I haven't taken a night wander lately so I left work last week with the intent to do some prowling downtown. It gets light early this time of year so I didn't have much time to take pictures before the sun started to peak over the city spoiling the night effect. I zipped down to the
Westin Hotel and Marina, remembered locally as the Hilton, at the end of Front Street. There was no one out and about at the six o'clock hour which gave me an easy ride across
Duval, where I did spot a
residentially challenged drunk having a conversation with a half empty beer bottle under a traffic light. A few early bird tourists were stuffing bags into a couple of cabs outside the
Westin lobby, as they prepared to leave an already nearly empty city. They still have convenient motorcycle parking under the
Westin parking building and there was room for my Bonneville:
The marina attached to the hotel is known in the city as Pier B. Why B I don't really know. The Outer Mole is called just that or the Navy Pier because the military owns it and Mallory Square where smaller cruise ships tie up is called Mallory Square so the
Westin is called Pier B. It glows in the dark:
During the day, later than six o'clock in the morning, this area bustles with visitors, hotel guests and boat Captains who keep their boats in the
Westin Marina:
The waterfront is quite attractive as far as resort construction goes. Lots of people might make the argument that this was proportioned better for human use in the Good Old Days, when shipping in Key West was commercial not tourist based, and the docks and wharves were classic 19
th century warehouses fronting wooden docks. Keep on wishing because this is what it looks like today:
And yes, there are the usual tourist oriented shops including, I might add, a coffee shop that opens at six to service the boat Captains getting ready to take their passengers out for a day of fishing. Buy a coffee sit out on the dock and wait for the sun to come up. Or you could wait a few hours and buy a...whatever it is they sell here:
Or anywhere else
around this crisp clean
al fresco shopping maul:
I'd rather eat worms than go shopping but this complex isn't as
ugly as some critics nag on. Its just an early model for over development in a town that has been covered in construction for a long time. Now the economy is sagging with worse to come, so it seems likely that development in Key West may screech to a halt for a while. We'll have to see how that feels when all the crass and undesired money stops floating around the city, and then I expect we'll hear from people bitching about how we are all marginalized by poverty. You can't win either way.
The marina still attracts people with expensive tastes in boats, people who for some reason like to leave their outside lights on all night:
Take heart, they bring excellently varnished furnishings with them, the better to sit out and admire our
residentially challenged neighbors and our unconventional lifestyles. Apparently six in the morning is a little bit early for happy vacationers:
There are boats built to a more modest scale but don't be fooled, even this cute little launch all lit up and ready to go is here to serve those of a certain standing, for this is the Sunset Key ferry:
There are a few retirees who have chosen to live year round on Sunset Key, the
Westin's offshore development of "Key West Style" homes across the harbor. That being the case the
Westin provides twenty four hour year round ferry service, interrupted only by weather "events" (
ie: hurricanes). The cool part is ordinary people can rent homes on the island for a vacation or simply take a ferry ride over to enjoy a
beachside meal at Latitudes, the restaurant on the island that serves a decent slice of fish in an atmosphere worthy of a town that doesn't coddle chickens on it's streets. By night Sunset Key twinkles charmingly across the water:
Sunset Key is another stark example of Conchs selling their heritage for a mess of
potage. The family that scooped up the land the
Westin is built on also bought Tank Island and got the whole lot for eleven million dollars I'm told, which had to be the bargain, even a couple of decades ago, among all of their reportedly extensive empire of hotels. Now that Key West is so desirable its hard to understand the motivations of the original families desire to get the hell out of a crumbling Old Town into regular sized lots and modern homes in New Town. But their sell off started what has proved to be unstoppable.
I am no
connoisseur of jewelry and have no desire to ever get interested in the stuff, but I am always amused by the rape of the display cases that goes on at closing time. Its as though the quality of the merchandise is attested to by its absence - conventional sales techniques turned on their head. And the display is as empty as the waterfront at this early hour.
Give it twelve more hours and they will be out to crowd the waterfront and toast the sun as it disappears yet again.
