Into Bahama Village

I took this picture in 2013 of the famous Octopus on Catherine Street heading towards Duval from mid town. I included Cheyenne sniffing around as she continued to do for the next three years.

In 2016 after she left and went to her reward making room for Rusty, I took time to photograph the old stump once again, not much changed. 

Last week things had changed drastically and I felt a great deal of regret. Things ain't what they used to be.

The turquoise attracted me...

The line of several "NO!" signs kept me and amused me.

I went by the Gato building named for the Gato family who built it a century ago as a cigar factory. That proved to be uneconomical when the Cuban factory owners discovered Tampa with all its cheap land and created Ybor City as the place to roll cigars. The usual story for over priced  Key West. 

Nowadays the Gato Building houses, most importantly the county department of health whence the authorities deal with coronavirus issues including vaccinations. 

Bahama Village has changed over the past couple of decades just like the rest of the city.  Gentrification has pushed into the village though the African American community remains as the largest segment of the population.

I used to read on forums years ago about nervous some tourists were at the thought of penetrating the Village, the rough neighborhood of Key West which struck me then as ludicrous and more so nowadays. There used to be drug dealers from Miami who meet Key West residents in the Village but even in those days if you were walking through someone might sidle up and ask if you were okay and when you said fine thank you, they scuttled off. Violent crime has always been quite rare in Key West.

The architecture is as interesting here as anywhere in Key West with lots of churches and former churches scattered about. A smattering of tourists too.

And a few restaurants of note, including Blue Heaven on Petronia. Still there still doing business.

And on the subject of times past and Bahama Village the  city commissioner for the neighborhood passed on the news of the death of a former resident of Chapman Lane, James Chapman. I took this picture in 2012 but the internet is littered with pictures of the man, the myth and his brightly colored tricycle.

He had been forced to move from Key West in a land grab that took away his home on the lane named for his family, a bitter fate that earned him a goodbye in the local paper:

The Blue Paper. 

Chapman Lane, Bahama Village

A cool Spring  night, a strong east wind, the anticipation of daylight savings time a mere week away and a few minutes to yourself in the middle of the night: Chapman Lane beckons...

"In the middle of the ghetto?" a rather timorous acquaintance of mine asked, voice trembling at my near brush with death. Bahama Village to me is just another Key West neighborhood and no one has ever bothered me there any more than they have elsewhere in the city at night or by day. 

I find the architecture here resembles the African American community that still constitutes a majority of the population in "the Village." Insofar as it is coherent and solid and based largely on the historic nature of the origins of Old Town Key West. Night photography here I find rewarding because there is an absence of glare and of invasive buildings and broken up blocks of old wooden houses.

Checking the Conch cottages lined up on Chapman you find they are as they once must have been more or less. No invasive Historic Architecture Review Commission requirements for modern structures here.

One after another the houses resemble what one expects to see in Old Town:

Check it out for yourself. Just about far enough from Duval to make the obnoxious noise disappear...