Back in January, after 20 years of planning n plotting I bought a house in a very quiet area almost in the center of Lake City.
You ask why Lake City? Because Lake City is the center of Florida cave diving. You can't drive 10 miles out of town in any direction without passing at least 3 diveable caves. Within a 50mile radius there are probably a hundred divable caves, and believe it or not Lake City offers electricity, garbage pickup, restaurants, bars, a library, 3 different gun stores, n a shooting range. The movie theater has 8 cinemas offering senior citizen discounts, Publix has 3 persons making fresh sushi which is good, unfortunatly the taste of Publix's fresh veggies and fruit leaves room for improvement. The couple of state liquor stores have a good assortment of cheap and bar brand booze, but if your searching for a specific cask strength Isla single malt whisky, or a Pappy van Winkle bourbon you're not going to find it in a liquor store near Lake City.
City water has a touch too much chlorine in it but is a nice soft water, water from wells is pretty good but is harder water.
As far as shopping goes, Lake City is not 5th Ave Manhattan but you can get almost everything there.
People are open and friendly, but I haven't gotten around to talking politics with the locals, I'm sure that some of them wouldn't have voted for Adolf Hitler because he was a National Socialist, others might have voted for Gus Hall/Angela Davis years ago, but almost all of them will stop and offer to help when your car is broken down alongside the road.
Michael