Houseboat Row

Once upon a time, long long ago there was a street in Key West called Houseboat Row, and it was called that because people lived in houseboats parked along the seawall. And there are photos on the Internet to prove it:They were a colorful lot the residents of the two dozen floating homes tied up to the seawall. Indeed there is a story that one of the homes was a hang out for biker gangsters in the 1960s which sounds terribly Hunter S Thompson, but as time went by the residents of Houseboat Row were pretty much your average working class Key West people. Which was reason enough to get rid of them. The last of the house boats was hauled away in 2002 and all that's left now is an empty seawall:Well its not quite empty, people still defy the city and tie up their dinghies to the seawall,in the mangroves:As well as their bicycles apparently:You've got to have wheels if you are going to get into town, and bicycles mopeds and even motorcycles can be seen from time to time parked along the roadway waiting for their owners to come to shore.

The city decided the boats needed to be removed in the early 1990's and that turned into a major city-wide brawl with everyone weighing in with an opinion. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the politics (and opinions) of the Southernmost City will know that one side supported the boat owners as an integral part of the funky fabric of the city (a citywide referendum opposed moving the boats) while the forces of law order and development needed to see the boats moved. Hurricane Georges in 1998 had a go and some of the houseboats bought the farm but Houseboat Row only disappeared finally when the great State of Florida got a court order protecting the precious waters of the sovereign bay bottom. The waters look pretty good today and let no one say the trash is deposited by house boaters this close to the sidewalk:One can still see the steps leading down to the water:Over the protests of the people, and with assurances from local property owner Ed Knight that he wasn't planning on developing the land he owned in the area the houseboats were towed away to new homes in Garrison Bight Marina. I remember seeing the forlorn houseboats being towed down Hawk Channel looking like dispossessed blocks of flats floating away on the tide. And boats at anchor out in the channel:
Meanwhile onshore life goes on, and amazing to relate those inland acres did end up getting built on. Right after the ugly blight of polluting wrecked houseboats was cleaned up, a bunch of multi-million dollar condos sprouted like mushrooms across the street:A cynic might argue that the houseboats were swept away to make way for the high end developments but that's not the way the history was written about Houseboat Row. I don't know if the people using the bike path or the facilities at the Seaside Condos know or care about this place's colorful past or their need for condos that ended it:

Its just one of those things. Change happens and people come and others go to make way for them and so the wheel goes round. People are still managing to hang in and live on their boats in Cow Key Channel. When the west wind blows the planes come in to land over the heads of the boaters, the condo dwellers, the cyclists and the salt ponds.Nothing stays the same, and every time I ride by on South Roosevelt I miss the mail boxes and planters strung along the sidewalk, but there it is. Modern Key West is better than no Key West at all.