Farmers Market Bayview Park

Walking across Bayview Park you can tell winter is the dry season around here. But don't despair the straw-like grass every Thursday is home to sales:

Some people come for the fruits and vegetables, the original reason these popular street markets sprang up across the US:

The strong wind interrupted my meditations as the tents sagged and collapsed for a moment. Many hands make light work and order was rapidly restored.

My mission was to buy Indian food for dinner. My wife is very fond of spicy grub so the chicken vindaloo I tried hit the mark. Naan and mango chutney and a couple of samosas and I had a big plastic bag for my Vespa to haul home.

 Nisha the Indian Lady's young assistant:

 Happily I had no room to load dust catchers on the scooter:

I bought quiche from the French guy and wished I could justify some Greek food but clearly I was at the outer limits of reasonable food shopping. Greek: next time. 

 I was glad to see dogs are welcome even though Rusty was at home sunbathing after his morning run.

On the way back to Virginia street with my loot I spotted two beach cruiser bicycles in a giant pick up truck which set me to pondering the value of  "no substitute for size" beliefs. A bicycle,a scooter, a car, necessary or not? I dunno. 

I rode home on my moped sized scooter. 

Veterans Memorial Garden

Today the park is officially dedicated, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

 I went by early today on my lunch break to check out the newest memorial in Key West.

 I thought it was well done and I expect it will look good over time.

Not much to say really, except this was probably long overdue. The place is good and I'm glad there is somewhere to sit and contemplate. This town has a terror of bums occupying public spaces but he saddest part is many of these homeless are vets, we are told.  A memorial is better than nothing but it seems more like a start than a final goal.

A Day In The Life Of Bayview Park

Virginia Street in Key West leads to the back entrance to the Police department so I come up here quite frequently. Sometimes I go west on Virginia because Sandy's café is conveniently located at the first traffic light from the police station and Sandy's is open twenty four hours. Little wonder then that I often see this splendid ancient Harley parked here. It happened that from the sidewalk I noticed it had a blue antique tag which was cool. Later this month I am crossing my fingers and hoping to get my own antique tagged Vespa back from the restorer's shop in Pennsylvania. maybe that's why I paid particular attention to this machine.

There was an article in the newspaper that day which I captured in this newspaper box discussing plans to build a monument to veterans in the park. Apparently the city would provide the land and a third of the half million dollar cost to build the monument whose design is not yet complete and whose funding is still to be decided. I was not at the meeting of the city commissioners so I know no more. But the article prompted to take a wander through this park, not often listed on tourist itineraries.

 Bayview Park is very much a local park for local people. they have festivals all the time here, family-like gatherings and events like the Seafood Festival and year round noisemaking events. In that respect Bayview Park epitomizes that small town America side of Key West.

http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2011/10/bayview-park.html

 It can also be annoyingly the epicenter of homelessness in Key West. The evidence of their residence, particularly in winter, is everywhere. In trees...

 ...under trees to gather and loudly discuss how to set the world to rights. There are no benches in the park these days supposedly to discourage them. They just bring their own.

Or as a place to fix their bicycles.

This guy was quite curious about Cheyenne, who did not return the compliment. We discussed the Labrador breed, the pound and the salient points of the English Labrador in particular. 

Conchs love sports. Tennis is not necessarily what you would think of compared to football, baseball and hockey but people do bang balls around courts here. There is even a tennis pro ready to give lessons. Poking around the  Internet I discovered tennis courts have been here since at least 1935 and they are still enjoyed today.

 http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2009/10/small-town-stuff.html

The park lies under the flight path to the airport too, as does most of Old Town when the wind is out of the east as it usually is. Noise is a constant hassle in this small, busy town.

So somewhere in this hive of busyness a new monument is planned. There are a few already including the largest and likely the best known: http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2011/05/jose-marti.html  These two statues seen below have been weathering away in their corner of the park:

Key West on Dwellable

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Key West 4am

I went to bed early exhausted by my bizarre alarm clock driven lifestyle and then, as the Gods had chosen to use me as the butt for their own inscrutable joke, they woke me up at a decidedly ungodly hour. I had nowhere to go on a Sunday morning while it was still dark and there I was off work for the weekend, and totally irretrievably conscious so I did the only thing a man can do when lying awake at 3:48am staring at the black space where the ceiling should be, thinking about the inscrutable ways of Fate. I took my dog for a walk.

Cheyenne was utterly delighted, after she had shaken herself into full consciousness and was able to appreciate the fact that I was awake and not leaving her behind for once. Such joy could only be rewarded one way.

I took her to Key West, her favorite place to walk and I opened te car door and she hopped out and was lost to me. I put her collar on her, took the leash and my phone/camera and a couple of plastic bags and by the time all that was assembled she was breaking loose toward Truman Avenue. No scent was safe from her enquiring nose.

Let's face it, it was no great hardship to be out in Key West under a pitch black sky, warm air cooled by a gentle breeze that just won't stop blowing this perfect August. There was hardly anyone around now that the bars had closed, forced to close by the four am deadline imposed by the city. The drunks had gone home the workers hadn't got up and it was me and my dog and the odd unlit bicycle and occasional buzzy scooter on the streets. It was all terribly un-respectable being on the streets at that hour.

That being the case we got off the street and I trailed my Labrador into the urban jungle that is Bayview Park. And there I found a monument I hadn't previously noticed. Why? I don't know why I walked past it. Perhaps I had seen it before and not noticed it. Here it is, and I found it interesting because it was dedicated to those who served in Vietnam. And below was the name of one who died in Operation Desert Storm. The poignancy of all this struck home especially hard at a time when yet another overseas war is in the offing as our leaders have now decided that Syria is worth dying for. I didn't believe the Domino Theory then and I don't believe it now. I guess Halliburton is just feeling the pinch with all these Federal cut backs. So off to war we go. Every time.

The joy of walking Key West is to be in a place where nothing is as one expects when walking an American city, crooked houses, narrow lanes and droopy foliage. And then we come across mainstream condos. Weird huh? Pelican Landing has always appealed to me in a funny way, perhaps as a reminder how most people live. I appreciate modern conveniences but I do find modern architecture to be soulless or at least driven to seek eccentricity as a motif for modern buildings. The condo blocks that line Garrison Bight along Eisenhower Drive do a good job of expressing nothing very much. They look out of place here but such structures, and much larger versions line all Florida's coasts.

I always wanted to live in a condo but my wife warned me off them saying my personality wouldn't do well with an owner's association. She's probably right so the fact that they aren't right for me makes we wonder... The perversity of being human.

See, this is the Key West they think of:

Or this, also nicely kept up:

I see pictures but Cheyenne smells smells. It takes a lot out of her running around in the August heat. And it's not that hot at that hour.

We were heading back to the car which we left on Olivia just off White Street and as we ambled along, side by side I heard the sound of a cat purring. Cheyenne heard nothing and kept stumping along. I couldn't believe the cat, it was loud! It was so loud I wondered if it was a piece of jammed machinery, an air conditioner compressor that couldn't compress... or something. I wondered what kind of cat it was, mostly they try to make no noise at all when Cheyenne hoves into view, not purring wildly like a steam engine. I had to investigate. I was a little tentative because I wasn't sure what the hell kind of cat I might have found behind the parked car. It turned out, to my astonishment it wasn't a cat at all. I don't usually shoot pictures with the flash but it was pitch black so I turned on the flash and fired away. This was what I got:

He never even stirred. It wasn't a great picture so I thought about moving in closer for a better view. However on reflection I figured getting a close up shot of a naked sadhu in all his penile glory probably wasn't to anyone's advantage. I left him to his noisy slumbers, gray head propped on his bag and a dried palm frond strategically covering his nether regions. To take our minds off the foregoing let's read a few uplifting bumper stickers.

The next picture puts me in mind of the movie CrissCross (1992 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which if you've seen it you'll maybe know what I mean...

We left the city behind and drove as rapidly as was legal, home to breakfast and then bed for a nap. It was a good morning, perhaps the Gods knew what they were doing when they woke me up, in the dark and set me on the path of pleasing my dog.

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Small Town Stuff

It's a short essay this Sunday morning, simply because I couldn't take the time to stop and take pictures the way I like to, so I only caught a smattering of the action on the sports field:I have written previously about Bayview Park, a grassy area off Truman Avenue a block wide to Virginia Street between the Police Station and the Harvey Government Center. Bayview is home to tennis courts, basketball courts and a large grassy area dotted with mature trees and it used to boast several picnic tables which got removed thanks to their permanent habitation by the city's residentially challenged residents. Much to my surprise, en route to an appointment, I spotted a bunch of youngsters organized into football squads in the park:
One tends to forget when dealing with Key West that this is an actual community with people raising families frequently out of sight of the tourist attractions and bars that the city is famous for. Fantasy Fest is a big deal, an adult themed carnival down Duval Street at the end of October, and New Year's Eve involves adult themed parties around town. But in between these well know festivities Key West quietly celebrates it's families with a Christmas Parade. I like seeing this sort of thing going on not least because it's precisely not what Key West is known for.The kids get their audience from their families and when they are playing football the local residents of the park get pushed out. I guess sit takes a football game for the families to reclaim the park! And that was all I had time for. I've wanted to sit in the bleachers all summer long at Wickers Field and watch the junior baseball but the opportunity never arose.So I was determined not to let this brief opportunity slip me by. Small town Key West- I just hope I'm not working the night of Christmas parade.