Everyone is on cell phones these days, chit chattering away ignoring the beauty all around in their desperate effort to communicate. Sure I have a cell phone but it's my answering service, most of the time. Call and leave a message, not like this frowning dude:
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.
