The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District has announced with utter gravity that rainy season is upon us and we must beware the squadrons of mossies about to descend on us with the imminent arrival of copious amounts of rain.
There are public discussions of the dangers of dengue fever a mosquito borne illness that makes a lot of noise and gives a few dozen well nourished First World residents a brief fever. In the Third World where food is scarce and public health departments even scarcer dengue kills hundreds.
I look skyward and see nothing resembling a proper soaking summer thunderstorm. I chose to walk Appelrouth Lane, the alley across the from Strand on Duval Street, as much for the shade as anything else. I very much enjoy perusing The Streets of Key West by J Wills Burke (a pseudonym apparently) and in the book he mentions Appelrouth was renamed from the rather bland Smith Lane in 1981, not so very long ago.
The picture above is not pilfered from a Spanish Tour Book. It is the autumnal appearance of parched trees dropping their leaves into the courtyard in back of the San Carlos Theater (the former and possibly future Cuban Consulate, land claimed by Cuba but retained by the exile community of South Florida). The picture below is of a building that went through a rather curious recent past. It became briefly a night club called Zu which, to much local whispering, encouraged people to come and watch others having sex. If you had any doubt we are over stimulated as a species ask yourself what life would be like without advertising where every single object of desire or utility is presented as a sexual enhancement. I believe someone somewhere hoped to make a lot of money from this club. It would be too much to hope to make similar sums from manufacturing widgets that might actually be useful for the promotion of human happiness.
Billy Appelrouth was a store owner who sold useful things on Duval Street in what was known I think as a dry good store. He lived well and died a respected member of the community and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in the middle of the city. Today he would have been steam rollered into oblivion by Wal Mart, or bought out by Zu, God help us. 
The Strand Cinema was a staple of early 20th century social life but had deteriorated by the time I first came to Key West but for most of the 20th century the Carbonell family brought reels of the outside world to Key West here. It soldiered on as a night club and then faded by way of Ripley's'. That it has become a chain pharmacy is just the way of our world. Sometimes change isn't completely awful, sometimes it is for the better, but change is happening all the time.
There are public discussions of the dangers of dengue fever a mosquito borne illness that makes a lot of noise and gives a few dozen well nourished First World residents a brief fever. In the Third World where food is scarce and public health departments even scarcer dengue kills hundreds.
I look skyward and see nothing resembling a proper soaking summer thunderstorm. I chose to walk Appelrouth Lane, the alley across the from Strand on Duval Street, as much for the shade as anything else. I very much enjoy perusing The Streets of Key West by J Wills Burke (a pseudonym apparently) and in the book he mentions Appelrouth was renamed from the rather bland Smith Lane in 1981, not so very long ago.The picture above is not pilfered from a Spanish Tour Book. It is the autumnal appearance of parched trees dropping their leaves into the courtyard in back of the San Carlos Theater (the former and possibly future Cuban Consulate, land claimed by Cuba but retained by the exile community of South Florida). The picture below is of a building that went through a rather curious recent past. It became briefly a night club called Zu which, to much local whispering, encouraged people to come and watch others having sex. If you had any doubt we are over stimulated as a species ask yourself what life would be like without advertising where every single object of desire or utility is presented as a sexual enhancement. I believe someone somewhere hoped to make a lot of money from this club. It would be too much to hope to make similar sums from manufacturing widgets that might actually be useful for the promotion of human happiness.Billy Appelrouth was a store owner who sold useful things on Duval Street in what was known I think as a dry good store. He lived well and died a respected member of the community and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in the middle of the city. Today he would have been steam rollered into oblivion by Wal Mart, or bought out by Zu, God help us. The Strand Cinema was a staple of early 20th century social life but had deteriorated by the time I first came to Key West but for most of the 20th century the Carbonell family brought reels of the outside world to Key West here. It soldiered on as a night club and then faded by way of Ripley's'. That it has become a chain pharmacy is just the way of our world. Sometimes change isn't completely awful, sometimes it is for the better, but change is happening all the time.
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