My recent vacation took some organizing but luckily over 15 years of marriage I have trained my wife that I am a neurotic traveler in some respects and packing early (and often) keeps me happy. I also had to prepare a string of essays for the blog before I left. I seemed to be photographing and writing all the damned time when I could snatch a moment, and of this list of 18 ready-to-publish essays only three were reprints. I chose three essays to remind myself what I was writing about in 2007, essays that I thought still had something to say that I didn't want to redo. This was my stored entries page of my blog before I left for Italy:
This very essay I photographed and wrote on June 16th for publication today, July 5th... I love Blogger's automatic publication function!.
This is summer time and the clouds are building like anvils all over the Keys every beautiful sunny afternoon:
The weather service said May was wetter than usual and it seems like we've had some heavy rain in June. So naturally the weather people's pronouncements mean the water suppliers now feel it's okay to waste more water on South Florida ornamental gardens and water restrictions have been eased. i doubt the South Florida Aquifer will thank them..
My own back yard has been looking quite luscious with all the rain. 
The salt ponds to the west of my house have filled up with rain water, transforming them from muddy stretches between mangroves into large reflective ponds. 
Here is Niles Channel Bridge in the distance:
Of course all this fresh water falling everywhere means it's mosquito season again. And even I who am not susceptible to their jaws find myself getting stung if I stand still for ten seconds under the house. Mosquito Vector Control comes by all the time spraying bacillus thuringensis up and down the streets but it's an eternal battle against nature.
The salt ponds to the west of my house have filled up with rain water, transforming them from muddy stretches between mangroves into large reflective ponds. Here is Niles Channel Bridge in the distance:Of course all this fresh water falling everywhere means it's mosquito season again. And even I who am not susceptible to their jaws find myself getting stung if I stand still for ten seconds under the house. Mosquito Vector Control comes by all the time spraying bacillus thuringensis up and down the streets but it's an eternal battle against nature..
I don't know if it's because of the bugs or despite them but there seem to be tons of people out and about enjoying the Keys magical beauty. Big Pine Key was packed with cars and looked more like snowbird season than summer:
I did get to spot a couple of motorcycles, a Road King for Alan Madding:
And some dude out enjoying himself while my Bonneville was still in the shop waiting for handlebars:
I was enjoying the air conditioning in my nice Nissan, thanks for asking.
I did get to spot a couple of motorcycles, a Road King for Alan Madding:And some dude out enjoying himself while my Bonneville was still in the shop waiting for handlebars:I was enjoying the air conditioning in my nice Nissan, thanks for asking..
Travel by boat is wonderful this time of year:
All that tropical waterfront keeps attracting visitors who drive along and peer out of their windows pointing at stuff I see every day; a house on stilts:
Mangroves and water:
Me? I look out for brightly colored flowers even if I can't name them:
And i know this is summer if my neighbors have spare coconuts as do I. This homeowner has started the cull already in preparation for hurricane season:
And over us all we see the very un-tropical mourning doves flittering around enjoying the weather while cooing wildly:
The glories of summer in the suburban fastness of the Lower Keys.
All that tropical waterfront keeps attracting visitors who drive along and peer out of their windows pointing at stuff I see every day; a house on stilts:Mangroves and water:Me? I look out for brightly colored flowers even if I can't name them:And i know this is summer if my neighbors have spare coconuts as do I. This homeowner has started the cull already in preparation for hurricane season:And over us all we see the very un-tropical mourning doves flittering around enjoying the weather while cooing wildly:The glories of summer in the suburban fastness of the Lower Keys.
So when the Uncle from America shows up at my sister's grandchild's third birthday, fresh off the plane he has to bring some sort of a gift. In Flavio's rugged rural environment I thought a large Tonka toy might do the trick:
The next day my brother-in-law went for a walk with me through the woods and up the hillside that overlooks their farmhouse. Vincenzo has been in love with my sister since they were fifteen and even now 47 years later they spend a large part of every day together. Theirs isn't an outwardly emotive relationship, in defiance of that other stereotype that puts Italian's hearts on their sleeves and when he and I are together we don't talk about our feelings. But it made me glad he wanted to share his mountain fastness with me. We used to come up here with my sisters on horseback forty years ago:
Umbria is the land of pork and grilling and mushrooms and truffles (which I love, but my sister the Phillistine, can't stand) and it's been a wet Spring so without even looking we stumbled across what turned out to be toadstools. If in doubt press the fleshy underside of the cap with your thumb:
If it turns black throw it away (or feed it to your enemy, if you have one). Mushrooms are risky eating but I'm pleased to say I did find the only edible fungus on our walk. I enjoyed ribbing Vincenzo endlessly that the townie in the family found the 'shroom. 
This is the only picture I have of Giovanni at the age I remember when our lives were the halcyon days of moped riding and Tom Sawyer adventures during the summer holidays. When I go to visit him nowadays I know I am an honored guest and they put on an effort for me. The fact that his wife is an excellent cook doesn't hurt:
My wife dreams of meals at Rossana's diner and were you to read my brief e-mails home during my time away they look like menu cards for the Italian traveler. Pork medallions, preceded by home made gnocchi (potato dumplings), preceded in turn by cheese and salami.
Their daughter may look glum in the picture but Eleonora is fifteen and that's an age when life tends to look critical from all aspects. Home made gnocchi from their housekeeper's expert hands make no difference to her. Especially when the honored guest is pointing a camera all the time...
On an afternoon ride we stopped off to visit his parents at their summer home and his elderly mother whipped up an enormous impromptu spread that Giovanni tucked in to without any apparent surprise. We had cured ham (prosciutto) a vegetable omelette (frittata)followed by chicken breasts sauteed with sausage rounds and sage, served with rice stuffed tomatoes. 
Not surprisingly Giovanni's 22 year old son prefers to stay with his indulgent grandparents while he "studies" for his law exam, though it is quite surprising he isn't gaining much weight during his retreat in the country. We gathered informally in the kitchen as they rate me a family member:
Giovanni's eighty three year old father got on with the important, manly work:
It was a cool damp June night in the mountains and faced with a forty minute moonlit ride back to the city we huddled round the fire, digesting our dinner, which wrapped up with slices of cake and Belgian liqueur-filled chocolates.
When Giovanni and I took off for a tour of the Alpi Apuane, a ring of mountains that separate northern Tuscany from the Po River Valley,an important part of the ride were the good eats. Breakfast in Italy is a heathen meal taken mid morning and usually consisting of sweet cakes and a coffee, all gulped down while standing up at the counter:
Working nights like I do, I don't eat breakfast much anymore, but frankly I like a nice plate of eggs and potatoes and meat for breakfast, washed down with several cups of weak American coffee ("brodo" Giovanni calls it contemptuously-"broth." He likes Starbucks' espresso as he thinks it's not bad and reliably drinkable). Eating pastry and sucking down an ounce of coffee isn't a meal in my opinion. This is though:
Truffle pasta...
...pork chops in a balsamic vinegar sauce (this was in the province of Modena, home of balsamic vinegar) with slivers of Parmesan cheese on top to offset the sweet sauce. Giovanni always orders fries for a vegetable ("My wife won't cook them for me!" he laments), and we washed this lot down with a slightly fizzy Lambrusco red wine (good for the heart). Finished off with a slice of meringue in a hot chocolate sauce:
I took the remainder of the Lambrusco to the sidewalk table and finished it off while Giovanni lit up his customary cancer stick as we watched the evening passeggiata, the stroll down the main drag of Pievepelago, the small mountain town we had washed up in. These were the local lads eating ice cream and waiting for the passing talent of which there wasn't much (else I'd have photographed it). A reminder of our youth, we said as we reminisced about our childhood. 
It didn't rain that day which was icing on the meringue, as it were. It rained the next day though, in a down pour that wouldn't have looked out of place in Key West in the summer:
We had a few miles to ride to the Passo del Muraglione when we spotted Da Sergio, a fine terraced restaurant overlooking the main road through the Tuscan village of Dicomano. Naturally Sergio, not being raised in the American tradition of the customer always being right, declined to seat us outdoors. "Then everyone will want to sit out and it will be a mess when it starts to rain!" he lamented. We laughed to ourselves at his pig headedness, laughter that turned to consternation when the heavens opened up as we sat snug indoors savoring another fifty dollar lunch:
We shared a plate of tortelloni, what an American might call ravioli, pasta that was so undercooked, by North American standards, it was almost crunchy, filled with creamy mashed potatoes, a first for me. We then sucked down some red wine while waiting for the grilled pork kebabs (spiedini) to appear. I ordered mine with Navy beans while Giovanni had the inevitable, and very good, roast potatoes. The rain did not let up:
The indoor grill warmed the entire room that was rapidly filling with Saturday lunchtime locals:
"Merda!"we shrugged and ordered a dessert each, a ricotta cheesecake for me, and a sweet pine nut cake for Giovanni. He has a very sweet tooth and a backhoe-like capacity to woof his food that outstrips even my capacity for fast eating, which I developed in English boarding schools:
I was reading last month's Vanity Fair on the plane and there was an interview with Johnny Depp who bought Hall's Pond Cay in the Exumas, in the Bahamas, a place I visited by sail boat before he put it out of reach of ordinary mortals. In the article the author described the food served by Depp's chef, a feast he said of tacos, guacamole, cheese steak sandwiches and other foods that one can only describe as veering towards the fast food end of the scale. I am no gourmand, but it did occur to me that were I ever to have a personal chef, these are the foods, pictured on this page, that I would order, and grow old and lazy on, day after day. That, and espresso and conversation:
As it was we faced a 200 mile ride home in the pouring rain, cold and damp with me screaming out for large cups of warming American "broth-coffee" while Giovanni lamented his freezing wet feet in what was almost July, in formerly-sunny-Italy. I had on every scrap of clothing I possessed:
These are the adventures we grow old on, not all that frou-frou eating and drinking and sitting around reminiscing. We are men after all, not gourmet foodies.
The weather was less than perfect, and I found myself riding in 
173 horsepower, a top speed far above the measly 125mph (200km/h) I managed to wring out of it on the freeway and barely any weather protection at all from it's magnificent bodywork. Cycle magazine in the United States rated this a top contender for sports/tourer above all other such bikes but I think they are crazy, because this is a sports motorcycle that is competing with all the junior league crotch rockets the Japanese produce to satisfy the speed demons who are much younger (and impecunious) than we old men.
This is a shaft driven four cylinder speed machine that costs close to $20,000 in the US and thus goes for about half as much again as a comparable Japanese speed machine. It's also comfortable enough if you are able to bend in the middle and hoick your feet up onto the pegs. Seen here on Monte 
The saddle bags are of the expanding hard shell BMW type, very convenient but at a 
On the freeway it is the most 
We only hit the freeway when we had to, as we were intent on spending a few days riding the mountain passes of northern Tuscany, the 
We stopped frequently so we could recharge with Giovanni's favorite fuel, what you would call espresso and what he would call 
Stir in a spoonful of sugar and swallow the lot in one quick go. Then take a seat, because drinking coffee at the bar standing up is cheaper (80 Euro cents, about a buck twenty in real money) than sitting down. While sitting and enjoying the view he would smoke, because he is a 
"I'm terribly sorry," he'd say to the dozens of callers," I'm on vacation for just a few days..." And then we'd get back on and take off for a few more hairpins and forests and bold panoramas:
The K1200S is an amazing machine, fully 
This photo was a beech forest on the upper slopes of Monte 
It always takes me a few days to get back in the swing of riding in Italy. On the plane back I listened to two Americans in the row behind me compare notes on this most fascinating and alien of cultures. They talked about the traffic and how scared they'd be of driving in it, but even though it looks chaotic the rules are simple enough.
Look forwards, not backwards, and let following traffic take care of itself. Drive with confidence and let people know your intentions. Of course this is tough if you are caught in a free flowing flood of cars and haven't a clue where you are going....
So would you take a left or go straight here? Quick- decide!
I confess that when I took off by myself I got lost a few times diving into the wrong overpass or choosing the wrong tunnel to get out of the 
But 
Giovanni's R1200GT offers an upright riding position and lots of weather protection. We swapped bikes briefly on the freeway but he couldn't take the hunched riding position. This is how he likes to ride: 
I would never buy a K1200S, as it is too specialised for me,but renting one for ten days is pure joy, in my opinion, in those mountain roads:
Eisenhower Drive is a short street much shorter than the thoroughfare named for that other President from the same era. However Harry Truman was a frequent visitor to key west and Ike wasn't, so perhaps that's how it should be. Eisenhower runs between Truman Avenue to the south and Palm Avenue to the north and is sandwiched between the waters of Garrison Bight and the area known as The Meadows. The corner of Truman and Eisenhower is marked by the Sub Tropic Dive Shop and it's delightful mural:
Even the office got into the act with sea creatures appearing to float around inside, adding to the mural's effect:
I snagged another couple of pictures of the apartment building which i think is Pelican landing or some such name: 
Eisenhower has few street lights so the darkness gives it a slightly dissolute, mysterious air:
I set this picture up with thoughts of Orson Welles' Third Man coming to mind, though the scrubby bushes lining Eisenhower at this point do a poor job of replicating post World War Two Vienna...and I don't think I look either mysterious or threatening in as much as I am visible at all under the street light. I guess it was actually pretty dark out there!
I caught sight of a few plants used in landscaping that apparently warrants burning electricity all night:
Other annoyances include cruise ships, that tower over downtown, but bring in millions of dollars to the city; lots of conflicting ideals there! 
And what we in the Police Department call "local subjects." 
This one was picking his scabs on the wall at the Pez Garden, the local name for the Sculpture Garden, which features the sculpted heads of notable dead Conchs. 
Architecturally one wonders why the old Strand Theater, 527 Duval, had to become a mere facade housing a modern, 24-hour, drugstore.
But parts of Key west can be viewed through a camera lens to resemble New Orleans, in all its wrought iron glory. 
Getting around all this culture can be chaotic, wise visitors and residents use two wheels, pedalled or powered and the city offers lots of dedicated parking. Some people brave downtown with large clunky heffalumps, others with diminutive putt-putts:
Duval Street never looks as alluring in my pictures as it does in real life. The street bustles with pedestrians and cruising cars, including electric rentals,
Narrow lanes like Appelrouth offer shade and a custom leather store to make your cod piece to measure. Leathermaster may just be what you are looking for, but for me it used to be Martin's German Restaurant until it moved to fancy digs on Duval.
Even major thoroughfares like Whitehead Street can get jammed
and it takes Key West's finest, including my buddy Monica, to help keep things flowing.
But the smartest shoppers of all stay on foot and keep close to the action. I have never understood the fascination of plastic mass produced "souvenirs."
These folks are a common sight, poring over a street map, though these Germans attracted my camera 
with their pooch poured into his backpack on an 80 degree December afternoon. Then there is more fancy architecture to sample
followed by a crumbling storefront on Fitzpatrick. Would you buy your souvenir jewelry at this decrepit wreck?
Lots of people love the bars like Hogs Breath, which offer al fresco drinking and lots of toasted new best friends. They aren't the sort of friends to build new relationships on, generally.
For some unhappy tourists, motorcycle parking spaces aren't enough and a short attention span can garner a $25 fine.
The city thanks you, as the budget is tenuous these days. A last look down Duval, 
a quick run by Key West Bight Waterfront and the Key Lime Christmas Tree with the square rigger masts in the background. 
Very festive! Then on to my favorite neighborhood, The Meadows, quiet leafy streets, like Albury Street,
that look like Old Town but aren't, and across Truman back to the office and a passing salute from Sgt Blasberg who is in charge of our Motor Division. He wished me Happy Holidays, as one does, but called me his friend and I felt honored. Frank is a cool dude, a devoted father and someone who has served overseas and he is thoroughly nice.
And there ends my quick lunch break around My Town. It was fun. I'll have to do it again some time. 
The Tropic Cinema is on the four hundred block of Eaton Street, between Whitehead and Duval, more or less equidistant from St Paul's Cathedral and the main Post Office, symbolic perhaps of the Art house theater's role part way between commercial enterprise and spiritual retreat.
The theater is a not-for-profit organization founded at the end of the last century to bring classic movies to Key West. It started out using borrowed space in art galleries and the splendid San Carlos theater whose Cuban managers seemed to be rather bemused sometimes by the films they showed in their baroque building. I loved going to the movies at the San Carlos, they breathed life into the former Cuban consulate on Duval Street, at least for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night shows of the nascent Key West Film Society. 
The society got a 35-year lease on the Eaton street property and started building a modern three screen theater for $1.2 million dollars in 2003. Jean Carper an anti-aging nutrition author has apparently made a fortune peddling her diet advice and put up $200,000 of the cash and got to name the main screening room in honor of her late mother:
Natella Carper had a penchant for the flickers apparently and now she has her name in red neon like a marquee. But the Tropic is growing despite the parlous financial times we live in and there are plans to open a fourth, 48 seat screening room as an addition to the current theater:
The Tropic is a membership organization and members get discount rates ($6 versus $9 to see a movie) and various invitations to special events. My wife and I have been members since early on but we decided a while back to upgrade our membership to $600 a year which gives us both free access to the movies year round. I guess the idea that we might watch a movie a week for an entire year seems a lot and it probably is, but the real idea is to support the society.
We've always viewed the Tropic not only as a source of decent quality films but as a downtown refuge, a place to hangout in, and that got difficult over the past year when the Board hired staff members who viewed the Tropic as purely a business. We dropped out. New management, a more focused Board and we are back and happy to be in the theater again. Lori a dear friend has been promoted to manager and she has restored the theater to a convivial place to gather:
The theater boasts lots of movie memorabilia in the lobby, which these days is a bit truncated by the new screening room construction:
The society offers the usual lines of clothing...
...DVDs
They also show DVDs in the lobby to keep up the ambiance:
And the place is ankle deep in posters and the like:
They have left up one sign from the Commissars of the Ancien Regime, but it's not as draconian as it might first appear. The Regal in Searstown used to have a policy of not allowing bags, to avoid bombs going off in the theater, they said, but the tropic is a different kind of theater:
I like to spend money at the concession stand, for two reasons. One is I am supporting my preferred cultural outlet and the other is that they have an astonishing variety of food, with candies priced at a buck and a medium soda for just three dollars, so it's no great hardship to spend a little money here.
Zabar's Coffee is, I am reliably informed, a well know coffee in New York, and i like it well enough. Some times one needs something a little stronger at the movies:
New Yorkers have their coffee at the Tropic, Mid-Westerners get their beef:
The rest of us get dollar Snickers and Key Lime Pie on a stick for a few dollars more:
Not forgetting popcorn for all:
And now dogs are allowed back into the Tropic. The problem of dog ownership and going to the movies can get onerous in South Florida. It's hard to find a cool spot to park the car, cool enough to leave a dog inside in the summer if you live out of town. Plus it tends to rain without warning and leaving the windows open in summer guarantees a soaked interior. Much better to be able to bring the dog with you to the movies:
From the early days of the film society with Michael Shields, the future has always been one of making enough money to keep going and building on what he started the Tropic seems to be doing well. There are dozens of creative ways to raise money and named plaques are everywhere in the theater. I'd have happily paid $250 to get my name here had I thought of it and had my wife not thought me mad to want to stick my name above a urinal:
there are theater seats still available for plaques I believe. Management is also getting to show more mainstream films, movies that draw in patrons not devoted to movies with subtitles. The new Star Trek movie showed at the Tropic and the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard religious thriller Angels and Demons is also getting an airing at the Tropic.
Unlike the Regal this is an adult theater where using cell phones and talking in the movies really is frowned on. All that and a glass of wine too.
A great place to hang out. I'm glad the Tropic is back and going from strength to strength. Their website is in my Web Links list.
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