I remarked to my wife yesterday that we must have settled comfortably into our groove as "freshwater" Conchs, because even though our islands are being sideswiped by a monstrous Category 3, soon to be Category 4 storm, we kind of expect everything to carry on as normal. She has been working on her new classroom getting it ready before she goes on vacation Saturday and I hung out with her downloading these pictures yesterday. The classroom is part of the College and is built of concrete blocks, supposedly hurricane resistant to some degree, but the ventilation system was whistling and whining as wind gusts hurled themselves at the building. It was my brilliant suggestion we eat lunch at the Conch Farm, because I was craving snapper and salad, which I got:
We also got a perky waitress who said lots of locals were turning out, like us, to make up for the lost holiday trade as Miami drivers stayed away in droves from the Keys, which are under a Tropical Storm Warning. It sounds dire but it's a whole lot better than a direct hit and Gustav is looking mighty nasty. 
The Conch Republic Seafood Restaurant was a cheerful choice for lunch sitting behind one plate glass window and open to the weather on the other side we got to feel the cool breeze and get blasts of raindrops mixing in our sodas. It gave lunch a picnic feel and that was just fine.
We got a ringside seat to watch the boats tugging at their dock lines and we talked about how neither of us missed living aboard anymore. We reminisced about storms we'd weathered at sea and at anchor and my wife shuddered thinking about the exposure to the weather of the boats anchored around Christmas Tree Island. "Anchor watch" she said, thinking how we'd take it in turns to devote our attention to whether or not we were dragging as the boat tugged and twisted in the wind gusts at anchor. Inside the restaurant it was snug:
More so at the bar where sickly colored mixed drinks were flying around the room. The antidote to stormy weather is crushed strawberries and alcohol apparently.
Conch Republic Seafood has a dandy little gift store strategically placed on the direct path to the toilets and it happened that as we waited for the gusts to abate we got to doing le shopping. My wife likes to take little gifts when she travels and she bought a couple of postcards to illustrate where she lives to people she meets in Turkey, and some "Mile Marker Zero" bumper stickers to hand out to the sailboat crew she will be lounging with. I found myself admiring the clothing, which is a bit out of character for me:
They call it the "Conch Farm" because the city helped set up the place originally as a Conch research facility to see about raising the mollusks to reintroduce them to local waters where they had been fished out. (I'm told Conch meat now comes from Honduras on the only international flights seen at the Key West Airport). 
I drove the Maxima into town deciding that the Bonneville (not me!) had earned a day of rest...But when the weather relented we decided to go for a walk and play tourists a bit. First stop was my suggestion of free pudding after lunch (English boarding schools call dessert pudding for those that think otherwise) so we made a beeline for Kermit's Key Lime store across the street.
Gaudy consumerism I know but they offer free samples and the merchandise really is good. This shop is wasted on visitors only! It turns out my wife's Turkish sailors are going to get Key Lime Taffy and hard candies whether they want them or not- personally I like the Key Lime tea cookies but it doesn't take long to get sugared out here.Outside the rain had let up for a second as we strolled Green Street, and everyone had their tropical storm protection plan in place. Usually nothing more sophisticated than a plastic bag:
The wife is into peppers for her cooking so that was the next stop and while she tasted burning mixtures I found one bottle worthy of my attention at Peppers of Key West:
My first Key West scooter was an elderly purple Honda Elite and I have a soft spot for the 50cc workhorse. I liked seeing it commemorated on a bottle. Next door Key West Hand Prints and Fabrics is going out of business and their share of the brick building is up for lease. Change is good I keep forcing myself to remember the mantra. Back at the Conch Farm Gustav's outpourings were making themselves felt in the parking lot. I wondered if this small wheeled electric car might drown in front of my camera, but no such luck:
And so it was time to go back to work for the afternoon and as I was driving I took the long way round, by the beaches. To get there I went through the middle of town past the cemetery, all windy and gray and bleak. Quite lovely, like an eighty degree November day. At the Corner of Angela we found another rainwater puddle at the famous bottle wall:
I was not alone in my idea that a pause at Higgs Beach might be fun:
The residentially challenged of Key West take foul weather in stride too it seems. This old dude has been around for quite a while and like all of us wants to make a connection with another living thing. In this case pigeons:
I did not miss the opportunity to photograph a young woman cycling one handed and shouting on the phone by Salute Restaurant in the middle of the howling winds:
Storms come ashore unimpeded on the southern beaches and Dog Park got blown around a bit. I could only imagine what might happen here with a Category Three coming ashore: 
Most of the occupants at La Brisa Condos are being bored Up North somewhere instead of watching the weather deteriorate in Key West, but not all!
This weather has scotched our plans for a weekend's boating and swimming and I have to say we feel a more than a pang of guilt that's all we've got to worry about while the Gulf Coast is going to get ravaged tomorrow by Gustav, but survival feels sweet. Assuming the tropical wave currently in the Atlantic doesn't come ashore here in a week or two...
I was out on a bright sultry August afternoon and one would think the street would be snoozing. Not at all; people were coming and going, mostly on two wheels:
There was the dog walker:
And while I was figuring how to take a shot of the bicycles, the street and the trash pile I could hear people in an animated conversation from some secret garden along the street. A busy place Dey Street:
This street is mostly residential with a variety of styles:
But there are some light industrial areas, which are really the backside of businesses on Greene Street which parallels Dey:
And have I mentioned the value of off street parking? Each spot is prominently labelled to avoid showdowns:
Of course you could use the public lot around the corner off Simonton, at ten dollars a day, and not heavily patronised in August:
Or you could sweat like a gentleman and ride a Bonneville...This guy didn't get the concept at all, he was sitting in the car (probably a rental) sweating with the roof down and he had the engine running. So he was wasting fuel, copiously and not cooling off with the air conditioning. Bizarre.
At least he wasn't parked here:
Dey Street dead ends into Elizabeth Street about where the old Jabour's Trailer Park used to be, just beyond the white picket fence:
Jabours was one of those wondrous places in Key West that every time i walked by I wondered how it still managed to exist. I never took any photos of the travel trailers that used to hang out in the park, but there they were, packed in tight and enjoying cheap waterfront living. Then the inevitable happened and the trailers, within easy strolling distance of Schooner Wharf Bar and Waterfront Market, had to go. Jabours sold the property for millions and a new condo development came in its place. Only it hasn't arrived yet as Watermark apparently has hit a reef and may have run out of money. Imagine my surprise when I spotted an RV in the open space. The trailer's are back!
Not really, I think its just some watchman preventing people from trespassing in the dirt. It's dirt today and I have a picture of it, just to remind me of what was when someone picks up the challenge and throws some more dirt around to build something new where there was something old and perfectly adequate before. 
I am not all sure what I photographed here. Its a sort of appendix off the street that fronts the cemetery, which is Passover Lane:
This little nub of a half hidden lane ducks into the bushes like the White Rabbit down his hole in Alice in Wonderland.
And it goes back a fair old way into the jungle darkness:
There's nothing much unusual or out of place up this little unpaved alleyway just the usual charming homes and flourishing plants.
And some of the houses had striking features, including an elaborate spiral staircase which I thought looked amazing in its supporting structure:
Or a particular handle on a garden gate:
And of course there always has to be one of these cluttering up the place:
But like every other interesting corner of key West one can usually find one of these:
And then its time to pop back out and face the sunlight:
And nearly get run down by a cyclist:
And Passover Lane reverts to its peaceful status quo ante:
So now I've been up and down it and photographed it and pondered it and I still don't know what it's called!
We are baking in summer's heat, and I like it. This is the weather people take time and pleasure to tell you about when they learn you live in Florida. Too hot- too humid are the words that spring to their lips as though they are imparting profound knowledge that should come as a surprise. The secret is to live on the water and usually there is a little breeze blowing. The other secret is to have a home compact enough to make it easy to keep the air conditioning on to offer a humidity free haven.
The sun is relentless, pretty much all year round in Florida, but in August and September the accumulated heat is thrown back up at you from the ground, and the ocean is simmering nicely at 80 or more degrees.
From what I've heard it is hotter and even more humid in parts of the Midwest where snowbirds go to spend summers with their families Up North. We are told summers in Florida are too hot which is why people migrate, and good for them, say I. I'll take the relentless heat and peace of long quiet summers. More or less quiet if storms stay away.
This is the time of year in the Florida Keys when tourists speak foreign and the breeze dies down and instead of an Overseas Highway we have an over-the-mirror highway, the waters as smooth as glass and uninterrupted by families boating, or rippled by the winds of Spring.
The power lines north of Stock Island stand out stark, like dead trees as they march off to the East to power Key Haven homes across the water. A closer look will confirm these are an elaborate over-the-water way to deliver power round the islands: 
A recent letter writer to the Key West Citizen repeated the tired old phrase "The quality of life just doesn't exist here anymore." And the tired old Conch is right- things have changed over the past decades. She is going back to Central Florida after failing to find work here in her original home town. But what Sharon Pierce failed to recognize in her lament to the newspaper, is that everyplace else has changed too, including no doubt the wooded paradise she fled to the first time she left her home town of Key West. Some things don't change:
And some things do change a lot. I have read lamentations in the 1912 newspaper about how the trains would ruin the island's backwater peace and quiet. More angry letters to the Editor came with the proposal to build a continuous roadway through the islands in 1938, about the time the sainted Ernest Hemingway upped sticks and buggered off to Cuba. Sharon Pierce laments "the smell of urine in the grocery parking lot," and she says Up North "fuel, utility and rents are less expensive" and so she packs her bags a second time and goes back to her relatively affordable mortgage and a urine-free life away from where she grew up in Paradise.
She's right of course, but these issues aren't new. It is expensive to live in the Keys but that's because it's worth it for some of us. I like living here in a way I've never enjoyed living anywhere, yet when I came here in 1981 there was nothing to keep me. I was 23 and looking for adventure and a tired little fishing village at the wrong end of a very slow narrow road wasn't my idea of ambitious paradise:
It took five torturous hours to reach the metropolis of Miami on this old road, and in those days Miami wasn't much, a retirement community of feeble restaurants and tired pensioners. I chose San Francisco as the metropolis I wanted to hover around when i was young and busy. I came from a backwater and i wanted bright lights. The fact is, now that I'm over the hill I too would like to get back the sleepy little fishing village Key West once was, but my age and Key West's stages of development aren't in sync, so I put up with the changes and the development and the endless bitching because this is as good as it gets:
In twenty years, after I'm dead, there will still be disaffected refugees lamenting and looking back at the turn of the century as the "good old days" and they will be right. These are the good old days and it's up to each of us to recognize that in our own lives. I look back at the past fifteen years and it seems to me now, as it did at he time, that we were living in a golden era of easy money and wild credit, just like the 1920s. Right now we are paying the price of credit driven affluence combined with uncertainty about global climate changes and ironically enough uncertain sources of supply for our cheap energy demands. we gotta get down that wide new highway...
A lot of people hate driving the Overseas Highway but to me it is a delight. I am a child of the internal combustion era, I grew up with engines and took full advantage of the ability to ride and move and be truly independent, at a time when even cheap gas seemed expensive to a young man with a motorcycle and yearnings for whatever was beyond the horizon. The Florida Keys have benefited immensely from the Internet, Satellite connections (radio for me TV for everyone else it seems) and bar codes and mail order delivery. My Internet cable broke disabling my laptop but Bell South got me a new one in two days. Free. That's life in the modern Keys, out on a limb but always in touch.
Sharon Pierce writes that despite her qualifications, recommendations and applications not one person even spoke to her about a job. That's because she missed the bus. Had Ms Pierce applied three or four years ago Ms Pierce could have had almost any job for the asking. Sure property values were higher and it wasn't any easier to live here then but those of us that held down boring jobs (not real estate, not bar tending) were worked half to death thanks to the number of unfilled positions there were throughout the city and the county. Now the party is over and the easy money is gone, and these boring civil service jobs have become our lifeline in a community without industry. My wife is sifting through thirteen well qualified applicants for a half time job (with benefits) in her old classroom. Three years ago she couldn't keep an assistant. One memorable successful applicant quit after three months because the four mile commute from Old Town was "too far."
My wife and I can afford to live here because we both work and take our jobs seriously. We show up on time and do what needs to be done, just like millions of Americans everywhere. We don't get toasted on 
Its a truism about the Keys, some people settle here and others can't stand it. It's almost as though the place is the selection committee and the Keys reject some applicants. For others the Keys are a great adventure to look back on when they are settled down in Real Life elsewhere, and bless 'em for coming. And the visitors too, the people 
I have no illusions, a medical crisis, a job lost, a storm that flattens my house, all or any of those catastrophes could kill this pleasant life. In the meantime I propose to keep on keeping on and enjoy the sunsets, not perhaps from Mallory Square but from my own angles, on the road (in the car! Gasp!!):
Or from my back porch: 
Wherever you are whatever you are doing, may your sunsets be memorable. Every day. 
On the eastern edge of Key West, between the airport and Cow Key Channel there lies a bridge and the bridge crosses a wide expanse of water:
That is the Riviera Canal and homes that face onto the canal are among the few, the very few in Key West that can boast docks of their very own.
There are a few others on Hilton Haven a street on the north side of Garrison Bight, but other than these two areas one needs to buy a house elsewhere if one wants a "wet" lot. Looking east from the bridge lie Key West city limits looking towards Stock Island over Cow Key Channel:
And there, in the midst of all that water we see one of Key West's finest on patrol:
The other end of Riviera Canal is somewhat less scenic, because for some reason the canal after a right angled turn to the north is being widened and mangrove jungle is giving way to the industrial ditch look, something less than charming:
That bridge is Flagler Avenue and as you can see, even though this waterway known as Salt Run Creek exits into the open waters north of the City, nothing much bigger than a kayak will make it all the way, so motorboats docked on Riviera canal have to head out in the opposite direction.
Some people do take the time to enjoy the scenic nature of Salt Run Creek:
As good a place as any to wait for the soup kitchen on Flagler to open. For those planning on living under a roof there are quite a few choices along Riviera Drive for I saw plenty of For Sale signs, but I'm not in the market as I have my house on a canal about 25 miles away. I just like looking at the architecture along both sides of Riviera Drive. It's a long wide street paralleling Flagler Avenue and the houses on the left are obviously the dry (no canal frontage) lots:
The housing stock is mixed, some of it is original 1960's type concrete blocks and some of it has been redone and naturally made much larger:
Even the nicest large house on Riviera Drive could use a Bonneville to enhance the aesthetics:
And speaking of Bonnevilles somehow my machine got stuck in front of the earth movers rebuilding the boat ramp at Eleventh Avenue and Riviera:
And I can't say I've ever seen a manatee in the canal but I will look per requests, this winter. Perhaps if I look I will see one. Some of the canal lots on Riviera are quite opulent. You don't see lawns like this many places in the Lower Keys:
And I suspect there are lots of boat lifts because the boats don't get used as often or as much as one might expect, a bit like most motorcycles really:
But some people do float their boats as it were:
Oh, and then there are the gates, big ones little ones pretty ones and massive ones:
There are some brave souls who live gateless in a cold unfriendly world but they compensate with lots of greenery to hide behind, just how I like it:
I find the variety of Riviera Drive endlessly fascinating and I'll take any opportunity I can to ride slowly down the street and enjoy it. There used to be sleeping policemen (British/English for speed bumps) but I guess the residents themselves got tired of them and they were pulled. If you are in a hurry it still makes sense to ride Flagler which is the main cross town thoroughfare through the middle of the island. But if, after visiting the automated teller machine machine at Bank of America you choose to ride through the bank parking lot and pop out in back, on Riviera Drive I for one wouldn't blame you.
And Old City Hall dominates Green Street as well:
Ann Street is just another of the myriad Key West streets named for women, for some reason I can't fathom. Boats get female names usually so perhaps there was just a huge number of remarkable boats that deserved streets naming after them . I don't know and as usual I am digressing. Here's the 200 Block of Ann Street, the only block in fact:
The homes along Ann are not very numerous, there's an empty lot, and how rare is that in Key West? Not as rare as you might think, and frequently they seem to be hardly used at all:
Spare ground, as it were with a dead tree standing tall like a piece of sculpture. There are the conch cottages of course, and ample palm fronds too:
Ann Street seems to rejoice in an unusually large proportion of large buildings:
Including this one with spectacular examples of fine Bahama shutters. A friend who has this type of window covering disappointed me before Tropical Storm Fay hit. She said the shutters seem nearly useless banging loudly and shaking in the winds. I always thought that in addition to looking good they made good hurricane shutters:
Perhaps others have better luck with them. I hope so because I like seeing them around town. The Curry Mansion is huge of course, it wouldn't be a mansion otherwise:
And the small houses are nestled in their foliage:
Both inside the trash cans and out of them. Joh McClane of Scooter in Turkey fame has made his disdain for bougainvillea known so I took a picture of something that isn't. I have no clue what this pink flowered arrangement is called:
The bare tree to the right is a telephone pole. I do know that. I also came across another classic car that looked to me vaguely like a Corsair though I'm probably wrong on that too:
Valuable off street parking collecting dust and cobwebs, which seems like a waste to me. And there is the distance, grilling in the August sun, lies Caroline Street:
But it's Old City Hall with its bulk that dominates Ann Street, looking back towards Greene Street:
I have noted elsewhere on the offices underneath the building undergoing renovation. The work viewed from the exterior seems extensive:
But these are beautiful and impressive doorways, suitable for such a building as this:
The city is talking about moving the current city hall from Angela Street and building something new elsewhere. This place looks big enough surely?
And one could sit and contemplate its proportions from a comfortable table across the street on Greene:
If you are blind drunk and needing somewhere to snooze is that orange sign on the pretty picket fence going to put you off? I can guarantee you it won't. I've taken too many calls from angry citizens who find people passed out in their yards. These No Trespassing signs are everywhere and they disfigure the landscape. And still people continue to trespass. Count trespassing as one reason I don't want to live in the City. For instance a new restaurant opened on Simonton Street recently and the enthusiastic and naive restaurateur thought this was the ideal spot for a sidewalk cafe so he put out tables and chairs, but omitted to nail them down. Next morning they were gone. Talk about trespassing! 
This avalanche of signs gives off an air of futility and desperation. One...more...sign...will keep them out, they seem to say. I doubt it. 
I'm going to bet the bicycle is not Mayor McPherson's but I guess we can let that pass. Every Tuesday evening when the commission meets we have to send a Parking Control Officer into the parking lot to clear vehicles out of the assigned spaces. They get towed and every meeting it keeps on happening. Like I say human behavior ain't going to change, and you'd think No Parking At Any Time would be clear enough. And if it isn't don't call me to bitch about the cost of the towing fee.
This homeowner on Dey Street is lucky enough to have an All American garage with a proper swing up door and everything. Park in front of it and you will get towed. But people still do and they get incensed when they discover the towing fee is somewhere north of two hundred dollars. All day at the Park And Ride is a measly thirteen dollars.
Because I live here I have a few extra curricular "comfort stations" I can use when the need arises, so my consideration of the availability of public toilets is a little biased. Even so, I think Key West does quite well by its citizens when it comes to loos. We have them at all the beaches and more than one park. Its not that hard to make a pit stop in some of the restaurants and a $1.60 Cafe Americano at Starbucks gets you a pleasant walk through the delightful lobby of La Concha to the hotel loo. But those signs are everywhere, like its a helpful thing to make tourists bottle it up, and like No Trespassing signs, they seem a little snippy and unnecessary. 
Not one, but three signs to that effect. The banner across the top is the sign advertising the construction company that is doing good work renovating the offices. The city's actual City Hall is on Angela Street at Simonton, behind the Fire Station. Old City Hall is just the place where commissions and committees meet, downstairs the office space used to be leased to the Marine Sanctuary until they got their new building on the waterfront. Personally I think the big wooden doors would look much nicer without Sturm und Drang signage.
Carlos Rojas advertises himself as a political novice and he has done nothing in the campaign to disabuse us of this notion. However this sign was posted next to a rather tasty Vespa LX50 and he is putting people first. I really like the Vespa but what does his slogan mean? What, for instance, is he putting second? My wife really likes one of the candidates for judge so we have a sign for some poor unfortunate candidate in our front yard (its a dead end road so God knows who will see it). Whether or not you had designs on your son for public office, if you were Mrs Slaton would you call your son Tegan? It must be a nice family name but Teagan Slaton just has an uneasy cadence to my ear. For the sake of family harmony he gets my vote for judge on Tuesday, but really Tegan? Luckily were I in his court, which is unlikely as he would be a family court Judge, he will be known simply as Honorable Judge Slaton. I find parenst to be unaccountable sometimes. 
This sign I liked. It's polite and covers pretty much every eventuality. I thought about standing on the steps to eat, but eating is outlawed, please. You can't sit, thank you, so I moved on. Off Duval, more precisely at the haunted theater on the 500 block of Eaton Street they are less polite:
I think the bill I saw posted on the old box office window which said "Lost Liberty" was about more than a simple lack of freedom to loiter, even though I'm not entirely sure what constitutes "loitering." Perhaps I was loitering by hanging around in the entrance. Was I saved from the sin of idle standing by virtue of the fact I was photographing?
Lost Liberty indeed. Across the street I saw, rather than noticed the Freemason's Hall, as announced by large silver letters:
If the secrets of Freemasonry titillate you Voltaire books next door had just the solution:
All apparently might be revealed if you like that sort of thing.
There are yoga studios popping up all over town, it must be quite the rage because I'm sure if you were to swing a cat, before you were arrested, you would hit at least three on any street corner. With all this yoga going on it amazes me there are enough adherents to go round, but it seems there are: 
I've never really thought of Key West as a very spiritual place, like say Boulder or Taos or Mount Shasta, but perhaps I only see what I expect to see. 
Key West has gone through a lot of street names in it's history and not all of them have survived. This particular one leads me to wonder exactly how long have chickens been roaming the streets of Key West. I went to a wake recently of an almost centenarian, to offer my condolences to his son, and it had shocked me to learn in his obituary that he had worked on the construction of the Overseas Highway in 1938. That road project seems so far away I was amazed that I had met, unknowing, with one of the few people left alive at that time,who were there and saw the road built over the old railraod tracks. 
On my trips walking downtown Key West I have amassed quite a few pictures which didn't fit in with the stories I wanted to tell so I thought to string them together at random like the billboard says at Sloppy Joe's: "You'll see it all at Key West Diary." First I caught these chickens standing around being fowl in New Town. I am not overly fond of them but so far my neighborhood on Ramrod Key is fowl free. I like my mourning doves, thanks, Key West can have it's chickens.
Alongside the chickens I saw this decrepit old thing, with 25,000 miles on the clock and nothing left to give I rather think. These 40 year old Honda 750s were ground breaking motorcycles when I was a kid, four cylinders, disc brakes and reliable, they spelled the end of the dominance of Harley Davidsons and Triumphs in the big bike leagues:
Sic transit gloria mundi. On the streets of downtown I saw what appeared to be a mundane pizza delivery machine, in a picture that at first seemed over exposed and yet on reflection illustrates the white hot heat of summer (with apologies to Arizona where it is really hot):
And here's a puzzler, what has pie got to do with the Virgin Islands I wonder?
Personally I'd rather have a roti (a Caribbean burrito frequently of goat meat). On the subject of food I noticed fake Scandinavian ice cream has moved into the building where Ben and Jerry's used to be:
I saw these people scooping soft serve from the chain restaurant, so I guess they came all this way to eat what is familiar rather than try something new and exotic at Flamingo Crossing down Duval?
Mind you, locals like this place, DQ, out of all proportion; good luck finding it if you are a visitor:
And on the subject, more or less of food, I understand this place will soon be no more, as the landlord has raised the rent out of sight, they say:
Somebody I'm sure will lament their passing, but I for one found deep fried balls of macaroni and cheese to be a little too robust for even my digestive system. Police officers will undoubtedly miss the weekend off duty details, if the rumors of their imminent closure are true.
The city has been making noises about forcing residents to recycle, an idea that so far has gone over like the proverbial lead balloon. People in Key West are not known for their foresight, charming though they may be. Putting up bizarre signs isn't beyond the grasp of your average Key West business person, even if recycling is beyond their grasp:
No Trespassing? Where? At the payphone? Who are these people with these weird signs, what do they mean? I am going to go to my grave with too many unanswered questions, I know it.
Here's an example of a Captain Outrageous scooter:
Some people, the lucky ones, come to Key West and discover they have a gift previously unknown to them. Others find their reward at the DMV, but the message remains the same:
And some encourage youngsters to be creative. I am very fond of the painting project on city fireplugs all around town, another expression of Key West style:
Do you suppose this crocodile of out of town youngsters gets to be creative with fire hydrants Up North?
And had they looked up from following Dad's exertions they might have spotted this, which I actually doubt because I hadn't spotted it before. I don't even know why I was looking up at the top of the Curry mansion when I did see it:
I am unsure if it's a wrecker looking hopefully for a wreck, or the captain's wife checking for his ship, or the captain's wife's anxious lover doing the same (as some rather spiteful interpretations of the widow's walk have the legend). Anyway there it is for all to see and for most of us never to notice. (They took him/her down for Fay and s/he wasn't back up a week later). Or what about this suspension of reality?
It makes the bicycle harder to steal I grant you but it also makes it bloody awkward to use. A bad parking job you might argue, like my silver Nissan Maxima parked on Elizabeth Street, only a short walk from the curb. But the red pickup was all over the sidewalk. Disgraceful says I:
You'd think we had both been imbibing at Hogs Breath but I know I hadn't, I just stopped by to take a picture...
...and just look at those bicycles, what a gruesome parking job. I am not alone.
That's the minimum distance one should leave between the back of the car and ahead and the front of one's front tire. Start counting as the car in front passes a road sign, a bridge abutment or a mark in the roadway. Then count the seconds until your front tire hits the same mark. 
I have been doing this for so long yet I continue to surprise myself by finding that I automatically find myself separated by two seconds from the car in front. Most of the time. Then I count.One Elephant. Two Elephant. 
The other thing that tailgating does is that it alerts the nerd in front of you that you are anxious to pass. That's a bad thing because no matter how slow they are going, as soon as you declare your intentions, they will speed up. So I hold back, drift from side to side to look around them thus making sure I have room to pull in when past them and also to make sure there aren't any cops in the line of cars to be passed (that's embarrassed me before now!) and then when they least expect it, on goes the turn signal and I pull out smartly into the left lane, check the way is clear and then I pile on the gas to get out of the danger zone as fast as possible and to let the victim know resistance is futile. They try to keep up but half a mile at 15 over the limit and the angriest of them will surrender gracelessly to the Bonneville and my determination. Then I slow down and cruise at my chosen speed. One Elephant. Two Elephant.
I leave more seconds it the road is slightly wet, if visibility is poor (I can't remember the last time I saw fog), say in a real downpour, or if I am out of sorts. If I am riding and feeling distracted, I might leave four seconds to give me time. If I am in heavy traffic I leave more room, maybe four seconds.One Elephant. Two Elephant. Three Elephant. Four Elephant.
You are taking care of yourself, elegantly, quietly and without any apparent fuss.
Higgs Lane is on Elizabeth Street between Eaton and Caroline, and should not be confused with nearby Donkey Milk Lane:
At least I'm pretty sure this is Donkey Milk Lane because there was no sign to that effect though I'm guessing there aren't many drunk tourists who could resist the urge to decorate their homes with such a sign. I have drunk horse milk and found it unpleasantly sweet; on the subject of donkey's milk I have no opinion. 
And peeking through the trees one can see the backside of the immortal Federal Building on Simonton Street, huge and lumpen dominating everything. I guess it must be a quiet neighbor at least:
Higgs Lane gives neighbors the opportunity for peaceful sunlit reflection if they are lucky enough have an upstairs deck:
Others have a rather more, how can I say?- eclectic taste in home decor:
While others who have the bad luck to have to go Up North for the summer have to button up their homes in case of hurricane while they are gone:
Back out on Elizabeth Street I spotted the Christian Science Reading room which would have done nicely for a little variety on my recent essay on churches. Anyway here it is
In my younger days I found these reading rooms to be pleasant places to check out the Christian Science Monitor, a fine newspaper (whose radio service I used to report for occasionally many years ago even though I am not a Christian Scientist nor would I ever be- I love my doctor!- in the interests of proper disclosure). It's worth reading from time to time for a different perspective. Actually the Reading Room looks typically funky Keys from the outside. And as Istood on the sidewalk contemplating my pictures from Higgs Lane a French couple swung by and there he was, at it again on the phone:
Is this how modern couples share a pleasant walk together? I prefer the company of my Canon to that of my Nokia.
What the handle came off I can't imagine, perhaps a shovel designed for an eight foot tall gardener. And meeting this dude every day outside my front door would get old in a hurry for me:
On the other hand this haven is entirely irresistible. It came as a surprise not find anyone actually enjoying it:
On the subject of the irresistibly bizarre I thought this was a piece of Adams Family style advertising. "Seats? We don't need no stinkin' seats!" Conch cruiser par excellence.
United Street is a main road leading out of the south end of Duval towards White Street. Its wide and straight and devoid of stop signs so vehicles tend to just whizz along it and I doubt they take the time to check out some of the stuff that lines the street. I was on foot in the baking sun so I had all the time in the world to check out these delightful old Florida storm shutters:
And there is the youth hostel as well, which I had heard was to be demolished. Perhaps the imploding economy saved the Seashell Motel:
I doubt rooms are still $18 a night but I'll bet its still an excellent deal. This place pulses with young people, hormones and bicycles in winter. I have heard that the imploding economy may have done no good for the Spottswood's grandiose plans for the Beachside Hotel (nee Holiday Inn). Rumor has it they can't afford it and Marriott is taking it over. And bang go their plans for a huge indoor convention center across the street from Beachside. I'm sure it's just a temporary setback, so opponents of development might want to keep their breaths bated.
Up the street there was a burst of greenery and someone knows how to keep a pristine yard, I was green with envy:
Trimmed clipped and neat and a flourishing coconut palm glorious in the sunlight, I mean its not like I don't get to see enough of these trees but this was quite a nice example of the breed:
Somebody spends altogether too much time trimming off the dead and half dead fronds off this one. Mine should be so lucky. Oh and this is apparently dentist's row because another tooth fondler has set up shop in the neighborhood. Brick buildings are relatively rare in Key West and when I see one, especially with wrought iron accents they put me in mind of classic Southern architecture.
Fair enough this is no court house or other substantial structure but the bricks, the iron and the shutters give it a certain ambiance in a town filled with wooden houses. This one below is more like it, a hot tin roof with a ridiculous cat walk on the top. One could hardly call this a widow's walk could one? No access, no view of the ocean if you could scale it. No captain's wife anxiously scanning the horizon for the return of the husband's ship.
Other homes in the area have their own, lesser embellishments:
Poetic license allows for the dreaded satellite receivers- two of them!- as embellishments. And let's not forget the charming order to stay out!
I don't know why people disfigure their homes with these signs. Its pretty obvious its a home and if somebody is intent on trespassing a five-and-dime sign isn't going to change their mind. Its just ugly in my view. 
I saw a parking instruction I had trouble understanding based on the fact that the parking area was gravel and had nothing painted on the ground:
I guess one gets to figure out one's own angles. As if we don't all the time anyway when we drive our lumbering cars. And not far away a rather more refined take on the same issue:
The Jeep had the angle thing all worked out without instructions, and wasn't poking into the street at all. The homeowners' association on the other hand took the time to threaten mayhem and towing in no uncertain terms. 
Ooosterhoudt got all upset when the Feds decided they needed anti- terrorism protection for the magnificent US Customs House that takes up a great deal of the city block.
They got the idea that a bunch of gruesome orange plastic barricades would keep dangerous vehicles from mounting the front steps of the building and causing unmentionable damage to the building. Oosterhoudt wanted none of them. He pointed out that they floated away in periods of street flooding and they looked utterly grotesque and ugly. He asked the Feds to find a better solution. They came up with what I think are the rather attractive flower planters. And everyone is happy. Of course I have to find the fly in the ointment and its nothing more than that, its a small thing because the outcome was good. During the kerfuffle I forgot that Oosterhoudt lives in the massive pile across the street from the Federal Building:
Casa Antigua houses the charmingly named "Pelican Poop" gifte shoppe and also manages somehow to claim a slice of the city's favorite literary son. Everyone wants a piece of Hemingway, and it seems his first rented apartment was in a building almost as massive as the federal Building across the street:
Until I came trudging up Rose Lane under the hot August sun it hadn't occurred to me that the former city commissioner lives right where the orange blocks would have struck him straight in the eye, had he been looking out the front windows of his palazzo. I'm happy that small piece of orange urban blight is gone but it does kind of irk me that it was because it irked him that he was moved to get all fussy about it. Silly of me I know, but I still expect more from our leaders, like perhaps taking care of issues that aren't just on their own doorstep. I have no idea what the security guard at the Federal Building expects of his leaders but I was unwilling to intrude on his moment of introspection:
What it brought to mind was an image I carry around in my head of a much younger me, when I was footloose and fancy free on my first trip around the world. It was October 1981 and I was enjoying a cold fall day in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, if that's possible. It was a stop I made on my week long train trip across the USSR from Khabarovsk to Moscow. I was 23 and keen to see things on my walkabout so I found these old wooden houses which apparently were scheduled for demolition to make way for more efficient apartment blocks. I can't remember who I got to take the picture for me, I think it was a British diplomat somewhat surprised to find a young westerner wandering alone in the steppes...
Fed up with the palm tree banging his roof the home owner nailed a boat fender (or bumper if you prefer) to the roof. Seems to work a treat, on two palm trees, one on either end of the house.
The past couple of years I have favored the drama offerings at the Waterfront Playhouse as the Red Barn has been weighted rather heavily on the campy musical type of theater that I am less fond of. Nevertheless I was in the neighborhood, so I strolled up the lane next to the Key West Women's Club:
Is this a great private nook to hang out in, or what? It would be if they weren't busy doing construction, so I had to turn around and tramp back out. Hard Rock Cafe was doing odd things with their chairs so naturally I clicked the Canon's shutter:
Duval Street looks hot and white down at the end of the alley doesn't it? Roll on Winter!
My wife recently turned down her chance to get a blue and silver convertible Smart car. She decided we should keep her new-to-her Sebring convertible and wait for a better choice of small, more fuel efficient cars to come to the US market in a few years. I was surprised by her decision because she seemed to have really fallen in love with the little two seater. 
I doubt somehow he would have the same effect driving a smartfortwo instead of his BMW.
Others in Key West use scooters to get around town and parking really is a breeze:
Others rent and wear the sort of clothing that would get loud tut-tuts on Modern Vespa and other motorcycling fora:
Away from the hustle and bustle of commerce downtown. Of which there is plenty:
Then he asked me something about my work and he wanted me to confirm a rumor. he asked if its true that we get lots more calls on the night of the full moon, and i had to confess that in my experience it is a lot busier for the emergency services when there is a full moon. I pointed out I don't believe in such superstitions, but it does seem, in my experience, that we are busier at that time. Hmm, he pondered, that's odd, because the moon is just the same, only more of it is visible. He has his feet on the ground does Curt, but we had to part ways with the conundrum unsolved.
And humble Navy Officer housing converted to million dollar waterfront condos:
Thanks in large part to the spark ignited by the old man of Woman Key.
The Bonneville was dry and snug in the Fire Station, adjacent to the Police Station and all the firefighters were out dealing with downed wires and exploding transformers so I wheeled the Triumph out, loaded my kit bag and wasted no time meeting up with my wife at her friend's house where I offloaded the bag into her car. 
We had a convivial dinner with some other Fay survivors and shared horror stories from past storms. Carol was telling us how, when she was a naive twenty year old in Key West she got drunk and went to Higgs Beach with some friends and amused themselves by getting knocked over by waves crashing over the seawall during a storm. How is it, I asked, we have got so serious about storms? We own houses now, she said, a wise middle aged property owner. Now we don't party, we put up storm shutters and worry.
Key West was damp and bedraggled with a few signs knocked over and a few palm fronds in the streets, but things didn't look so bad. My route didn't take me downtown but in New Town, on Flagler I saw the 1950s style Lulu's Kiss Drive In still had it's umbrellas up. How did they survive?
And so it goes. The National Hurricane Center hasn't a clue what happens next and everyone has an opinion. "It's not getting above Tropical Storm strength (40 miles and hour sustained)" one person will tell you as they screw in their storm shutters. "I heard it may reach Category Two," says another shouted comment across the canal. No one knows anything- towards marathon- Towards Key West - they guess the landfall. As we get closer to this modest storms' arrival everyone is getting a little bit concerned and storm shutters are appearing and people are buying supplies. It's easy to be blase about hurricanes when they are still days away, but most people drop the facade as they face the possibility of getting swamped. Besides television news doesn't help, they always hype stuff up. That's one reason I don't have TV reception at my home. Near midnight Sunday,I saw a reporter standing in front of the Southernmost Point which was all wrapped in plastic and looking rather undignified.
Heaven knows what she was reporting; there is nothing to report, so I go to my quiet place and think of my deck, my recliner, a glass of lemonade and a quiet evening in the Keys:
Pity the poor Floridians Up North, after they dig themselves out they won't be lucky enough to be in the Keys.
At first I thought: "Wow! Cool, they've downgraded us to a Tropical Storm Watch!" But then I looked closer at the eleven am advisory and I realised the National Hurricane Center has simply overlaid a Tropical Storm Warning over the Hurricane Watch. That means we could get tropical storm conditions within 24 hours. That could mean winds up to 40 miles per hour by tomorrow. It could be worse I suppose. Especially if we do end up with Hurricane conditions.
The weather locally has turned cool and and gray this morning. Of course when I say cool I mean 80 degrees with a light damp breeze. Non of that Alaskan 50 degree August chill down here thanks. Actually 50 degrees would be great right now as even if I needed to wear fleece that would stop Fay dead in its tracks. On the other hand we have been working like dogs and in between excited chatter-filled calls from all her girlfriends my wife has packed my bag for work, packed her bags and helped me bring all the outside crap inside:
I put our generator and some of our jugged fuel upstairs on the porch. That was something I started doing when I realised flooding might really happen which served me well after Wilma.
Don't forget the power cord! Or the bug juice because the mosquitoes are ferocious and omnipresent after a storm.
With the storm shutters up we are now inside our shell attempting to watch a DVD but, no matter how low risk Fay may be at this point, it's always there gnawing away.
Then we put our feet up and wait. I wish the Tropic Cinema were open tonight as I had hoped to see the Hunter Thompson biography but I guess not. It seems rather churlish to grumble.
So now it's official, the national Hurricane Center has issued a Hurricane Watch for all the Keys, which means Tropical Storm winds may start to affect us within 36 hours. The city of Key West has ordered an evacuation of visitors to begin at eight o'clock this morning, which means hotels will start to close.
Well bugger. Its official, all leave is cancelled and we get locked down Sunday at work. The good news for me is I am ordered in at midnight Sunday (overtime!) which gives me time to get the house sorted. In the spirit of this emergency I have postponed my planned essays around town and the Keys and will be writing storm related essays as long as the Internet is up, about what I'm doing and what is happening. I apologize to those that come here for rest and relaxation and a few nice pictures but the storm is sort of uppermost in my mind even though it can't seem to make up its mind about how strong it should be nor which direction it should take. And for those of you dreaming or planning a life in the Keys, this is just the Serpent in Paradise that one has to deal with every summer...
And yes I have cut down my coconuts, not because I could get sued, as ownership is hard to prove but because they become cannonballs in 100 mile-per-hour winds. Coconuts are non native trees and are prolific so it takes work to keep them trimmed and I harvest hundreds of coconuts from the dozen mature trees I inherited around my home. My house is a stilt home and we use the downstairs for storage, as a workshop as an outdoor laundry and we hang our clothes to dry down here too.
Stilt homes are handy not only for flood avoidance purposes but because all wiring and plumbing is easily visible overhead if anything breaks. Plus you get tons of shade to keep cars and motorcycles out of the sun which is the real ruin down here, not necessarily fresh clean rain that washes everything off.
The barbeque grill (which will get strapped down to the deck) sits on the cement chamber that would store 12,000 gallons did it not suffer from periodic leaks...be that as it may we haven't run out of rainwater in the past 18 months and we only use the piped aqueduct water to run our washing machine mostly. My home was built in 1987 among the first in the subdivision before electricity and water were supplied to the street.
Furniture should fold or collapse, be comfortable lightweight and stack able. These are not the normal criteria but when we buy stuff we try to picture ourselves in this very position: storm coming!
I have a small (2400watt) gasoline generator by Yamaha. It can power the fridge (800 watts) lights fans and TV/DVD player (we don't have satellite or cable reception) and of course Sirius Satellite Radio- all the essentials except a/c. We decided to go with small and portable in our generator for simplicity and ease of maintenance and it is also very quiet; you can talk while standing right next to it. I might have gone for the Honda 1000 but I like the Yamaha dealers at Garrison Bight much more than Victor the Honda dealer on Simonton Street...
I have a skiff at our dock,a 14 foot Dusky which is self bailing (very important for those sudden summer squalls that drop four inches of water while you are at work!) and it rode out all the storms of 2005 at the dock...but I decided I need to get it together to put it on the trailer and stop pushing my luck:
They slide into the upper frame on the window and are screwed in using butterfly nuts at the bottom, overlapping as you go:
This type are laborious and awkward to use especially if you don't have decks to walk on, but I think they are the most secure and my insurance company agrees. Modern sliding shutters are very easy to use and are very good also while plywood sheets are a pain in the ass t nail up, labor intensive and awakward to store. 
That's looking south towards Cuba whence cometh Fay. I hope its"only" a Category One, or pehaps a modest near miss.
Since those early days the new homeowners have repainted them of course, various shades of this and that:
As well as the larger, and straighter, thoroughfare called Eagle Avenue:
These are all streets with fairly abundant greenery which adds to the charm, and homeowners in Smurf Village enjoy duplexes with yards large enough to grow a bush or two:
I haven't heard the term Smurf Village used in a while so perhaps it has faded from the lips of newer arrivals, perhaps the Smurfs are no longer the craze they once were and perhaps too, people who paid half a million or more for their duplex may not want to think of themselves as living in a cartoon character's toadstool. Even though they do boast those pronounced overhangs and easily identified silhouettes:
Make no mistake these are duplexes:
I know a couple of people who live in Smurf 
And like everywhere else in Key West, when it comes to real estate, if you wait long enough it will come on the market:
This sign looked pretty weathered so a cute Smurf home with pool may or may not still be looking for a happy new owner...
These papier mache things are everywhere around there, posed and staring fixedly into a future that will never come. It is bizarre, but at least some of the visitors think they are great fun:
And this guy isn't a statue at all, he just looks a bit like one owing to a slight lull in the flow of customers:
This next one looks like a New England purveyor of tinned seafood more than a rugged Key West Conch hunter. I don't suppose the punters really care one way or the other, it's just me being fussy:
And this one with his idiot's grin plastered forever on his vacuous face has overtones that dare not speak their name:
I am probably just too sensitive for this sort of thing. I needed something pure and innocent and traditional but the best I could come up with was this, though what the hell this little tableau is all about I have no idea:
And though it is decidedly traditional some critics argue the Pez Garden is not Art. It all defies definition if you ask me. The Pez Garden is the local name for the Sculpture Garden wherein some notable heads from Key West history are on display:
This is Commodore Porter who vanquished pirates and buccaneers from around Key West and set such a high moral tone locals petitioned the Department of the Navy to get him out of there:
He ended up a mercenary on the Barbary Coast helping North African governments deal with their own piracy problems. Which goes to show virtue is definitely not its own reward. I need to be invited to write school history textbooks, the little dears would get quite an eye opener.
And across Mallory Square, a young man was busy impressing a young woman:
Hemingway had his movable feast; I have my movable statue. Home James, and don't spare the horsepower! 
Or this one, walking in circles and frantically trying to get his point across:
I expect I can be forgiven for a being a phone curmudgeon bearing in mind my line of work, but I am generally slow to take up technology of the sake of it. Besides, I hate myself when I answer my home phone inadvertently by saying "Key West Police..." that's when I know work is interfering with my peace of mind. This dude takes indifference to a whole new level:
Part of me admires his indifference to societal disapproval but I guess everything gets blunted by the gut warmth of alcohol. This next guy I snapped on the fly. Street performers play to tourists in Key West and they are always looking around for someone to interact with, and that most definitely would not be me. I don't mind dropping a buck in the hat if they play well but I don't like interactive theater, thanks, so I hurry along:
On the subject of indifference I must confess I feel nothing about the Olympics in China. I am one of those who, lacking television reception finds it easy to block out the running around and discus hurling. Until I come across a small reminder, this one a trunk sticker on a statue outside the Museum of Art and History:
Ho hum says I, spotting something much more interesting up ahead. A crane, large and industrial no less:
It seems the Westin Hotel (nee Hilton) is expanding its garage. Either that or they are demolishing it, which is too much to hope for:
Across the street there used to be employee parking on a large gravelled lot. I used to leave my scooter there when the covered scooter parking was full. I was working as a boat captain in the Hilton marina and there was more space, now we have more housing bless us everyone, but it doesn't look like workforce housing to cynical old me:
My blood sugar was back to more or less normal by now and my headache was quite gone. That left me able to appreciate beauty once again and here is another of those weird fan palms I last saw on James Street. Now I notice them they are appearing everywhere:
And in closing, on the subject of parking, the lady and all her dogs was absent from her post on the street corner I usually see her at.
Perhaps she was having her blood drawn and hadn't quite recovered. 
Across the street is the Tropic Dive Shop and next to the police station is the other means of locomotion, the place with the big blue sign known as Duncan Autos:
When people want to meet at the police station I tell them we're next to the Ford dealership because that sign is easy to spot on the Boulevard. Duncan also sells Toyotas while Niles, further up the street sells GM and Nissan, and the "other" dealership is a Kia in between the two. Want to buy another kind of car? Head North...
There's a building that is supposedly undergoing refurbishment and every time I go by I see this raw, naked cement and it reminds me of third world semi-constructed buildings. It's occupied but has no plaster or paint on the exterior and it looks like an Albanian customs post, functional but graceless.
Times are hard and foreclosures lurk around every corner. Captain Runaground's floating restaurant is no more and I didn't even notice it's passing. I never ate there but it was there on Key West's industrial waterfront and now it is a a Thai restaurant, garrison Bight's second such restaurant:
The funky cover is gone with all the dangling bric-a-brac. My wife shrugged when I asked her if she knew about the change; "Of course," she said and I wonder how many other abrupt reversals have gone unnoticed by me. Some things don't change, bus stops as trash cans (drinking on buses is not allowed):
One of the great things about scooters is that you can always find some unnoticed spot to abandon them in. Here's one covered in dust, parked and forgotten, and likely only to be noticed if there is a fire in the neighborhood:
On my hour long lunch break I had intended to stroll all the way round the bight but such is the attraction of the unconsidered trifle I got about one third of the way round, as far as the light tackle charter fleet dock near the harbor master's hut:
Personally I prefer my fish alive and vital in the water but taxidermy is apparently alive and well and advertising in Key West:
I had a brief chat with the Security Guard in his golf cart and it was time to head back to the office and my computer screen. Ah, but before I go George Street is begging for a picture.
For some reason Key West streets manage to stretch to infinity. This must all be in the eye of the beholder (they aren't really infinitely long!) and I think it has something to do with the lack of land on all sides, and this knowledge inside my head makes what there is look longer. Which is of course the male human condition. Anyway that's George Street stretching south towards Havana at three fifty in the morning. 
A large concrete structure at the corner of Grinnell and James Streets does not seem like a very good subject at first glance for a blog essay but there is more to the Park and Ride than meets the eye. Parking in Key west is a nightmare for much of the year. In winter it gets desperate and in summer it gets better, but the issue of where to leave your cage is always on the mind of residents. Not for nothing I have noted previously that OSP is a valuable asset for home buyers to consider. Off Street Parking has become a premium item owing to the mad need for bigger homes and garage conversions that swept the city. Not everyone can bring themselves to ride motorcycles and the city has set aside some precious few scraps of land for parking. The Park and Ride is the big bad daddy of them all.
It is in many respects a conventional operation: drive in, collect ticket as you go, park and leave. Pay for parking on return, pick up car and drive out. $2 per hour, $13 a day, with a $100 per month option. Storing cars in the Park and Ride is strictly prohibited:
And the multi storey building is prime ground for parking when a hurricane threatens. Especially after Wilma drowned 10,000 cars in 2005. Some people park their classics here to collect dust:
The Park and Ride also offers that most Floridian commodity, shade:
If it occurs to you that this open cement area might be ideal for skateboarding you might be surprised to learn others have already thought of this and police officers take it upon themselves to patrol the parking garage at odd hours to keep it nuisance free. However the steps make an excellent spot to pass some time of a sunny July afternoon:
This philosopher surprised me by A) drinking tea not beer on the stairs and B) bemoaning his ex-wife and not asking me for money as I carried my camera to the top floor.
After I checked out the Fly Navy building (Bachelor Officers Quarters is the Navy's proper name for the building with the words Fly Navy! painted on the side) I noted someone had been rhapsodising on the garage walls:
Indeed you get quite the view from the third floor of the Park and Ride. Across the leafy streets of the city, towards Strunk Hardware:
At the entrance to the Coastguard Base at Trumbo Point:
At the luxury Steam Plant condos and the low income Railroad Condos in the foreground:
At Wisteria (Christmas Tree) Island in the background, with the Fort Myers ferry wending its way out of the Key West harbor:
And the Key West Bight laid out higgeldy piggeldy before me, a mass of masts and boats and water:
I was almost but not quite alone at the top, admiring the views:
It couldn't have been a brighter summer afternoon, but apparently not bright enough for the city to dim its parking lights, in these times of expensive energy:
The late afternoon sun, not the electric lights, gave my shadow a peculiar profile. I look as though I am dressed in sackcloth of a particularly bad fit:
I read in Joy Williams' excellent guide to the Florida Keys that there was a time people got married up here and I think I found the ideal location:
And this is where we broach that other particular secret. If you don't want to get married or go skateboarding you can still climb up here and have a sunset picnic, all to yourself most likely, and watch the famous Key West sunset from an almost unknown spot. Or you can mingle with the plebs at Mallory Square, but now you know you have a choice. Also we discover here the reason for the Park and Ride's peculiar name:
For the cost of a ticket you get to ride around town all day on the city buses. Cool deal indeed with your car safely in the shade. If you ride a two wheeler you don't need the Park and Ride; mine was in a free spot on James Street:
And as usual aircraft fly low overhead, especially low if you are on the top floor,
as they make their way to land at the airport across town. Downstairs being local has its privileges as the lower floor is currently reserved for Keys Energy employees whose headquarters is across the street:
Even though the Park and Ride doesn't solve Key West's parking issues it is a useful building. And if like me you are easily amused you can spend a happy hour here pootling around and enjoying the views...simple things for simple minds.
Call me lucky, or call me smart but I choose to ride a motorcycle to and from work which makes the commute highly enjoyable.
And even though these pictures were taken between Big Pine Key and the Seven Mile Bridge aforementioned and are thus not part of my route, I get to see stuff very much like this every evening on my way in to work, on my green Triumph Bonneville.
Even though gas prices are still around $4 a gallon (one US dollar per liter) and I only get around 43 miles per (US) gallon, or 16 kilometers per liter, the pleasure of the ride makes the commute well worth burning dead dinosaurs. As I pointed out previously gas needs to get more expensive (!) to make the bus worthwhile...
One of my friends complains the summers are too hot to ride. I'm lucky because I work nights and commute in the evening with the sun low on the horizon, so even though it can still be ninety degrees (32C) it never feels too hot to me. Over most of my life I've been too cold far too often and those occasions stick in my memory. The Keys are humid but temperatures rarely hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38C). And there's always lots of gorgeous blue water to flop into all up and down the Fabulous Florida Keys, if you are a over heated visitor driving down for some end-of-the-road fun. One of the great things about Highway One in Monroe County is that you can pretty much park alongside the Highway wherever you feel like and there are trash cans all along the way. Bring a picnic! Go for a swim! Visitors find it warm enough to swim in winter, imagine what an al fresco bathtub it is in August:
And of course there are the people who derive their living from the sea, like these:
Me? I'd rather ride to work and use my boat to play.
It started out as a rant in my head. "Why does some stupid Chinese middle manager in the Special Economic Zone think he's doing anyone any good by forcing his slaves to wrap these bloody chairs in miles of stupid plastic?" You know the thought. It goes round and round in your head as you struggle with some impossibly recalcitrant inanimate object.
And then, squatting in the heat under the house waving your Leatherman around you focus your unreasonable, unreasoning ire on the human who must have been responsible for your predicament.
And still the stupid plastic unravels inch by precious inch and gets caught in the screw heads and forces, forces I tell you, your Leatherman blade to scrape the painted metal thus causing the scratches the stupid plastic was supposed to prevent. And it's not my fault my hands are a bit greasy from fiddling with the motorcycle, is it?
Which is when one realises one is being bloody stupid and the rant trails off into self conscious incoherence. Actually the new outdoor recliners look quite nice, at $69 apiece remarkably so. Even with more of that stupid ineffectual plastic clinging to the legs.
And they look a lot nicer than the old plastic ribbed cushioned things that are mouldering and ready for the dump. Out with the old and in with the new.
Somehow in the lottery of life I got to be born on the rich side of the blanket, the part that buys new chairs on a whim, that gets to toss out the old ones, too old and funky even for Habitat, and then I, the lucky one gets to test the new chairs on the dock, and gets to check out the sky and the clouds and the passing boats and the impossibly still waters of the canal that reflects the stormy summer skies.
Hmmm. Life could be worse.
Ohio Key comes in two parts, the nature park to the south of the highway and the trailer park to the north. As far as I know the trailer park is living on borrowed time, because there was an agreement some time ago to hand the southern portion of the island to the park service in return for condo-isation of the northern half. So far, so good:
For the youngsters in the park this is all a playground:
Though I did dissuade one excessively adventurous young Huckleberry Finn from leaping off the seawall into three inches of water. "Think this is deep enough?" "NO!" This is quite the paradise for adults too, with lots of boating and fishing and even sandy beaches, rara avis! to enjoy:
That last picture is a beach on the northern tip of Bahia Honda Key, the State Park that is the next key to the south of Ohio Key.
Back on the busy side of the Key, there is a gas station and inconvenience store. The gas was offered at $3.91 a gallon which is a very reasonable price in the Lower Keys, and I have my five-percent-off-Shell card so I might have to consider stopping here for fuel:
And there is small, well protected marina for residents to keep their boats in the water:
What more could they want? A Triumph Bonneville perhaps...
And you'd better believe that vinyl seat was hot to the touch after sitting in the 95 degree sunshine. 
I got a request some time ago to 
The 
Their goals are not modest but as best as I could tell they were doing well, in raising the red ink as it were. Wesley House offers tons of services and recreational outlets 
And in order to keep on providing services and opportunities they have started an innovative fund raiser whereby people buy stakes in the picket fence around their brand new crisp clean facility at the Inez Martin Center:
The picket fence stakes carry a plaque with the name of the donor:
And as the person who asked me to take the photos was anonymous I felt I could do no better than highlight this one, for which profession I have a 
Online and in hard copy, as they say:
For a good local cause the money keeps rolling in, we hope.
Marathon is a city I have wanted to photograph but I have lost my nerve. I don't know it very well, I don't eat out there much or shop, I've been to the movies there a couple of times. I guess its greatest draw for me is the convenient layout of the Home Depot and the grappa I can buy, Italian brandy, from the super slick deli and liquor store wedged between the gym and the Post Office on Highway One. Because we work in Key West even though my wife and I live equidistant between the two cities, we shop mostly in Key West, not Marathon.
The fact is, Marathon lacks the cute factor, as you can see in the photo above. It's a city incorporated almost a decade ago on a wide spot along Highway One, a four lane strip mall with none of the Old Town, greenery, or big city pretensions of Key West. It is an excessively long strip mall and compressing an essay about it into 20 pictures is more than I can manage. So, I have decided, like the man faced with the problem of how to eat an elephant, to chew it off one piece at a time. First the beach, later the highway:
Older people, or perhaps just more restful people we might say:
Residentially challenged people:
And swimmers:
All of which is a tremendous encouragement to stay and linger awhile, which I may well come and do later when school is back in session. Instead, photos taken, water fountain drunk from and its back in the saddle again to the next self imposed assignment:
And there it was tied up snug next to the Western Union schooner, that small, mastless sailboat has fallen into the second life of boats around here, serving as accommodations. 
No one was on board this visit, perhaps I'll have better luck next time though I am usually in town in the afternoon and he is likely out on the water then...
The waterfront is a busy place in winter with flocks of people wandering back and forth, but in late July its too hot to attract drifting crowds. I heard a few Europeans talking, a common feature of summers in Key West, poor things they know no better than to come to the Keys in baking season:
Sailing is tricky this time of year as winds are down and thunderstorms are up, so going on the water means less sailing and more other stuff (motoring):
I've seen this trimaran around for some time and I rather like the elaborate cabin arrangement, its probably too heavy to sail well with a floating bar in the cabin but that isn't a consideration for most passengers in my experience as a charter captain:
Schooner Wharf uses their boat as an advertising prop pure and simple, and quite the eye catcher it is too:
On the subject of eye catching I wouldn't have the nerve to wander around in public looking like this but I guess they were sea scouts or some other worthy thing and it must make it easy for the scoutmaster to keep an eye on his flock. You can just see the heat pressing down on that splendid hat :
The short stretch of waterfront near Schooner Wharf is home to the key West symbol of seafaring which is the Western Union and a group of enthusiasts have taken on the task of refurbishing the boat as a floating museum ever since Historic Tours unceremoniously dumped it one day without notice.
Within living memory Western Union used this sailboat to lay telegraph cable to Havana, and if that sounds old fashioned bear in mind today there are something absurd like half a dozen phone lines to Cuba and good luck making a call. 
Its that time of year, even in a good year, when business slows down to a crawl in the Southernmost City, including in the cute little booths along Lazy Way Lane:
At least they are open for business again after a period when it seemed everything was going to stay shuttered on the lane over a rental dispute. It's said around town that Harbor House, the new development behind Schooner Wharf has gone bankrupt and construction has stopped for now on the old Jabour's Trailer Park property.
Fire the proverbial cannon down Greene Street and all you'd end up doing at the end of July is knocking a couple of mad dog visitors off their Honda Metropolitans:
Swivel the cannon ninety degrees to the left and if you missed the scooter riders before you'd get a second chance as they cruise the urban desert of downtown Key West:
I didn't find the Prodigal Son this time around but I had a nice excuse to check out the boardwalk one more time. This blog is a great excuse to just go for a ramble.
I wrote an essay on Curry Hammock State Park a few months ago but I never did take the nature trail which is less than a mile from the main park entrance at Mile Marker 56, and every time I've driven up to the mainland I've eyed the turnout longingly. So, being the damn fool I am, I decided August was as good a time as any to go 
The parking area is only a quarter mile from the entrance to the trail itself. One parks in the pea rock and one strolls down the bike path that 
And there was no shade so I soon got to 
About the time I finally arrived at the turnoff and I ducked into the shade some intrepid soul on a bicycle whizzed by on his way God knows where:
Along with shade the trail starts out promisingly enough looking like a waterhole for large tusked mammals, 
And rainy season brings out the mossies as well. While I am relatively immune to their bites I am not 
I did manage to remember the sunscreen but I did of course forget to apply 
Despite reports to the 
I don't know if it was the sudden lack of a fresh breeze or the insistent snarling of the mosquitoes but the fun started to drain out of the walk. The forest closed in:
The trail became less obvious at the same time my absent minded 
All along the trail, 
Ah yes the joys of a clear sky and bright sunlight!
Just time and 
If there were any doubt, this is in fact a gentle walk best enjoyed in Winter.
James Street is two blocks long and busy as a hive of bees with traffic at certain times of the day, the rest of the time its in its own torpor. Its the sort of street that visitors pass by a dozen times a week and never notice. For people who know the area, James is a short cut from Eaton via Frances or a way of avoiding Caroline Street around Conch Harbor and the Ferry terminal. It's residential so it doesn't do to behave badly on this street but in winter its a nice way to avoid snowbirds queuing at the light on Eaton at Grinnell. James Street is cut in half by Grinnell and that is the home to one of the nicer Irish pubs in Key West, in my opinion. Perhaps that's because when I lived on a boat it was a short hop from the water to a pint of Guinness and they used to welcome my Labrador too in the days before some people got fussy about dogs in bars:
They are building next to the pub and I'm betting someone is going to be complaining about the noise down the road:
The luxury development is called Ocean Breeze and would it sadden you to know this lot used to be a nursery filled with all those plants we decorate our yards with. I remember too there used to be the graffiti on the fence here "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" from the Joni Mitchell song. I guess it was referring to the huge Park and Ride building across the street (the subject of a future essay) but it goes well with the current state of construction. Tara meets manufactured housing:
McMansion anyone? You can't have this one, carriage lamps and all because it must belong to:
I need to remember to do that; put my name on my parking space at home. I'm sure my wife would be delighted. The dog from Finnegan's Wake seemed indifferent in the heat:
And so did this spectacular tree:
But people still keep hoping, they don't give up and just stand there, they put bumper stickers on their cars and hope for better times:
I like a quiet street with a few of those cute little homes they specialise in around here:
Were you to have had breakfast at say Harpoon Harry's and resolutely turn your back on the waterfront, after a block you'd see this relatively rare tree in Key West:
And up James street in the shade of another tree there is this final example of a mid century shed, or garage, moldering gently in the humidity. Its been mouldering there for years, as long as I can remember:
The sign says no parking so one assumes the red car belongs to the owner. Be careful when parking in Key West, doing as others do can lead you to a ticket or a $200 tow if you park wherever you feel like. I used to use the open space in back as a secret parking lot which may account for the fence: 
The times they are a-changing because from the upstairs at the parking building I saw a lawnmower standing by to keep the place in apple pie order: 
Across the street I saw a Key West sized car, a Suzuki convertible that used to be seen on the road and now seems to be doing its own bit of moldering:
This was where i saw a guy striding up the sidewalk carrying a bag of golf clubs. Which in itself shouldn't have caught my eye but his rather dressed down look prompted speculation:
Key West is home to casual dress but I wonder what the minimum requirement is at the golf course on Stock Island? Flip flops and a tank top? 
While Keys Energy, the Lower Keys public utility company dominates the other side:
Light industrial chic:
Or for a hardcore urban industrial look check out the Checkpoint Charlie gate that lets the lumber trucks in and out of the back of the yard:
All this could be on your front door steps for more money than you can imagine:
Fixer upper needs some tender loving care. Don't we all?
Power lines notwithstanding I find this church, recently renovated, to be a nice example of the Caribbean Anglican style of church. I call it that because I have seen numerous examples of church architecture on English speaking islands around the Caribbean that have been built in the style of the English parish churches, and their square towers or pointy steeples dominate skylines from Grenada to Jamaica, and also it turns out Key West!
Well, dominating may be a bit hyperbolic but sure as eggs is eggs, there is the church of the long name peeking over the greenery. As far as tropical funk goes I like this one, a little run down but exhibiting the faith of the small and intimate:
I find the notion of "holy ground" harboring plastic pink flamingos to be suitable entirely for Key West. Or take this little beauty near the hill called Solares, Key West's highest point:
Trinity Wesleyan combines the elements of Anglican stolidity with the lovely pitched roof and slat walls typical of Key West home building. 
When I was a juvenile delinquent altar boy The Church of Rome required its' adherents world wide to pray in the one true language, impenetrably enough that had to be Latin. And as St Francis reputedly taught us, once its learned as a child, whatever it is, it's never forgotten! Indeed i remember many of the responses still, from those far away days. Nowadays along with eating meat on Fridays the Catholic heirarchy has relented and Mass at St Marys is recited in the vernacular. So the traditions change and yet these lovely structures remain:
This is the big old church on Truman Avenue at Windsor Lane on the way into Old Town. It's the heart of the extensive Catholic community in Key West and it makes it's own statement about size and architecture:
St Marys operates a school, a soup kitchen, a grotto built to protect the city in case of hurricanes (napping apparently during Wilma) and that most Catholic of institutions, a gift shop:
When in 2007 my peripatetic Jewish wife went for the first time to St Peter's in the Vatican she stood in awe, her jaw literally dropping, under the vastness of the rococo embellishments of the vast basilica and confessed that for the first time she understood the worldwide reach of the Roman Church. Outside she was equally astonished by the trinket trade in plaster Madonnas and graphic artwork for sale in the streets surrounding the Holy See. Needs must and they do a roaring trade. Its not exactly money changers in the temple even though I find the gift shop trade rather tacky.
It's history in the Southernmost City is frequently held up as an example of tolerance in Key West but a few years ago some unidentified anti Semite torched the place, which became the opportunity for the neighboring churches to send the opposite message and they grabbed it wholeheartedly offering the synagogue space in their churches. Which incidentally would have got you a roasting in hell in the Catholic Church I grew up in, but times change and sometimes for the better. 
Not forgetting the Unitarians in The Meadows with their delightful old Florida louvered windows. Either the building is lo-o-o-ng or my Bonneville is shrinking:
There is a persistent sign holder plaguing downtown Key West ever since Fantasy Fest, and he holds up a notice encouraging people to believe that queers go to hell, by virtue of their gayness. Apparently this bald statement is supposed to be an encouragement to Key West gays to change their ways which is a proposition I find bizarre, human nature being what it is, and I doubt it would gain much traction at the Metropolitan Community Church just up the street from the Unitarians:
It surprised me when I realised just how many churches there are in Key West. I think the number and variety of them (a Mosque interestingly enough does not appear to exist) of which these are a tiny sample speaks to the fact that even a rootless shiftless migrating community like that viewed superficially in the Keys in fact has a population that demands the rooted sense of community that churches bring to a town. Churches in Key West seem to thrive because many many people in Party Town USA are just ordinary people raising families and going to work. They are why I like living in Key West, not because I can go to Sloppy Joe's and get tanked whenever I feel like it, but because I work in a small town that has real roots, despite any appearances to the contrary. Of course there are those that manage to slip off the bottom rung of the societal ladder:
And the churches minister to them and their needs. The Salvation Army is prominent in town, and made a spectacle of itself by declining to hire a gay office worker on the grounds of the old going to hell problem, but hey no one's perfect. They help a lot of people regardless of orientation who come looking for it. This sleeper chose his spot well because when he awakes the beacon of Glad Tidings will be across the way, a church noted for its services to the down and out:
On Flagler Avenue there is a big time soup kitchen across from this Lutheran erection. It's some sort of Buckminster Fuller apparition lacking the conviction to go all the way and become a real geodesic dome. What the Tudor style wooden beam highlights are doing I'm not sure:
The attached school enjoys a fine reputation and is housed in a more conventional if rather dull building. I think in my next life I would like to be an architect and offer my services in communities across the country that would like to see proportioned attractive buildings housing their banks and churches and public offices. Whimsy is delightful but it hurts the eyes after a while:
My hat is off to them if they can round up a congregation at that unearthly hour. Oh, wait a minute, I think it says nine am not five am, nevertheless.....
Especially when contrasted with the traditional church it is attached to. You don't get to see enclosed porches like that very often at rthese latitudes: 
But out of this series of buildings my hands down favorite is the church at the 800 block of Center Street. This a two block street between Petronia Street and Truman Avenue. To find it simply turn north off Truman at the over sized Adirondack Chair. 
Clearly a church I would rate as Anglican Caribbean, from the exterior it has the attributes of stolidity from the interior it is cool and dark to make it a restful and intriguing place to sit and not think:
And when such a place invites one in, what can one do but respond?
All those drunks need ambulances and police, all night long! God help me...
Seagrapes are hardy buggers, just right for people like me endowed with black thumbs. I have one bush that started to topple when inundated by Wilma's floods in 2005 but I didn't touch the tree except to cover up the exposed roots and the thing is flourishing like never before. My kind of plant. While the grapes are edible and i love eating them, I should note there are a few issues with seagrapes. One is that their giant green leaves turn into crisp brown dead dinner plates when they fall off the tree which they do copiously year round:
When the winds blow, as they often do, these large dead leaves blow all over the place rattling and crackling as they go. They create carpets of dead leaves. Also, like most fruit the seagrapes tend to riped all at once. This is good for the birds, mourning doves mostly, that live in my neighborhood, but the ripe grapes tend to fall off in clusters when the stems are shaken and they make a peculiar mess:
I do like having this huge clump covering half my driveway, I look out of my study window and there it sits, huge and green and full of fruit:
Here's the hard part- how to describe the flavor of these so called grapes? Well, they are fresh and taste like a mild grape, a little astringent, not too sweet and are little more than a large black pip surrounded by a thin covering of flesh. I peeled a couple to illustrate my feeble powers of description:
I like grapes and I like them wild too. When I was growing up in Italy one of the pleasures of my unfettered summers was the ability to head out into the fields in late August and take up residence among the leaves of the vineyards for a little light snacking. The beauty of the vines growing in central Italy is that they are planted in long lines and grow about six feet tall, so that in the fullness of summer their leaves cascade to the ground and a small boy can sit under them, invisible, and gorge on ripe grapes.
We look angelic, after a fashion but we were seven year old expert fruit thieves, Diego in the background, and I. My mother was always puzzled why I came home from a morning of wandering around the fields and wasn't famished. So it is that to this day I get a strange nostalgic pleasure from stealing my own seagrapes from the bush in my own yard:
It was a Huckleberry Finn existence though I hadn't read Mark Twain at that stage in my life. Aside from stealing grapes from the sharecroppers around the village I and my buddies wandered the hills and fields and bothered the grown ups like this guy with a herd of pigs, or a flock of pigs, or a porker of pigs:
I don't remember this picture being taken by my older sister claims the honor. I do remember the grapes, the symbol of summer at its peak. Nowadays that means hurricane season at its peak but I take my nostalgia from my seagrape bush:
Just a taste of what is essentially a wild grape and one gets transported across time and space. Powerful fruit, indeed.
When I was eight years old I did not get to take sailing lessons. I was landlocked. The good news was, a few years later I was riding a Vespa, and I am, as may have been noted still riding. Wednesday was one of my numerous days off and I was riding into town to see the movie Mongol (Genghis Khan didn't get a break as a youngster, in and out of handcuffs, wife stolen, home burned it went on and on for two full hours) and I got detoured by a bunch of white handkerchiefs on Garrison Bight.
Garrison Bight (bight in sailing lingo means an indentation in the coast) is an almost entirely enclosed body of water, enclosed in part by Flagler's engineers when they built the train depot where the Coastguard Station is today on the north side of the island. It makes for an ideal body of protected water to park boats in the city marina, or to sail small boats without danger of large waves or being dragged over the horizon by errant tides. This is especially helpful if you are small and your boat is small and you are learning how to sail it.
The Key West Sailing Club has a summer program of sailing lessons for kids as young as eight and for a week they twirl around the bight in Optimist dinghies, Optimist is the brand name not the state of mind of the sailor, under the direction of a club instructor who rides in a outboard powered skiff giving direction and help:
I cannot think of a more wholesome activity for a young person living in this city where people frequently complain "there is nothing to do." The waters are as safe as can be, everyone is wearing life jackets and the grown ups sailing the club boats respect the right-of-way of the youngsters:
This is also an affordable activity as the Sailing Club is the little tiki hut next door to Spencer's Boatyard, a do-it-yourself kind of place. I used to be a member when I lived in the city and membership cost something ridiculous like $10 a month, which gave me access to the clubs sailboats, like this:
The sailing club isn't the Key West Yacht Club at the opposite end of the bight, home to the city's glitterati who get the pauper's rental rate from the city of one whole dollar a year for their property...The sailing club is rather more modest, and perhaps more accessible:
And the Sailing Club offers tons of fun on the water which I spent a good few minutes watching and enjoying. I can't say I was envious of the kids, but I think they are lucky to get the chance to know the joy of sailing at such a young age, with an instructor who enjoyed the fun:
I missed a couple of previews but sat down in time for the start of the show. Young Genghis lost his dad at the age of nine, poisoned by an enemy, and he and his mother were kicked out of the tribe to wander the steppe on their lonesome. He'd have done better had he learned to sail and got clear of that messy country as soon as possible. But he was landlocked and had to learn to ride a horse instead. Key West youngsters have choices. 
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