I first published this essay in March, by request, and I have decided to post it again in light of widespread notice that the Secret Garden my be forced to close soon. Apparently the owner, who has kept it going largely with her own money and all her time, wants to hand over responsibility to a not-for-profit, (The Mana Project) to keep the place open, as she goes into well deserved retirement, but there is a little matter of a $160,000 shortfall and the appeal has gone out for donations. Google "Nancy Forrester's Secret Garden" and for more information, though I have to confess it's not laid out very clearly on their website, in my opinion. They need to raise the money before October or the garden may close. Alternatively just enjoy these pictures a second time around!
Key West is not a town one can keep a secret in very easily, and by now I would venture a guess that just about everyone and her brother knows there's a profusion of greenery open to public inspection in the very heart of the city.
Free School Lane is not such a weird a name for an alley in a city that boasts innumerable little paths and tracks all over town, Nassau, Love, Gruntbone, Poorhouse, to name but a few. I've thought about photographing them for an essay but it's overwhelming thinking about how many little lanes there are all over the city. A reader of this blog wanted to know what is happening with Nancy Forrester's Secret Garden, and after my brief inspection yesterday I can report, not a lot.
Things are growing, the collection of parrots is extremely loud in their cages, the sunlight is still quite dappled on the huge tree trunks and the enormous dinner plates of green leaves.
Free School Lane lies off Simonton Street, the artery that parallels infamous Duval Street. There are fewer shops on Simonton, and there is more shade. Fewer traffic lights than Duval and much less traffic making it easier to get from Simonton beach to the north to United street to the south if one needs to get across old town in a hurry.
Free School Lane is marked on the cement street light post, halfway between Southard and Fleming Streets, which are in turn the major old town arteries leading onto and off Duval Street. 
And there is ample parking...designated for motorcycles and scooters, inclusing Bonnevilles. 
The Secret Garden is a desireable commodity just at the moment, a refreshment tucked away and available for those that want to stay within walking distance of the bars of Duval, Key West's other refreshment.
What strikes me about places like this is, aside from the care lavished on the plants that I, a failed botanist with a memory like a sieve, could not hope to name, is how much I value these small corners of extravagant exuberance.
Living in the Keys I take no space for granted, I cannot allow myself to overlook any object of interest.Not only is there too little land to do that, everything in a market as overpriced as this, is by its very nature transient. 
A guesthouse next door to the garden, a modest white wood home was for sale in the paper for one point three million dollars on my visit to the garden in March of this year, when I originally published this essay.
Nancy Forrester is growing older like the rest of us; how long will it last, this privilege of walking these downtown paths surrounded by greenery and nothing else? Each visit is, in addition to refreshment, a small statement of defiance against the forces of change, of "improvement," of destruction in the name of maximum return on investment.
Key West is not a town one can keep a secret in very easily, and by now I would venture a guess that just about everyone and her brother knows there's a profusion of greenery open to public inspection in the very heart of the city.Free School Lane is not such a weird a name for an alley in a city that boasts innumerable little paths and tracks all over town, Nassau, Love, Gruntbone, Poorhouse, to name but a few. I've thought about photographing them for an essay but it's overwhelming thinking about how many little lanes there are all over the city. A reader of this blog wanted to know what is happening with Nancy Forrester's Secret Garden, and after my brief inspection yesterday I can report, not a lot.Things are growing, the collection of parrots is extremely loud in their cages, the sunlight is still quite dappled on the huge tree trunks and the enormous dinner plates of green leaves. Free School Lane lies off Simonton Street, the artery that parallels infamous Duval Street. There are fewer shops on Simonton, and there is more shade. Fewer traffic lights than Duval and much less traffic making it easier to get from Simonton beach to the north to United street to the south if one needs to get across old town in a hurry. Free School Lane is marked on the cement street light post, halfway between Southard and Fleming Streets, which are in turn the major old town arteries leading onto and off Duval Street. And there is ample parking...designated for motorcycles and scooters, inclusing Bonnevilles. The Secret Garden is a desireable commodity just at the moment, a refreshment tucked away and available for those that want to stay within walking distance of the bars of Duval, Key West's other refreshment.What strikes me about places like this is, aside from the care lavished on the plants that I, a failed botanist with a memory like a sieve, could not hope to name, is how much I value these small corners of extravagant exuberance. Living in the Keys I take no space for granted, I cannot allow myself to overlook any object of interest.Not only is there too little land to do that, everything in a market as overpriced as this, is by its very nature transient. A guesthouse next door to the garden, a modest white wood home was for sale in the paper for one point three million dollars on my visit to the garden in March of this year, when I originally published this essay.Nancy Forrester is growing older like the rest of us; how long will it last, this privilege of walking these downtown paths surrounded by greenery and nothing else? Each visit is, in addition to refreshment, a small statement of defiance against the forces of change, of "improvement," of destruction in the name of maximum return on investment. $10, charged on the rather old fashioned "honor system" seems a small price to pay to wander in peace for a while. Two loud beers not three blocks away. Your choice, for now.
Gas prices have dropped a few cents around here from $4.30 to just under four dollars for a gallon of regular, yet the cost of gas remains an issue of course, and I live at Mile Marker 27 and my job is at Mile Marker 2 so my commute is a fifty mile round trip, which at 43 miles per gallon equals what it equals. As I'm a modern man with too much time on my hands I get to thinking about what if... we, because my wife works at Mile Marker 5, tried commuting by Key West Transit? So, as an experiment yesterday afternoon I rode the Marathon to Key West shuttle, to go into town to meet my wife at her work. It's a long walk to the bus stop on the highway, three quarters of a mile up my street from my house and even with the pleasant ocean breeze its still 95 degrees out on the asphalt:
There are a few stops along the way with benches and shelters and solar equipped illuminated advertising, but mostly the stops are poles along the highway. The ride to Stock Island's College Road took about 40 minutes, ten minutes longer than a ride on my Bonneville might have taken, and I spent the time finishing Carl Hiassen's novel Flush, set in the Keys and a fun read:
The driver was a barrel of laughs, actually he just drove like the silent connsumate professional he was, though I liked his Keys look, of the understated fishing guide school of dress:
I pulled the pinger after we passed the dump on College road and the bus came to a creaking halt:
From there it was a short walk past sunset marina to the Sheriff's Administration and Jail complex where my wife works as the Juvenile Jail teacher. This stop is also the pick up point for people who live at the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (K.O.T.S) which offer air conditioned dormitories showers lockers and an address for the working poor of the area. Anyone is welcomed and not everyone actually rides the bus to work. Some hang out and wait for the Safe Zone, as it is also known, to re-open in the evening:
Here's where I ended my trip, my book finished, cool refreshed and ready to help my wife move her boxes around her office. A highly satisfactory journey with a tiny carbon footprint, I think.
I usually leave the office a few minutes before six, and the fresh warm air outside the frigid Police Station is a pleasant contrast, however by the time I've stowed my stuff on the motorcycle and I'm rolling up North Roosevelt Boulevard I have adapted to the outside temperature, hovering around 80 degrees, and it starts to feel on the cool side of pleasant, even in July. By the time I'm on Big Coppitt Key at Mile Marker Ten the night sky is starting to show signs of sunlight and the houses on the eastern shore of the island are starting to appear out of the gloom:
Across Shark Channel the sunrise is doing its thing, clearly visible from the boat ramp where I parked:
Being so close to the water puts me in mind of the times when we lived on a sailboat and woke up in the morning on board with that cool damp breeze blowing through the cabin.
Standing at the boat ramp the waves, thrown up by the breeze splashed against the cement wall sounding just like waves hitting the hull of the boat. Sometimes I get a hankering to be back on the water.
Back on land commuters are starting to increase in the direction of Key West after six in the morning. Most are smart enough to have their lights on, some think they are visible in the half light as they rush headlong to work without lights:
I took photographs on two recent mornings, one while riding the Bonneville:
Then I found a nail in the rear tire, so while I waited to see if the tire would go flat (not so far!) I borrowed the wife's Vespa, which is always an alternative blast on two wheels. I may have sold the GTS 250 but I still enjoy a romp with her 150cc:
I parked the ET4 on the bicycle path that winds along the Saddlebunch Keys to take the time to play with a few cloud formations in the dawn's early light:
While I am not as susceptible to mosquitoes as many people, eventually they manage to annoy me enough to force me to move along. This is the time of year when they are out in abundance and though I don't get welts or rashes from their bites they do manage to annoy me by hovering all over my face. Which is another way of saying it was time to go home to bed:
Compared to the larger cities a block may not seem like much but in Key West it's plenty to be going on with. Bayview Park aspires to the classical roots of public spaces designed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, formality, high minded statuary and nobility of purpose are the watchwords like this formal entryway across from the Police Station: 
In Bayview Park we find a massive stone monument, a block of immutable rock, commemorating the sacrifice made by New Yorkers preserving the Southernmost City for the Union in 1862, and at the opposite corner Jose Marti, Cuba's revolutionary hero is celebrated in marble in a style typical of 19th century statuary.
And at the opposite corner of the park a Czech artist Emil Adamec has erected two statues, a male and female torso expressing he says a gateway between Havana and Key West two cities divided by political barriers. 
Dogs are prohibited which doesn't mean they don't get to visit the park if they have daring owners, but mostly I see people playing tennis here standing on the courts in the sun knocking that fuzzy little ball back and forth. There is even a pro instructor even to help the amateurs on their way, so there is no excuse for an attitude like mine except sheer bloody-mindedness.I think they forced me to chase too many balls during my youthful imprisonment in boarding schools. 
There is basketball, softball and a set of slides for the toddlers. The softball field looked particularly ghostly in the moonlight Saturday night on my lunch break. In the distance, rising up like a fortress one sees the Harvey Government Center illuminated against possible softball ambushes from the darkened park lands where I lurked:
For everyone there is something in Bayview Park including public restrooms, facilities not to be under valued in a city where the complaint is frequently;y heard that there aren't enough. Even if in this instance Key West seems to favor the institutional-correctional look for its loos:
The restrooms are another reason Bayview tends to get a disproportionate number of residentially challenged hanging around. A few years ago the Salvation Army got permission to install a shower trailer in the Police Station parking lot but even since those facilities were dismantled the park provides determined homeless people a place to lay down:
And you thought bleachers are meant to seat people watching softball? Key West, home to multi-purpose facilities. Even in the muggy night air the aluminum benches looked less than homey to me. Homes alongside the park tend to have the characteristic Key West look to them, old, handsome and frequently just a little run down. At four in he morning they can look vaguely sinister:
I like working nights for a lot of reasons but having middle of the night lunch breaks is my secret perk. 
We left the house at 5 am, I dropped my wife off at the doctor's in south Miami at 8:30 and i arrived at Pure Triumph an hour later. I waited for the shop to open and was first at the service desk to sign the paperwork and get back on the road to south Miami to pick up my wife. Things went a bit wrong and I was told the motorcycle might not be ready by closing time even though I had booked ahead with that stipulation. 170 miles each way adds up to a lot of mileage for a return trip. I got a bit snotty I'm afraid and the owner ended up promising the bike would be done before closing. I left angry that I'd had to make a scene. I hate drama and being the cause of it makes me hate myself.
Thursday afternoon I needed to get out of the house, so in addition to going to the Post Office and the bank on Big Pine Key I took a ride north towards Bahia Honda. Even though I know this road quite well enough I just wanted to see what might appear in the lense of the camera. Flat water it turned out; the waters between the mangrove islands was looking as they should in summer, all flat and mirror-like. The effect wasn't even spoiled by the hazy skies covered by indeterminate cirrus clouds. I rode and I photographed.
That last picture I took of the Bonneville in a parking area on the south end of the Bahia Honda bridge. I went just to poke around and lo and behold I found yet another little piece of Keys back country previously unknown to me. I've been by here a million times too...
Apparently other people have already discovered this small corner of wilderness:
I'm sure i don't know what he found to dive on, and swimming with a regulation dive flag indicates he knows the rules, I just wondered if he was doing some reconnaissance for next week's mini lobster season, the annual summer massacre of lobster by amateur hunters, that precedes the official commercial lobster season. The area in back of the parking lot was easily accessible to divers or walkers:
And I cut across a block of Bahama Street towards Eaton. That put me fair and square in front of Fausto's Food Palace, the downtown grocery store that claims to be a social center as well. It is a good place to pick up a twelve pack too, and if you are so thirsty after a week's labor you can empty one bottle into a plastic cup right there in front of the store to fortify yourself for the trek home:
If you are a pigeon refreshment is more easily accessible and cheaper in a gutter if you are so inclined. This guy bathed in his drinking water which I though was a bit much:
Amidst the complaints about the disappearance of old Key West, the signs of past glories are still visible, like these louvered shutters.
This house is pretty obvious but across the street I saw a sight I've never noticed before which is the actual name of La Concha hotel on the Duval Street side of the building. 
I've never stayed at La Concha but to me it's the coolest hotel. The rooms are small, which matters to some people, but it just has the attributes I love in hotels when I travel. Its the antithesis of modern convenient motels, with its long carpeted corridors, heavy dark furniture and spacious tiled lobby, and its right on Duval so it can be noisy.
And alongside the alley I found a truly peculiar tree, with this sign nailed to it. Who would take up residence in a tree I wouldn't know, but there it is:
Taking a stroll along Bahama close to Eaton Street you come across the back of St Paul's and their parish hall. I like the notion of a "parish hall" it has the sound of an old fashioned community center, which is a bit unlikely in Key West:
At the corner of Bahama on Eaton there is an old theater still standing long since unused, unloved and uncared for. It has more than its share of ghost stories attached to it and the Ghost Tour stops by and spreads the gossip with glee. One thing they tell you, and I've never seen contradicted, is that local residentially challenged citizens never spend the night in the doorway:
All of which may or may not be true, and I'm forced to wonder how this building survived the recent housing boom. But it does have a cool tower which someone other than me appreciates, because they've been doing some work to that part of the building:
And it just so happened I got see a genuine rat bike parked on the street an MZ, formerly an East German brand that gained a world wide market with the fall of the Berlin Wall. This one still runs apparently despite the disappearance of the Miami importer of these obscure bikes:
I sort of doubt the owner would have bought a new seat had one been available. I like a motorcycle that gets well used up. I'm still working on the Bonneville, but I bought a machine with a solid, I hope, dealer base. 
Sugarloaf Lodge sits at Mile Marker 16, about half way between my house and my job. It's a popular enough place with a funky 1950's decor restaurant, the usual fish menu and water views. It's one of those places that in theory offers a commuter a stopping point half way home, an oasis, a moment to pause and rest. In reality all one wants to do in commute mode is get home, and in my case I'm riding home normally at six in the morning so this place is never open:
On this occasion I wasn't terribly sleepy and I felt I could waste a few minutes stopping here and poking around with my camera. The restaurant enjoys a cover of greenery that gives it the proper tropical look:
Sugarloaf Key is a weirdly meandering Key shaped in a U with the highway cutting across the tops of the arms. The bottom of the U doesn't join up as the old road just peters out in the mangroves, abandoned after the highway was rerouted. Thus it is that at the North (or west) end at Mile Marker 19 lies Mangrove Mama' s restaurant and the nearby school and at this end separated by water lies the Lodge with a private airstrip nearby and the famous bat tower I photographed previously. The Lodge itself sits next to a small marina:
You look at these places and wonder why people complain about the disappearing Florida Keys. This is as it always was, a little funky, perfectly serviceable and in no way fancy. Much like the vehicle repair shop next door which is part of a little strip mall that includes a bank:
There was still the odd car passing by on the Highway and I wonder if they even noticed me contorting myself on the ground with my camera and tripod trying to get the pictures the way I desired them with the exposure levels I wanted. When the cars disappeared into the distance the silence was complete, not even the sound of an air conditioner humming, just me, the Bonneville, the camera and the night:
Before leaving I paused one last time in front of the Volunteer Fire department, all square and solid with the flag properly illuminated and flapping steadily in the fresh night breeze:
Small town America, asleep in the middle of the night as all good people should be. I didn't feel bad myself, being awake in the middle of the night, I felt rather good actually sneaking some pictures when all about me were sawing Zzz. 
Stock Island is going to be redeveloped, the land is bought, the plans are laid, the permissions sought. We wait with bated breath to see what condo monstrosities will rise like mushrooms across what is now a working person's island. Hogfish is firmly ensconced in that tradition, an open air bar and restaurant on the waterfront:
This is a quiet corner of Safe Harbor, sure they play music, melodic 60's and 70's when I was there on Sunday, but this isn't the place to get rowdy or rude. If you need air conditioning the spritzer cooling system may not work for you:
Reviewing the quality of food in Keys restaurants is a tricky business, cooks come and go, sometimes they have bad days, other days they show up drunk, and all the minutiae of their daily lives tends to get plated with the food. I've had badly cooked fish at Hogfish (once) but the fish fingers I had Sunday were divine, as they normally are, soft white flesh inside, crisp steaming battered outside. And the iced tea wasn't bad at all, I drank enough heaven knows, and here in proper southern style they offer it sweetened as well.
The staff were friendly and cheerful keeping my glass filled but leaving me in peace to read and eat, which is exactly how I like it. The totally outside tables dockside I prefer in the winter but some hardy souls were perspiring under the umbrellas:
There is a daily menu plus a list of printed items as well, hamburgers and chicken and stuff like that all jumbled up with the various catches of the day:
If you are feeling more jocular you will appreciate the welcome sign nailed among the bric-a-brac:
All of which would be enough to recommend Hogfish to friends, though finding this place is a little tricky. Riding down the main drag on Stock Island from Highway One you will reach a West Marine Store on the right (reverse direction in this picture, for my convenience):
Follow the little white signs on 4th Avenue andthey will tell you to turn left on Front Street and after half a mile there you are, a last little piece of old Stock Island. And if the restaurant weren't enough, there's more to this place than just somewhere to eat drink and listen to music. There is a private little world here.
Try and guess if this inhabitant is a local or a visitor:
If you guessed local you'd be right; he's given away by his lack of clothing and in particular his lack of interest in name brand clothing. If he's a visitor he's doing a fine job of imitation. His neighbors live alongside in boats either commercial or recreational, though around here recreational means "affordable home afloat":
Not everyone lives in a small floating space, gentrification is nipping at Safe Harbor's heels:
A nice house is nothing compared to what's in the works. In a previous essay on Stock island I mentioned the new marina planned for the other side of the harbor and developers are trying to get a hotel approved without submitting it to rigorous state mandated building restrictions. They say it will be useful as a storm refuge for essential personnel. The state is not impressed by the reasoning but something big this way comes. Money talks, and we hope Hogfish and its surrounding community can hold on.
The residents know how to make a place homely and they've even built a a little plaza to hang out in:
The sheds are used to fabricate and create because this is a community of independent thinkers and creators. I met one resident getting off her boat and she was restraining her very elderly guard dog, who though barely able to stand was determined I shouldn't interfere with their home. Faithful to the end he looked at me through rheumy eyes, his hind legs barely able to support his thin old frame and I wanted to hug him, but I don't think it would have done his self respect any good. He is still a guard dog, still breathing thus still on duty.
I had to go to work as I had signed up for some overtime to cover for a sick colleague, so I tootled off on my Bonneville (Argh! I FORGOT to photograph it. I'm losing my mind) and went to do my bit for police communications. I got off at midnight and decided I needed to savor the peace and tranquility of safe harbor in the middle of the night.
Ah yes, Hogfish, what a good idea it was to remind me to pay a visit.
College Road runs in a mangrove lined loop across the northern half of Stock Island, starting near Cow Key, the bridge that connects the City to Stock Island, and ends almost two miles later back on Highway One near Key Haven. Coming south on the Highway the entrance looks like this, not terribly prepossessing, a jumble of road signs and no clear indication this is College Road. Key West City limits start at the blue hospital sign and include the right hand lane only, of Highway One, heading south:
The City of Key West is synonymous with the island of Key West in many people's minds. Other people think that because their ZIP code is the same as Key West's they therefore live "in the City" even if they are as far away as Big Coppitt Key at Mile Marker Ten. The truth lies somewhere in between. The city annexed the northern half of Stock Island some years ago, a fact I discovered to my surprise when I lived in Sunset Marina on College Road and got a ballot to vote in City elections. I thought the Elections Office had made a mistake!
The marina is just one of many businesses that call College Road home, not least is the College itself, formally known as Florida Keys Community College:
It deserves an essay of it's own and will doubtless get one when Fall Semester starts in a couple of months. The College, under the dynamic new leadership of President Boyle is waking up to the possibilities of expanded education in the Southernmost City, including offering four year courses, but it also keeps on site some valuable facilities that a lot of people don't think too hard about when they complain there is "nothing to do" in Key West. A pretty decent pool:
A modern library, a dive school, a plastic arts building and of course, my favorite Marine Engineering. And the campus also offers some welcome green open space, where I was glad to see every one's favorite from Sculpture Key West 2007 found a permanent home:
Next door to the College the School District keeps its most modern elementary school, which somehow got a Bonneville mixed up on its empty front entrance:
And across from both facilities there's the convalescent center always looking good hidden behind its abundant palms and vegetation:
And lurking behind is the hospital, properly known (for some obscure long winded reason) as Lower Keys Medical Center. This has the added benefit of making it hard to locate in the phone book if you wanted to call the Key West Hospital (305 294 5531, by the way) in case you thought your missing loved one, visiting Key West, may have been taken to the hospital.
The Monroe General Hospital opened on Stock Island in 1944, so there has been a hospital here for some time, but when people ask if there is a hospital in Key West I do take delight in replying "No," with a dramatic pause, "...but there is one on the next island over." Considering its only five miles from Mallory Square it really isn't far! Some visitors really do think Key West is the dark side of the moon and act surprised when I tell them its a modern capable facility. Plus if you've got $16,000 to spare you can fly to a hospital in Miami by helicopter if you are badly burned or have had some other major health fiasco. Personally the socialist in me thinks a general tax (half cent sales tax? $20 a lot property tax?) would be a worthwhile insurance to provide the service at no cost to the individual users. We are currently facing a vote to get rid of the Sheriff's helicopter that backs up the private service that flies the primary helicopters. I hope when we do get rid of the County helicopter ($5 million saved they assure us), the private service will stay, what with the cost of oil and all... For those in a hurry its worth noting Lower Keys likes to keep its emergency entrance under a bushel as it were. Its not at the main entrance, follow the red signs around College Road:
If you miss the entrance to the Emergency Room ("Casualty" as the British call it) don't despair, the entrance to the Key West golf course is just around another mangrove lined corner:
This is another Pritam Singh gated community with homes in the "Key West style" and a little guard hut and so forth. The Golf Course is public but as I'm not a golfer I know no more. The homes are frequently offered for rent and provide a quiet place to live near the city, as long as you can stand to conform to all those pettifogging rules about...conformity! 
The end of College Road closer to Key West is more industrial in some respects, and it includes the highest piece of land in the Keys, known locally as Mount Trashmore. Unlike the same kind of landfill in the city of Virginia Beach Up North, where they have created an eco garden out of theirs, ours just sits there, some thirty feet tall and reportedly belching methane gas:
This used to be the site of the city's trash-to-energy facility, a place where the city made up to thirty percent of its own electricity needs. With the cost of energy in the headlines this decision by the City has to look dumb in retrospect, but even at the time I thought it wasn't bright.
Environmentalists argued that the ash produced is toxic, residents of the nearby million dollar Sunset condos protested the old plant spewed black ash from time to time across their gated community:
But rather than modernize the elderly plant they closed it and signed a contract for $20 million to haul trash 200 miles up the mainland for a couple of decades. That was the same price quoted to upgrade to a modern electrical generating plant... plus we get the delight of trash hauling trucks spewing bits of garbage up and down Highway One. Oh well.
The city employees were lucky the decision to close was made in flush economic times because they got rehired in different positions with the City. These days the budget isn't so elastic. Closer to Key West is the Monroe County Sheriff's Office and the jail and then there is the animal jail where they are on a fund drive to raise money to air condition the pet holding area. It may seem extravagant until you realise these guys live in cement pens with fans to keep them cool. their crime? Being abandoned:
In a community like this where so many people live on the edge there are plenty of animals looking for a home. Happily new rules allow pet owners to take their pets when they evacuate for a storm. That came about after the Katrina debacle in New Orleans, where pet owners stayed rather than evacuate. And beyond the SPCA we have the Power Squadron headquarters a social boating club with a pleasant view across Cow Key Channel towards Key West:
And right next to the Botanical Garden is the Bayshore Retirement Home wedged in between the Easter Seals and the Aqueduct pumping station.
Its all go on College Road, where there's lots more than a college, all those facilities the city would be hard pressed to find room for on its own island.
There are days when the heat gets too much for me, and that's saying something. I revel in being warm, sweat lubricates me, humidity reassures me that I am still alive still able to breathe, still one with the program. I listen to people who come to Key West and complain about the temperatures, as though it should come as any kind of surprise that Key West would be hot in the summer.
In the deserts of the south west temperatures routinely climb into the 100's and as high as 120, sometimes more, and people say they prefer that heat because its dry. As though cracked fingernails and hair dehydrated like straw is a good thing. In the Keys its a hot day when the temperature climbs over 95, and beyond Key West proper the temperatures always seem a little more bearable given how much less cement and asphalt there is outside the city. When I ride into town on a summer afternoon I can feel the hotter air hit me as I cross the Cow Key Bridge. By contrast my home on rural Ramrod Key frequently benefits from the lightest of sea breezes ruffling the foliage of the mature trees that surround and cool my house. Shavers Lane, just off Duval street positively shimmers with white hot heat of a July afternoon:
I spotted a black doorway on another side street and was shocked to realise the door was open, and even though the interior was plunged into darkness the lack of air conditioning must have had the occupants panting:
I enjoy the heat but the blessings of air conditioning shouldn't be underestimated, and I very much enjoy the cool of my home, especially when sleeping (and I do a lot of that in the heat of the day as i work nights). There are a lot of homes down here without air, or that choose not to use air. In the height of summer my 800 square foot home costs about $130 a month to cool. In the winter our monthly bills drop to around $35. The numbers aren't high but its clear the air is what sucks up the juice.
Some unsuspecting visitors rent bicycles, and then find they have to pause for refreshment in any available patch of shade to catch their breaths:
Others rent electric cars that don't have air but they do have a roof for mobile shade:
Motorcycles work though their seats can get burning hot if you leave them in the sun and plan on riding them in shorts:
Moped renters would be the despair of all those who fervently proclaim the value of protective clothing while riding:
Some walkers, even though choosing to walk on the sunny side of the street carry refrigeration with them:
I don't think this message got through to them either though I expect that being French, they would have handled the message outside a well known gay bar, with continental aplomb:
I think this guy is a little to fair skinned to be out with a buzz cut and no hat:
One such stopped at a booth to...use the phone. Look closely because you won't see this scene very often anymore, a young person dropping a coin...though I have to confess I forgot my phone at home while taking these pictures and was glad for the use of old fashioned pay phones to keep in touch:
On the other hand many visitors to Key West have a very clear idea of what to do about the heat:
Margaritaville was packed of course, though they don't need heat to encourage the punters to sidle up to the bar and waste away for a while:
Some pirates are busy pirates others are more laid back:
Taking their ease on their homes afloat. I remember doing this and now I'm up at all hours working, and enjoying it too. I don't envy him, his sunny retirement, which surprises me.
The lack of combustion in his Honda Aero 750 got him down a bit, and I decided to get involved with my car and my trailer. Diggy is the only one of two other people who work at the police department who regularly commute on two wheels. I felt he needed an outside boost. He seemed grateful as we set out for the shop at Ken's place across town.
Sometimes things get overwhelming and all it takes is a little help to get the ball rolling. No word yet on why it died so completely but we rolled the Honda into some mechanical therapy. A broken Honda, imagine that.
This is summer time at Smathers, which means flat water, bright sun, sparkling waters and a book, or an Ipod or something electronic and a deck chair:
Or for the busy people wanting to enjoy a vacation there's the possibility of a painted ship upon a painted ocean:
It was far out trying to find a breeze. And failing. Not so busy after all.
Everyone likes a shot of Duval Street. This one hit my whimsy button when I saw a sale sign on the sandal shop. I've never seen Birkenstocks on sale until now:
I imagined the unwary realising their mistake in arriving in the Southernmost City with unsuitable footwear and finding these icons of funky footwear at BMW prices- on sale. While I was on Duval I spotted these umbrellas at the Pegasus Hotel, Key West's Art Deco establishment with a rooftop pool:
One way to spend a summer afternoon. But not me I was out taking pictures, including these happy youngsters enjoying their 50cc freedom. It reminded me of me 40 years ago, carefree and young, at least in my memory:
Nostalgia being what it is I ducked into Fast Buck Freddies department store for some cold air and I met a couple of coworkers from my time there five years ago. I enjoyed working in shipping, it was a challenge but the police paid better and offered overtime. I like dropping in on Fast Bucks especially as our anniversary is coming up and She will be glad to be surprised with something when I decide what it is.
I sheltered from the heat in the Aladdin's cave gloom of the store where I bumped into a couple of my former coworkers who remembered me, a minor miracle in a town with the turn over of Key West. John the manager is starting to think about retirement after three decades with the store, a remarkable life of stability in Key West. We talked and it was a pleasure to hear his thoughts on Costa Rica, tinged with regret at the thought of leaving a town he himself describes as special, even after all those years dealing with its trials and tribulations. 
I came for the air conditioning and got an uplifting chat. A nice and unexpected treat.
I find myself content with rich deep greens and blues and the white sunlight, a long glass of icy lemonade and a book. This sort of thing I can do year round in the deep south. My kind of place. 
The effect of this one is spoiled by the tape fencing and plywood- all made necessary following last months big blaze that displaced three businesses from this building on White and Virginia Streets. There's a tiled mural at the airport:
I found this fearsome depiction midway up, or down, Duval Street:
Whatever else it is, it certainly is something other than the usual depiction of sweet tropical flora and fauna. Like that found at Higgs Beach, decorating the public loos next to the Salute restaurant:
This is a popular hang out for our residentially challenged residents. However on my visit to the beach I found fewer than usual, occupying the decorated pavilions. I'm never sure if the groups of homeless really notice or appreciate the delicate pictures painted on their temporary shelters. I do:
Next to Higgs beach there's the White Street Pier, often jokingly referred to as the former bridge to Havana. The entrance is another form of public art, the Aids Memorial, a depiction of the island chain and lists of names etched into black marble.
Unlike the dork in the photograph you aren't supposed to ride your rented scooter on the memorial. Further up white street animals come to life. I seem to recall in my misspent youth acquaintances of mine bought clay animals that sprouted leaves when watered. I think they called them Chia Pets and the inventor made a fortune similar to the one made by the inventor of the Pet Rock. Indeed there was a time when people wasted money buying "pet" rocks. But I digress, there's a giant Chia outside the NOAA weather station:
Weird huh? Across the street is an older landmark, a tiger welded out of metal in front of Glynn Archer School. It happened in dispatch one afternoon I took a call from an agitated Spanish speaker and in response to my "Adonde estas?" she wailed "El Tigre!"I turned to my colleagues and asked where the hell the tiger is. Once learned never forgotten. It is kind of obvious on White Street:
Graffiti is not the worst problem Key West suffers from but scrawls show up from time to time and get residents incensed. This I saw on Seminary Street and I couldn't figure out what it meant. A lamentation? An accusation? A boast?
And on Catherine Street not too far away some creative soul long since painted a tree stump to resemble a technicolored octopus. However the ravages of time and inconsiderate drivers have taken their toll:
I figured I'd better photograph it before it vanishes... Pineapples are supposed to be a symbol of welcome in the islands,perhaps because they are sweet, perhaps because they are barbed and rough or perhaps because they were a bugger to grow in Key West and expensive to import from Cuba. You will see lots of pineapples carved in gingerbread style all round the island, some more graceful than others:
This rather brash example was on Duval Street.
A neighbor watched me stop and park the Bonneville and after I took the picture told me the actual vehicle is parked inside. An added and unexpected touch.
It would be nice if he got what he was looking for, because I only got a piece of the red mosaic for my trouble. I made a spectacle of myself at the triangle stopping in the median to take a picture of the no-longer-new sign at the entrance to the city. They managed to park it right behind a road sign on the way in making it almost invisible. On the way out its clear enough:
A few years ago my wife was in the checkout line at Publix when an anxious tourist came by and asked the cashier how many more miles to Key West? The city never did care much one way or the other and it was left up to the Rotary to plant the welcome sign. And there it is.
Outside the Stock Island Hilton at 3 am. That by the way is the jail, in jest so please don't call asking to make a reservation- its like one of those other hotels where you can only get in, not out. And the artwork inside is mostly shades of cream and gray.
The Key West Airport is rather grandiosely named but there is nothing international about it. They did try a couple of flights to Nassau for a while but it seems that not enough people wanted to fly direct to the Bahamas, so that died a death. As far as I know the only regular international flight was one rumored to come out of Honduras with frozen seafood to supply local demand. Plus of course we get, from time to time a plane load of Cuban refugees who hop across the waters to join us in our capitalist enterprise. Be that as it may the County Commission decided the airport was too small so they voted about $26 million dollars to upgrade the facilities.
Last week they found out the job is going to cost more than $40 million. The contract has been rife with problems and accusations and investigations and still they plow on building a new terminal on and on and on...The new ramp that collapsed killing a Guatemalan worker is now being disassembled, presumably so they can try again a second time. I'll bet they aren't doing that for free.
The thing about the addition, like so much of the new construction in Key West over the past decade, is that it's out of proportion to the needs and character of the city. There's no arguing the old terminal could use some work, it is not the most modern facility, especially in light of the security requirements since September 11, 2001, but this?
Mercifully from South Roosevelt the profile of the new terminal is reasonably proportioned, thanks to the mandated height restrictions:
Herman Wouk wrote a book a few decades ago titled Don't Stop The Carnival about expatriate trials and tribulations on a small Caribbean island, and for some reason the old Key West airport puts me in mind of that book. Is this not irresistible?
Powered two wheelers still get easy parking near the arrivals hall, and the mastodon in the middle of the scooters in actually my Bonneville:
Seen above, the new terminal is on the right connected with the abominable glass walkway to the current terminal, which is visible in the background with its shady overhang and outdoor benches, shown here: 
Key West offers very expensive connecting flights from Continental, Delta, US Air and American Eagle, but the planes are small and many are powered by propellers:
However even the commercial jets that land at Key West are on a diet. The runway is too short for them to take off fully loaded so only a portion of the seats are filled. The runway can't be extended without mangling the salt ponds at either end and the mangroves are protected. So far progress has been impeded but one wonders how long it will last. Marathon has a nice long runway but it's fifty miles away and can't seem to retain an airline no matter how much money it offers them to use their airport. 
The thing was, passengers went from here to the outside walkway where they went through the security check, but people grumbled that the security check itself wasn't in the air conditioning, and there are no loos in the air conditioned "secure" waiting room, all of which is either charming or irritating depending on your approach to island time. Apparently they solved one problem even before the new terminal is finished. If in doubt read the homemade sign on the door:
And a lot of travelers enjoy the offerings of the Conch Flyer bar and restaurant which is not going to survive the renovations in its current form, model planes and all:
The arrival area is like any other airport, only...smaller! And considering how few people fly on each aircraft all the kerfuffle about the staging areas and security and stuff seems overblown. This is an airport that handles a couple of dozen passengers per flight, at most. Just one baggage conveyor handles all arriving bags:
And from here one steps out to a waiting line of cabs:
Or one rents a car if one sees a need to on this small island. And from here its a few short yards to South Roosevelt and the freedom of the Conch Republic and its turquoise waters:
However the airport expansion is bringing with it a couple of other issues as well. For locals the loss of The Pines, the open space next to the East Martello Tower in front of the new terminal has been a shame. Now I grant you that it was a gathering place for our scruffy residentially challenged but I wasn't alone in enjoying the shady waterfront benches from time to time.
Now its a construction parking lot and will soon be replaced by pretty gardens to please the eye of the passing visitors. 
On land currently occupied by employee parking:
And the state driver and vehicle licensing center which hasn't harmed anyone so far as I know and deserves a better fate:
We are in the middle of summer and its those pesky days of not much tourist income so the tourist people have spent a good deal of time and bed tax dollars dreaming up whacky weekends to bring people to town. With gas at four and a half dollars a gallon its more of a struggle but the show must go on and this weekend we have not only Mel Fisher days, the man who found the treasure, but coincidentally Hemingway Days when fat old white men with beards will run down Duval Street with wooden bulls in hot pursuit. Either you get it or you don't. I don't. 
I am one among the last people on the planet who reads paper books, and I alone don't like reading Hemingway. His short sentence structure, terse dialogue and lack of description leave me breathless and hyperventilating. The guide on the tour suggested this style came about from sending telegrams when he was a reporter and had to keep it short. I used to write news copy for the radio but I like a florid, run on sentence or two. He was, as they say, larger than life. He won a Nobel Prize, he made a ton of money, always the sign of an American winner, and he chased women like they were going out of fashion. Hemingway makes me feel like a pansy, he hunted big game- I felt sick the one and only time I shot a deer, he married four times I think and cheated on all of them- I'm a home body, he drank like a fish all hail fellow-well-met- I'm a sober loner, he was a successful war reporter,-I drank like a fish when I reported from the front lines and spent most of my time ready to pee my pants when people shot at me. I guess my disdain for his writing style has deeper roots. But people throng to his home and pay their respects to the man of the written word. I like his house real well and it gives us some taste of what life was like in Key West in the thirties, but I think he would have made an awful neighbor, overrunning his place with cats:
Carousing till all hours, even hauling a urinal back to his startled wife from Sloppy Joe's old bar:
Arguing with her all the time, on one spectacular occasion about the money she wasted building a saltwater pool: 
No, no Hemingway and I would never have got along. But there again, who cares? His granddaughter comes to key West and presides over a short story competition, and the city has a favored son to commemorate and we have no threat from Cuba where Hemingway's favorite home was located, Finca Vigia ("Overlook Farm") and the real Old Man and the Sea recently died so we are currently Top Hemingway Dogs. Come one, come all, just keep the economy going, please. And the tour is fun. Our guide looked like he was rode hard and put up wet, no doubt keeping up the Key West image:
The interior seems much as it was though I don't really remember much about my last visit years ago, there is still plenty of open space under the tall ceilings, in a house open to the heat and decorated with the heavy dark Spanish style furniture Hemingway reportedly liked:
Which must have made the saltwater pool quite the refuge as air conditioning wasn't then an option:
The writing studio seems changed to me, not least because the walkway from the house is gone, and the stairs are still steep:
But also they have a manual typewriter on a table with a chair and as far as I know he wrote standing up to relieve back injuries from his excessively athletic youth. I seem to recall a writing stand in the room. Oh, and boxing I think is barbaric, Hemingway loved it, so we definitely would have been at loggerheads:
Looking in through the protective bars at the studio, the tourist in front of me made some snide comment about the ease of working only a few hours each morning, and compared to the daily grind for most of us there is some truth in that. On the other hand Hemingway ate his gun rather prematurely which puts me definitely in the 100 years as a Lamb, rather than a day as a Lion as Mussolini put it facing his own unsavory end. Hemingway lived large because he was driven to, and that, not just pushing a pen was his hard work. He got a nice view out of his studio window as he struggled with the English language:
Actually he didn't. There is a print of the Asa Tifton house at the time Hemingway owned it (purchased by his father in law because writing a few hours a day wasn't making it, ironically!) and the greenery around the house was sparse, nothing like it is now. Hemingway's taste in tiles is still evident. Fish and parrots. 
The tour of the house is brief but the beauty of the Hemingway House visit is that one is free to ramble anywhere and everywhere the doors are unlocked. There are no time limits and few restrictions that I could tell. Followers of The Man are free to stand and contemplate all day long if they choose, though the public loos are a little less fancy than the master's, though entirely acceptable. I saw visitors hiding from the sun chatting in one public outhouse. 
The Hemingway House boasts a rare thing in Key West, a genuine basement which the guide assured us has never flooded. The owners of the property have fenced it off so we the curious can't get in but that black hole in the ground was tantalising I have to say:
Especially on a hot sticky day like yesterday:
The cats didn't seem to mind the thundery humidity, though the visitors were complaining all the time as though they expected glacier melt to be surrounding the Southernmost City. The cats sit up and looks supercilious as the tours go through and get kibbles for their troubles:
This one was preening himself until something startled him though what could startle a Hemingway cat in this oasis of adoration I couldn't say.
Footprints in the cement perhaps?
As an illustration of close Key West living someone who chose to live near the Hemingway House a while back reported the property to the Department of Food and Agriculture accusing them of running a breeding farm without a permit. The complaint alleged that the stock (cats not cows) were suffering in an urban environment and they should be removed. Well, the shit hit the fan, predictably enough and at vast taxpayer's expense an FDA inspector came to town to investigate the illegal cat farm and the owners howled and everything ended up getting smoothed over which is why there is an impressive cat herding fence on top of the wall around the property:
Here's a hint: don't like cats? Don't take up residence near the Hemingway House! The cats look pretty smart by comparison to the humans, even though, in the final analysis another reason Hemingway and I wouldn't have got along- I'm a dog person!
Sunny days! I remember them well! I was moved to take a few pictures of State Road 4A along it's Ramrod Key incarnation last week, before the endless summer rains seemed to set in permanently and i got by chance a few sunny outdoor pictures... It happened that I was listening to the radio (that happens a lot in my TV-less home) and I heard there was a dispute going on in Marathon, some 25 miles north of my house over ownership of a stretch of State Road 4A. That caught my attention because I knew SR4A is split between several islands in the Lower Keys, indeed I wrote an essay about the section on Little Torch Key recently, but I had no idea the road also surfaced in Marathon. In Ramrod it has pretentions to pretty leafiness:
If it seems weird that Monroe County 
Change comes slowly around here sometimes and recycling is still an art that is not fully understood. However trash comes in heaps! The Keys recycle less than seven percent of the trash stream, where even mainland Florida gets nearly a quarter recycled.
They are closed during the month of July but otherwise this is the best place to get a To Go 
There is also a surprising amount of light industry on Ramrod Key, a nursery, a vet, a car mechanic or two, construction yards and even a welding shop to my surprise:
The Keys are always 
And I use these storage lockers when hurricanes threaten, to store our powered two wheelers in, if they have any spare lockers I can rent for a quick clean week:
Usually they have 
There are billboards 
And then at the south end of Ramrod where the road ends in a red triangle there is a major construction company yard, all industrial and everything but still decorated by the 
The road runs straight and true of course one does need to 
Though most of it isn't:
Key West Diary: keeping it real on the backroads.
We have had some crappy weather around the Lower Keys lately, all cloudy and wet and really quite pleasant. I know its a contradiction but the beauty of the Florida Keys is that rainy season is in the summer, the hottest time of year. Effectively a nice thunderstorm is not only a dramatic counterpoint to the daily routine, it is also a refreshing break from the heat. However crappy is as crappy does and picture taking sucks in the steel gray light of a cloudy afternoon and I haven't ventured downtown recently to see what's worth photographing. I have to bear myself in patience. So I'm driving into town in the car to meet my wife, and its obvious its going to pour down, the sky is black and the clouds have closed in, I leave the Bonneville at home and take the Nissan. I like riding in the rain but I hate clambering in and out of my plastic suit and over gloves and over boots when I'm riding between chores around town. Ride to work day is tomorrow so I was in the clear driving the car yesterday. I came across this guy hauling his buddy into Key West on his Harley. They have about sixteen miles to go and the rain is starting:
The Harley has no saddlebags so there's no point in stopping because apparently they don't have a rain jacket between them. The rain got heavier as we passed Baby's Coffee at Mile Marker 15 and they were in the sixty mile per hour groove, keeping up with the car in front. If you're going to be stupid you've got to be tough, as I tell myself when I'm caught out on the Bonneville unsuitably dressed:
I can't say I was bummed to be in the Maxima listening to the stereo and watching the windshield wipers slash back forth. The dashboard computer told me the outside temperature was a chilly two degrees above zero Fahrenheit (where locally 70 degrees F equates to zero) so I was wondering how it felt to be on the fifty mile-per-hour Harley... the rain was coming down hard enough now traffic was slowing in the reduced visibility, though not everyone had their head lights turned on. It looked bleak out there if you were riding in sandals - and the passenger was:
I guess they were resigned to their misery by now, and I can appreciate they probably felt a certain heroic defiance in their crazy ride. They must have left knowing they were going to get plastered by the black clouds overhead and I'm sure a hot shower and clean clothes weren't too far away. However Mother Nature wasn't letting them off lightly on the mad dash. Searstown was flooded in all the usual places, no surprise, and I stepped out of the car dry and clean and ready for a movie with my wife before showing up for work at 6pm not looking like a drowned rat. Shoppers at Peacock Plaza looked a bit drowned as they waited for the rain to pass, whcih had by the time I came out of the Regal Cinema:
Tomorrow is ride to work day so I expect the hard core Harley rider will be back out in it rain or rain. I know I won't be -it's my day off, though I'll make up for it the rest of the year!
As I rode up Fifth to the old La Curva grocery store I could see people backing away from the fire on the dock behind a pile of lobster traps, and I didn't pause to balance the camera. From where I parked the motorcycle I could see a small part of the fire across the calm waters of Safe Harbor:
I rode around to Front Street which leads to Hogfish Restaurant, but I couldn't approach the fire without tripping up over the emergency crews and that's not what I wanted to do:
But the flames though hidden were large enough to give off impressive amounts of smoke:
When I was a journalist I never really subscribed to the modern theory of "if it bleeds it leads," as stories about crimes and fires only increase listener insecurity, I preferred to report on stuff that might actually affect listeners lives. And thus it was that as I watched the flames consume themselves on the dock I was thinking about fire response. I live in the county and a fire at my house would get a response from the Big Pine Key Volunteer fire fighters, as do the people of south Stock Island. In the city of Key West, where I work, we dispatch from three fire stations which are staffed with full time firefighters. Fire has always been a holy terror in Key West which suffered periodically in the 19th century from fires of greater and lesser magnitude among the wooden homes pressed tightly together in Old Town. But even here on the docks at Stock island the lobster traps piled high are little more than kindling were a fire to break out:
I find the flat waters of a secure harbor very calming, and despite the proximity to the fire I enjoyed hanging out on the shrimp docks back at La Curva:
I saw this setup, a motorcycle, someone likely living on the boat with secure dockage for the boat and it set off memory cells jangling. I liked the compact living style of this guy:
Lobster season will be upon us before we know it next month and fishermen are all feverishly preparing traps. They keep little huts and work tables like this one, silent at three in the morning and most likely empty awaiting the owner's return in a few hours:
And, speaking of returning owners my Bonneville was right there where I wanted it, ready to go back to work:
New Town is not the part of Key West visitors flock to but wasn't I surprised to spot a Conch train last Wednesday taking a handful of tourists up Kennedy Drive in the heart of the Conchs' Key West. I guess I'm not paying attention because I had no idea they cruised the middle of New Town. I know they have their depot, what they call a "roundhouse" in railroad parlance, on Flagler at George Streets, but that's for mechanics and bean counters, not riders:
The thing about New Town is that even though it isn't a hundred years old, even though it isn't historic it still manages to exude a Key West air by including odd architectural details or decorative motifs that don't belong in just any American suburb. New Town is where the Conchs fled after they sold their nasty wooden huts near the harbor to a bunch of crazy (gay) outsiders who overpaid badly for those cramped little homes. So, with the advent of cheap air conditioning the old timers built nice modern (soulless?) shopping malls and built themselves some ranchette style American Dream homes nearby and lined them up alongside straight wide streets, similar in all respects to Staples Avenue:
And now, fifty years later New Town is old and has its funky corners just like before. Its where one goes to escape the crowding of Duval Street. Staples Avenue Bridge, a footpath and bicycle route only, which crosses the 10th Street Canal, is deserted predictably enough at 3 am, except for my Vespa. The city promised this bridge for years to cyclists who wanted a way over the canal that avoided the heavy traffic of Flagler Avenue. Predictably the city took a long while to get around to it. The best part was some dude who kept writing in to the Citizen's Voice every month sarcastically reminding the city of it's failure to come through. After the bridge was built, the Doubting Thomas was never heard from again, not even aword of thanks, but his place in the newspaper column was taken by the neighbors whining endlessly about the "dangerous" increase in bicycle traffic along Staples Avenue. Predictably enough everyone is used to the bridge and all whining has stopped:
When the creature from the black lagoon failed to materialise I got on the wife's ET4 Vespa, filling in for the bald-tired Triumph this week, and crossed Flagler Avenue for a look at a few places that seem to gain depth, as it were, at night. The Presbyterian Peace Covenant church is another of those vaguely Polynesian looking buildings that seem to have been favored in the 1950s and '60s around here:
This place shouldn't be confused with the soup kitchen at Grace Lutheran up the street where they feed the poor who have a regrettable tendency to squabble while supping. The soup kitchen got whacked pretty badly by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and their church collapsed like a wet house of cards after the storm. Which illustrates another thing about New Town. This place used to be uninhabited because the early settlers snagged that part of the island more impervious to what forecasters delight in labelling "weather events." Old sometimes is better, especially when faced with the prospect of a citywide hurricane flood. Across the street is a large billboard that I find rather intrusive on Flagler Avenue, big yellow and in your face every time you ride by:
I know little about school shenanigans but the Auditorium is a great new addition to Key West's list of locales to see concerts and attend performances in winter when Culture rears its head on the island. Personally I find the High School, open and unfenced, to be the perfect symbol of small town Key West. I hear big city schools rejoice in the use of scanning machines and security devices to check admission to campus, procedures sure to instill self respect and trust among the student body. Even in this town people complain (in the Voice!) about kids and their manners all the time but I find Key's kids to be polite and respectful almost universally. Another old fashioned pleasure of living here. 
Very festive. Next to the corner store there is a mysterious building which I have never ever seen open, not even when I had the misfortune to drive a congenitally defective VW Microbus. This building does no business that I know of, yet has never been taken over or altered through the decades of mad development. Spooky, or possibly encouraging:
And because the little hand is at 40 and the big hand is heading towards the four its time to get back to the star ship and take up the business of dispatching police once again. Hop on the Vespa, take a left at the green light and a right on Leon Street a few blocks down Flagler:
Me and my bad ass ride- I own New Town at three in the morning and don't you forget it.
Hurricane Bertha is wandering the Atlantic as I write, a Category One storm that 
Ansel Adams shot this picture, more or less, of the back of the church of San Geronimo:
The important food photographed with the main plaza and the church in the far background.
And we got a teapot drum, modestly sized for our modest little home. Here too Phillip Martinez was happy to be photographed:
And with our purchases they took time in this tourist low season to talk a little about their lives, which was fascinating to a degree I had not imagined. These are people who have traveled, studied, got degrees and have known the world outside the Pueblo and New Mexico itself. The worst of it was hearing how hard it was years ago for an Indian to make a living in the world outside. Not so long ago to be a Native American was to not be accepted in America. And so they do their crafts and hope to do better than subsist. Some do it with humor:
But it was difficult to admire these award winning artists and realise they were here because their hopes of professional careers in the outside world were dashed because they were Indians. Had I been denied in the same way I might have been a tad more testy about the whole thing. Naturally we wandered like tourist stereotypes ourselves, our wives shopping and browsing...
...while Bruce and I sat on a bench in the main square in companionable manly silence, possibly exhaustion, and watched the comings and goings of the Pueblo:
Another of the rules about the Pueblo includes not to piss or throw trash in the river that runs through the middle of the community, which seems reasonable enough on the face of it, and sparkling it was too in the high altitude (7200 feet) sunshine. They say they get their water from this open stream which seems a little surprising in this day and age. When I was a kid down on the farm I happily drank stream water but it always gurgled up from some dark safe place underground and came out of a familiar pipe. It was not open to God and everybody like this, but lacking plumbing this is what they have to use:
The Indians of Taos Pueblo make a lot of rules about religious ceremonies and secret rituals that an unbeliever and sceptic like me would mess up entirely were I to witness them. The residents themselves seem pretty easy going about these strictures which luckily don't happen to interfere with commerce at all. taos Pueblo is full of people and activity and cars and in no way resenbles a cloister. I suppose there is a compensation factor at work, after centuries of interference you've got to have a secret club with initiations and passwords to make it worth while to be a member. Nevertheless St Jerome's Catholic Church (San Geronimo in Espanol) is the prominent structure in the Pueblo and does not conflict, they say with the ancient and complex Indian rituals. Which include bans on running water and electricity apparently. I find these limitations bizarre but like the photography rules I see no reason to violate them. Personally I love flush toilets and electrical outlets and value them everyday as tools for a more civilized life. I can't believe there is a God that frowns on their use, but what do I know.
The round dome is a traditional oven or Horno in Spanish:
Eventually the shopping came to an end and we found our way back to the car and the open road beckoned:
Needless to say my mind was on the Bonneville as we drove the winding mountain roads. Bruce has bought a BMW 650 since i was there so at least someone I know is enjoying these roads on two wheels, as they were meant to be ridden. Outside the Pueblo it's okay for people to live with electricity and plumbing and they take advantage of the slackness of modern living in their modest farm houses:
Luckily for us we were in time for a late lunch at the local eatery a couple of miles outside the Pueblo:
the food was okay, American staples offered on fry bread instead of hamburger buns, but I did step outside the collective comfort zone as i always do when presented with something weird on the menu, and I ordered a cup of atole, which the shy young waitress endeavored to describe. Words failed her rather as they do me. Here's a picture:
It's some sort of mild blue corn concoction which needs a fair bit of sugar to give it flavor. Its sort of gritty like a very thin gruel but not in the least offensive. Atole and a kruller- breakfast of champions. While we were lunching a young couple came in and propped their offspring on the counter and started a conversation with the waitress and her mother, the cook. I thought they were family members but by dint of listening they were apparently complete strangers, just curious about Indian cooking.
It's at times like these you learn how really shy you are compared to some brazen people! Oh well. 
Rather inadequate souvenirs of the oldest continuously occupied structure in the US. And they won't even notice if the lights go out, for the rest of us.
As is the way in Key West the abundant growth of all sorts of wickedly romantic palm fronds gives the most mundane home on the dreariest street a special flavor. However Love Lane is fortunate enough to have abundant greenery and charming Conch cottages:
The Fleming half of the lane dead ends into someones picket fence and the ubiquitous bougainvillea, of course, which I am slowly learning to despise:
But one can still spot some blue sky between all the flora:
Then there is Love lane from the Southard Street side which has a proper sign and everything, photographed at the top of this essay, next to my wife's 150cc Vespa which I'm borrowing while the Trumpet gets a new front tire. As I fumbled around here a man peered over his balcony at me and stared a moment.
"You're that guy," he said slowly but with certainty. "You're the scooter guy." He looked puzzled so I explained the absence of the green Triumph Bonneville. He was very nice about the blog and gave me the (complicated) name of his, which I was unable to recover, so he needs to drop me a comment with it spelled out if he reads this.
Imagine actually living here, with your scooter parked under a bush right outside your door, or a car if you absolutely need one to get away from time to time ( I love getting away!), and always assuming you have a stronger backbone than I do when it comes to that love thing, this is all that Key West promotes itself as: a tropical paradise...
Charming isn't it? Though how they get that modest sized car in and out of it's off street parking (OSP in Realtor talk) space I don't know. With a shoe horn perhaps.
And window air conditioning is still around bless its uncomplicated, noisy, rattling, inefficient heart:
It may seem perverse but I like living out of town, and at a time when cheap oil is a mirage I should be thinking about how to reduce my commute, but the cheek by jowl thing just isn't me. And then do you suppose all neighbors are as conscientious as this plastic bagged walker across the street:
Our guide on this trip through the gardens was at pains to point out that Fairchild is a place devoted not just to growing pretty plants in a pleasant environment but it's primary mission, as a non profit, is to secure the world's largest collection of tropical flora and propagate it back in its original, endangered environment. Fairchild isn't strictly a garden it's science in action. And it is no less delightful for that.
Fairchild Gardens are located close by Biscayne Bay, south of the great Miami metropolis in a tony suburban little city called Coral Gables. Coral Gables is one of those places that eschews neon, has a stern police force, and wealthy inhabitants who spend the winters doddering from one over priced restaurant to another. These enclaves in middle class America are easily identified by their profusion of greenery. I have found in my travels that wealthy neighborhoods are always filled with mature trees and shrubbery. The gardens in their midst are just one more display of tropical extravagance. You want bougainvillea? They got bougainvillea, twenty feet tall if you like:
The darker of the two of us is a statue of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas a former South Dade county resident famous for her unreadable (in my opinion) defense of the Everglades titled River of Grass. She died a decade ago at 108 and in her lifetime she spoke out for Florida's ravaged open spaces at a time when exploitation was the theme for natural resources. A brave woman memorialised here, appropriately enough. One doesn't have to be old to appreciate Fairchild:
In the midst of the gardens there are...
...hothouse collections displaying orchids...
...and splendid tropical fruits, such as the famously foul durian of Malaysia, a fruit said to smell as foul as it tastes sweet. My sorrow was there were none ripe and visible on the tree, so I shall to return to see this thing that has intrigued me since first I heard of it. The Jack Fruit was though, a goiter that grows up to 150 pounds, so heavy it can only sprout from the trunk of the tree:
We saw huge baobab trees with their distinctive flowers and fruit:
We wandered through the tropical rain forest which is periodically ravaged by South Florida hurricanes and thus unable to grow a proper rain forest canopy such as one might see in Brazil and points south. Places that also have twice as much rainfall as Miami which allows the rain forest to grow more lushly and impenetrably. This is not a bad sampling in my opinion, even if it is a mere shadow of a "real" rain forest:
But fear not, even in the midst of all this lush tropicalness civilization is never too far away, a drink a loo a gardener with his electric runabout, and even a reminder of the world of commerce outside the fences is there:
The gardens are split into uplands and lowlands. The uplands are the better developed area lying on a ridge of limestone rock that runs across South Florida (the community of Cutler Ridge lies a couple of dozen feet above sea level as a reminder). The lowlands are still being developed around a series of mangrove marshes and reclaimed lagoons. There is even a Florida Keys area which we will seek out more in depth next time. Fairchild offers plants for sale for amateurs and we are thinking about trying to create a more native, wildlife friendly area around our house which is surrounded by trees but not necessarily the ones we have discovered we might like. In the lowlands too the vistas are splendid:
I found the natural beauty entrancing but I also like the idea that Fairchild gardens is helping us export plants that are actually beneficial to their recipients, repopulating areas of the world not as wealthy (at the moment) as we are and not as organized as we have been. I'd like to think the export of trees might in some measure balance out the export of high explosives:
We'd have Fairchild Gardens to thank for that.
I am fond of what Italians call the Campo Santo, the Holy Field. More prosaically in death-averse Anglo-Saxon idiom we call it a cemetery, and Key West's is in my opinion a particularly fine example of the type. I like to visit cemeteries when I travel and years ago I was smart enough to get a tour of this one by the Historical Society's Director George Born, who was well informed and armed with a dry wit. Thus it is he left earlier this year for Rhode Island, our loss their gain. Let's face it, a town like Key West, much of which is a 19th century architectural museum for the living would be hard pressed to create in its midst a holy field that didn't inspire flights of fancy in anyone taking a stroll through its avenues:
I first got a taste for the cemetery when I worked one summer in the shipping department at Fast Buck Freddie's on Duval Street. It was a matter of a few moments to leap on my scooter and take myself off to a shady spot in the city's best park. I always figured the dead, had they any feelings at all, would appreciate a member of the community of the living hanging out in their midst eating a sandwich and drinking a con leche while perusing the day's news or a toothsome novel: Some of my colleagues wrinkled their noses when I told them where I spent my lunch breaks but I shouldn't have been surprised, most people prefer the company of the living to the peace and gossip free environment of the dead. The cemetery enjoys a central location on the island, where it was put after the original cemetery on Higgs Beach got badly messed up in a mid-19th century hurricane. This was originally on the edge of town but development naturally overtook it and now its in the middle. Indeed they are running out of space and the city recently demolished a condemned house on Olivia Street and is using the space to add a few more vaults.
There are quite a few empty vaults scattered around the holy field but they are already sold under what undertakers delicately refer to as the "pre-need" program. And from time to time old vaults can get reused as the ancestors return to the format whence we all came. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," as my Catholic priest used to intone on Ash Wednesday:
Key West isn't known as The Rock for nothing and digging isn't easy around here. Furthermore the water table is pretty high so people get buried above ground. It's common enough in many countries but the other well known US example is New Orleans where the same rising damp problem requires the same solution:
The city comes in for some grief from time to time from Conch families upset that the place isn't in apple pie order. The city did surround the cemetery with a tall strong fence but that was a move designed to prevent people from sneaking into the cemetery to have sex or perform weird rituals, or simply to get stuck after hours. 
If you call 9-1-1 because you are locked in after hours, be prepared to wait, it usually takes a good long time to locate the sexton and the key and at the best of times the sexton can be a grumpy man. You'd be amazed how hysterical some people can become when they are trapped in the cemetery after dark. Personally I always liked the idea of a house on Frances Street with the dead for neighbors. Even now a two bed two bath cottage with pool and pool house is for sale for one point six million dollars. Peaceful neighbors at a price.
And Kemp's Riddley turtle had to be named after somebody didn't it? Rare as the turtle is the Kemp family has quite a few headstones around here:
The Spottswood family is a solid and imposing a presence in the Keys developing anything not nailed down so it would be proper for them to have a large granitic mausoleum to get planted in:
The family who first made their fortune pouring concrete for Mr Flagler's railway are still in town and the Toppino vault was I thought a little over the top in rococo style:
There are the well known parts of the cemetery, the Martyrs of Cuba, commemorating revolutionaries who died in one or other of the revolutions they kept coming up with, throughout the latter years of the 19th century.
I like the private sentiments better and the cemetery is positively littered with those of course:
From the sublimely heartfelt to the wildly intimate:
The simplest epitaph tugs hardest at the heartstrings:
I know the sentiments aren't totally personal on this one but I like the cri de coeur nonetheless. I like to imagine my wife, bereft, echoing these sentiments:
Or this one, I'm guessing written to express serenity but it has overtones of hoping for the best:
I came across one vault in the Catholic section set up for a kaffee klatsch, supporting my theory that at least some family members like to hang with their deceased:
I was just an interloper in the cemetery, related to no one, vicariously wandering, but I was not entirely alone in my musings:
The Key West cemetery is wide open to anyone who feels like checking it out but it does have some rules, as confusing as any I have read. Does one park a moped inside the cemetery and is running at more than five miles per hour outlawed?
They banned mopeds and motorcycles after mourners got fed up with people racing through the cemetery using it as a short cut between Frances and Margaret Streets. The picture at the top of my blog I snapped the day before the city commission enacted the ban. Cyclists though still get to ride through:
Motorcycles bad, cars good, go figure. Cars can't use the cemetery as a short cut because the Frances Street gate is too narrow, even for a Smart Car I'm pretty sure. That would be cool,"No Mopeds, Motorcycles or Smart Cars." Mitsubishi convertibles are OK, Bonnevilles aren't? Humph.
In any event this isn't always a quiet spot for contemplation of one's mortality. It is, as I have pointed out, in the middle of town and that means the sounds of the living carry across it all. Key West is a noisy place to live; it has to be as there is no room at all to swing a sander or a drill without impacting a neighbor. And some bright spark lined up the runway at the airport so aircraft fly directly over Old Town when they come back to Earth:
Cultural segregation is alive and well in the land of the Dead where people are planted according to their typecasting :
It reminds me a bit of Bosnia Herzegovina where one could identify the sympathies of the villagers by the shape of their tombstones. As they had recently had a great deal of unpleasantness there, they had an abundance of tombstones to identify. My plan is cremation and scattering at sea, entirely ecumenical and anonymous. Though I enjoy cemeteries I do find their occupants' pursuit of graven immortality a little too hopeful. There was one headstone which carried the comment to know him was to love him, if that could have been said of me I might cheerfully submit to interment with a tombstone. However I think I am a little too astringent for such cloying sentiments, nevertheless I do enjoy the simple beauty of the cemetery with its inevitable decay and its flowered statements of loss and grief and remembrance:
And as we celebrate Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness this Independence Day Weekend, I shall spare a thought for those who are today what we will be tomorrow.
I have never lived in a place where the term local carried so much weight. When I lived in Santa Cruz, California no one ever made much of being a local, in part I am sure because locals and visitors never mixed. They drove down Ocean Street to the Boardwalk, we crossed on River and Water Streets and avoided them like the plague. In Key West such a separation of tourist from local is much harder to manage, the city is tiny, the attractions are everywhere and even residents of New Town are forced from time to time to cross paths with visitors. 
I wonder who he is because his talent is prodigious, and all I have of his are the beautiful drawings throughout this wonderful book.
The next block up is marked by Bogart's the Irish pub on Duval. This was slated for destruction a few years ago to be replaced by a gigantic entertainment complex. A neighborhood revolt ensued and miraculously Bogart's reopened the same as before, I'm told. You see Bogart's distinctive green awning and you know you are at Olivia.
Very clean, very modern, but who would have guessed the city needed one more place to buy water and chips. Another block east one comes to Simonton Street, a shady section with overhanging trees and a distinctive Dade pine house:
If one is rolling south on Simonton one also spots the muriel glued to the wall of Bobby's Monkey Bar a gay hangout eccentrically located not on the 700 block of Duval. Wilhelmina Harvey was an outspoken representative of the county at all levels of government here portrayed in Revolutionary pose in front of the old seven mile bridge accompanied by a few select locals of the era:
Harvey was a tireless self promoter, known as a "character" but a canny politician for all that, claiming many firsts- female member of the county commission, female county Mayor and she died in 2005 with the title of Mayor Emeritus attached to her name. There is a better likeness of her hanging in the Historical Museum in the Customs House.
And speaking of residential there is the old fashioned Conch style of living with everything chaotically hanging out:
Or there is the modern middle class as exemplified by these Conch homes, both renovated with nice landscaping and trees and stuff but one is clearly superior to the other:
And the winner is number two. Indeed, the second home has off street parking, and that is something it is easy to be blase about until you can't find anywhere to put the thing. I know the snowbirds are back in town when people flood the police department switchboard with complaints all night long about "their" parking space on the street in front of their house (!) being occupied, or worse some bozo is blocking their driveway (instant tow! Don't do it! $200+!!). Next to off street parking I am a fan of mature trees:
Goofy mail boxes are not exactly my cup of tea, though I confess our box has modest decorative artwork on it. Not quite as outre as this:
Speaking of fish there are seven of them at the corner of Elizabeth Street and I like to eat there from time to time:
Why they named it Seven Fish I have no idea, but a restaurant by any other name might not be so appealing. Or do I have that quotation backwards? And if the struggle to get to Windsor Lane has quite worn out the urban traveler, do not despair there is another inconvenience store and grocery on the corner filled to the brim with food and drink:
And so one comes to the final stretch of Olivia Street which soon crosses Frances and then White Street before disappearing into the bowels of The Meadows, a neighborhood that got an essay all its own a couple of months ago. Between Windsor and Frances Streets Olivia becomes a 20mph lane with a tiny sidewalk on the cemetery side and a cramped parking lot on the side with the little houses:
Undistinguished but oh-so-useful Olivia Street. A street by any other name would not smell as sweet. Or something like that.
The speed limit is a sedate thirty not observed from what I could see by local residents, and a quick squirt of the gas showed the road is smooth and wide enough to take these series of s-bends at twice the legal 
The right fork of the main road runs out soon enough, and ends with the inevitable view of the water, wedged tightly between mangroves:
Little Torch Key, like Middle Torch and Big Torch, is named for an undistinguished looking tree that apparently burns like a ...torch when it is ignited. I have no idea what 
Posted indeed. This next one appears to be appealing to Neptune for coverage in uncertain times:
It would have been nice had I noticed the 
And similarly here I also came across a coral rock wall, this time protecting a waterfront 
Away from the salt water is where one finds the bigger homes on bigger lots and they end up looking like discreet hunting lodges in the forest. I hit up a couple of dirt roads, made friends with a nervous dog:
and found a whole new subdivision I want to come back to for some in depth exploration:
Back on the paved road, civilization and a straight ride home to tea and a properly behaving lap top, at last:
Not much gas burned for an afternoon out in the sun.
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