Throwin’ Shade: Orlando Edition

Now that the season has come to an end for the Orlando City Lions, we as fans have had some time to reflect on the year that was. The ups, the downs, and all the fun we had throwing shade at cities across North America in the buildup to the matches we'll fondly remember from this inaugural MLS campaign, leaving a rather obvious question for us to ask ourselves.

Just who the hell do we think we are, anyway?

Sure, it's fun to jab at San Jose's replica light tower attraction, until you remember the $1.53 million we, as a city, flushed down the toilet to make the Lake Underhill bridge look like a suspension bridge. Providing no purpose whatsoever, it actually makes the bridge look ridiculous, like putting a V6 engine in an army tank — you can instantly tell there's no functionality whatsoever.

Right, those cables are keeping that bridge from collapsing.

I mean sure, we can make fun of the Sonics bolting Seattle for Oklahoma City all we want, but let’s not forget our Orlando Magic ranked 23rd in the NBA in average attendance last season. The Seattle Sounders, in fact, tripled the average attendance that the Magic reel in.

And even though the New Jersey Devils are the only professional sports team willing to call New Jersey home since the Red Bulls dropped the N.J. part of their name, at least they have an NHL team. We can’t even get 6,000 people to show up for our minor league Toronto affiliate, the Orlando Solar Bears. (Seriously, here’s the schedule. Finish reading this, click the X, and get yourself to a game.)

Kansas City may have some seriously overrated barbecue, and New York’s pizza is a greasy, chewy excuse for food, but at least they have something to seriously overrate. What’s Orlando’s specialty? Sure, we’ve got the Korean BBQ Taco Box — which, by the way, is incredible — but a food truck hardly stands up to a culture of cuisine.

There’s also the laughable existence of Gatorland, a themed zoo in south Orlando where you can observe alligators. Know where else you can observe alligators? Everywhere. This is Florida, folks. Lake Jesup, no more than 45 minutes away from Gatorland, has over 400 reptiles per mile of shoreline.

I guess it can’t be much of a surprise when you realize we ranked 46th in intelligence among the country’s 50 states, according to a recent study. Of course, it’s not all bad. We may be dumb, but at least we don’t let our stadium catch on fire.

We did, however, let this guy exist long enough to get famous. For that, above all else, we should be ashamed.