South Beach

I spent a couple of decades living in Northern California and the words South Beach conjured up a mental picture of the Italian quarter of San Francisco, hills, Italian stores Caffe Trieste and all the rest. I liked it too, but that doesn't mean I dislike the rather more modest South Beach in Key West. Unlike the San Francisco version South Beach in the Southernmost City is actually a beach, with a restaurant and everything:South Beach is actually the southern end of Duval Street, more or less the last block intersected by, not unnaturally, South Street:This is one of the spots in the city where southernmost everything is located, house, guest house, hotel, etc... etc...because this is after all pretty close to the southernmost tip of the continental United States. The Southernmost House has been owned since 1939 by a prominent family of Conchs and they are currently having a tiff with the city over the status of their building. They want more commerce, their neighbors want less and where previously locals were welcome on the premises now they (we) aren't for casual poolside drinks. Bummer because it is quite the structure:It's quite the pile and people do like their picture taken here:Though I quite like the details, like their brick driveway:Across the street is the more modestly proportioned southernmost hotel, one of the southernmost's anyway:The thing about this location though isn't the architecture though there's lots of it. It's the ocean, more precisely Hawk Channel which sets visitors to thinking. They look out from their perch on the South Beach pier and think about the clarity of the water:And the fact the Forbidden Island lies just over the horizon, 90 miles away, making Havana closer to Key West than Miami, were there a road over there:South Beach is one those pocket parks that a little town like Key West does so well, using and taking advantage of every speck of recreational space:You come, you see, you contemplate a moment, then you leave headed back to the fleshpots of Duval Street:It didn't strike me as much a dog park but a dog might well appreciate the modest pleasures of the little pier at the southernmost end of the island:I find the southernmost thing gets a bit tedious, it's as though one has to make a virtue of an accident of geography that of itself imparts no virtue. I guess Duval Street had to end somewhere and it might as well be here.