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!