ser­v­a­tive.

We don’t now and prob­a­bly won’t any­time soon lead the coun­try in paving-the-road to equal­i­ty, log­ic or what­ev­er you want to call it. Since most of the rest of the USA comes here to die (err, retire), our leg­is­la­tion tends to favor con­ser­v­a­tive, “old school” think­ing.

Racism exists every­where and with­in every race, but I don’t feel we’re much dif­fer­ent than aver­age in the USA.

If you had to pick one pho­to which cap­tures the essence of your Welling­ton, which would it be?

This was a tough one. I chose this image because it rep­re­sents Welling­ton as a cre­at, close-knit com­mu­ni­ty com­mit­ted to our fam­i­lies. This pho­to is tak­en from a local Amphithe­ater where they reg­u­lar­ly host per­for­mances, pub­lic movie nights, fes­ti­vals, etc. This­pho­to was tak­en at a local tal­ent search event.

 (Here’s the orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tion)

Any­thing else you want to add?

Thanks for the oppor­tu­ni­ty and for shar­ing your Welling­ton. I hope to pay a vis­it some­day. Cheers!