Clinton Square

It occurred to me, after resting for a while on the bench on the porch at the Custom House that people strolling past Clinton Square have no idea what  a controversial piece of land that once was.

I don't know why it's named Clinton and it is a triangle not a square and it it is also supposed to be the home site of native son Stephen Mallory, of the nearby square fame. Mallory was a lawyer who became Secretary of the Navy for the losing side in the Civil War but in Key West that doesn't mean the waterfront named for him has to change names. No sir!

In any event the Navy Club of Key West decided to honor war dead with the column you see in the triangle, which move upset Confederate adherents who promptly built the fence around the column to memorialize their dead.

Call it a diplomatic victory in a town that was split between sides during the war. As I recently mentioned on this page the military detachment led by Captain John Brannan, by subterfuge secured Fort Zachary for the Union and thus Key West, that most Southern of towns remained with the North. 

Which is not to say a great many influential people, and less influential too come to that, chose yet to support the South and so I suppose you could say they felt emotionally Southern but enjoyed the perks of  being on the winning side after the war. All these red hot emotions are encapsulated in this little monument and its garden and fence. 

Yet if you look at Clinton Square next time you are here you will notice no one paying attention to the place. They walk by looking away.

And there is a small sign explaining the story:

I climbed down from the museum preferring to struggle with the steps and handrail rather than winding halfway round the building on the handicapped route. However these two steps at the bottom nearly undid me. Surprising how hard they were to negotiate and I leaned heavily on my cane much to my surprise.

Stumping back to the car on Whitehead Street I passed the wall which holds up a  raised play area created from wasteland inside Truman Annex next to the old water tank structure. Ha! I thought. Finally I can get my camera at ground level thanks to the level being six feet up. 

Not normally something I can do for the time being.

Welcome To Old Town

I was out walking Rusty early one morning before this latest monstrous 55 degree cold front swept over the Keys and I was trying to picture myself landing in Key West, preferably not at 4 in the morning and coming across the city through the Margaritaville Resort. Aside from a  delivery  truck on front street Rusty and I were alone.

Charles Street looked pretty  good after dark even though it's not some where I hang out during the day.

Then I wandered around the front of Front Street to admire the shops touting for tourist dollars, and boy are they disgusting. You have to ask yourself what self respecting tourist would shop in a store with black shiny mold pouring down he wall?

Or this decrepit jungle at the other end? Across the street is the famous and lovely custom house museum but this tarnished crap is no selling point for this tired old town.

This I thought was the end of the world until I realized its being worked on and the interior is under construction. One hopes there will be some paint in the bottom  of the can for the exterior...

Here's a picture I took a while back of what the city offers to make Clinton Square look nice. The Custom House built for that purpose and converted to a museum worth visiting:

Or  Key West's indoor shopping mall, if you can call it that,  Clinton Square Market:

Better hope the eager tourists don't look to their right and see the decrepitude!

Night Impressions

"I am a newbie in town," the woman said rather disarmingly and went on to ask me a question which I answered. Then I went on to give her a history of the answer which, when I heard myself doing it I realised I was turning into one of those people who has enough history in Key West everything starts to become a chronology. "The Paradise section of the paper comes out on Thursdays," I started to pontificate, going on to say how I used to prefer the old publishing schedule, blah blah blah. She was a sweet woman, a captive audience as her foot was encased in a plastic cast of some sort and she nodded along until I caught myself and shut up.

It was one of the reasons I started this blog, to photograph and pin down the changes as they happen in and around Key West, to record the changes as it were. I listened as the woman from Georgia, told me her tale of moving to Key West "on a whim" and learning to live in small spaces over the past eight months. The freshness of it all reminded me of Key West seen as a new space and when she asked about the city at night I said I frequently wandered the streets with no problems. She seemed relieved- sort of- but I know that when I take my night time walks during my lunch breaks I never get accosted or bothered. Perhaps I exude some anti-drama musk, or my beard frightens people or I just look too ornery to be messed with. On another topic I put 20,000 miles on my Suzuki Savage 650 single, similar in all respects to this one right down to the same saddle bags as I put on mine. Perhaps it was my old Suzuki.He was blipping the throttle as though learning how to ride, on Front Street at 10 pm. Eventually he rolled away, leaving me to remember how uncomfortable I found the cruiser seating position and how much I liked the belt drive and how bad the mileage was, no better than the Bonneville at 45 mpg with a tiny fuel tank to boot.

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In many respects Key West has yet to identify itself to visitors- is it low brow mass market or seeking to encourage the well-to-do to the island? Some residents hate the cruise ships and blame all ills on them while the merchants on Lower Duval have to pander to them and what I can only describe as their odd purchasing decisions. I mean, who buys this stuff? Is it ever appropriate in Peoria to wear these sentiments out in public? Are there crowds of people showing up at Starbucks across the Great Plains ordering their first latte of the weekend wearing these sentiments? On Whitehead Street in front of the Audubon House a young woman was pushing her bicycle and with a powerful pair of lungs was complaining to her current friend about the perfidy of friendship in general and one instance of betrayal in particular...about how could she do such a thing and still call herself a friend? etc... etc... the injustice of it all.Sometimes Key West sounds like a college town without the campus but with all the drinking.

Unconsidered Trifles

For an island four miles long by two miles wide (6 kilometres by 3) Key West manages to tuck away quite a few unknown and unknowable spots. When one is faced by an undeniable shortage of land surrounded by an ocean, the human response is to make the most of what you do have. Now that I've lived here for a while I'd like to go back to Monaco and seek out the less obvious corners that I never bothered to in the past. Away from the aquarium and casino there must be an entire culture of the minuscule I was never attuned to seeking out when riding a motorcycle meant going as far and notching up as many locations as possible. Ah youth! Pass the bottle...Key West has an abundance of nooks set aside for human refreshment, not of the liquid sort, for a change, but of that part that other activities cannot reach. Well, the fact is these tiny parks would be fabulous is they actually offered somewhere to sit and contemplate, but in response to the residentially challenged habit of permanently occupying any flat surface all city benches and sitting arrangements have been removed from Bill Butler Park. There is a child's playground, possibly owing to the fact that spending all day in a child's swing is beyond the capacity of even the most determined loafer:
Bill Butler is a pretty little spot, green shady and relatively clean. In my pictures it looks quite huge and in terms of pocket parks I visit in this essay it is the second largest, and one of the shadiest:On Google maps its shown at Pourhouse Lane which should be Poorhouse Lane (where we are all destined to end up the way things are going), not far from the cemetery. And that's all the link you get unless someone wants to waste their time adding links for each park in the comments section. I say have fun searching and finding. A couple of surprised visitors found the park on their rented bicycles and passed me by with smiles of pure delight as they freewheeled on through. And look at the access lanes they used, pure Key West:You won't need a map to find the next one. Clinton Square is a triangle in proper Conch style (we don't need no stinkin' geometry!) and it is crossed by a gazillion tourists a day especially when cruise ships dock at Mallory and the Westin. This lot didn't pause:These two did, to smear lotion on those lily white limbs, poor things:In the middle of the swarm of t-shirt shops, souvenir stands and Conch trains is this not divine?And naturally there used to be benches to sit on and enjoy the peace of a tiny triangle in the midst of the bustle. Now the benches are gone as is the pervasive stench of stale urine, so I suppose...it's a good compromise? Bring your own chair. If you are having trouble locating this tiniest of parks let me put it, and the Bonneville, for Janna, in context:If you need more than Clinton Square you will need to move further afield, perhaps a cooling swim at this point in the tour. That would be next to the Community Pool at the end of Catherine Street, where we find not one but two parks bracketing the above ground pool. Willie Ward Park, whose splendid donated flag pole flies at the top of this essay is blessed with seating arrangements:

Not only that, there is also art to view, a muriel that supports the above ground pool:

Above which are the good burghers of Key West enjoying yet another free city facility, in a city where people are prone to complain "there's nothing to do." This dude found nothing at all to do and seemed to be doing it magnificently:

Around the other side of the pool on Thomas Street is another small city park, a sunny spot but in the early and evening hours this place doesn't offer anything much to do either:

During the summer months Nelson English Park is best enjoyed in the early morning or late afternoon as it is a bit lacking in tree cover:

But where else can you ride an uncomplaining turtle in the middle of a city?
And of course where there is shade,and a seat there is...the local HC:Further afield one tends to come across pocket parks that have more of a neighborhood flavor. A short walk from Bill Butler we have, on the other side of the cemetery, the Angela Street Park, which was the first spot converted to park use and is thus known generally as the Pocket Park.

This place is enjoyed by neighbors who bring plastic Adirondack chairs, pick up after their dogs and call the police immediately if any HCs decide to take up residence in the bushes:

The suave part about this park is that it is just a short walk away from Five Brothers Deli at Southard Street. Lurking in those bushes with a con leche and a Citizen is, despite what the purveyors of beer will tell you, about as good as it gets.

By now it's time for some ocean air so we go south. This little pocket of palms offers a nice view of the ocean and its the newest park in this genre of unconsidered trifles:It's on the south side of the island at the corner of Alberta and Seminole Streets. If that's too vague let me see if this puts it in context:That white block would be Casa Marina viewed from the rear. The dark blob is the Bonneville.

In the style of the Angela Street Pocket Park is another public space created from the dismantling of an electrical transformer apparatus that used to sit on this piece of land on Flagler Avenue. If you find yourself in difficulty finding this one you need a GPS implanted in your brain. Just look for the marker (not the Bonneville -its long gone from here):This was the most popular piece from a past Sculpture in the Park exhibit at Fort Zachary, and it appears to have found a permanent home in New Town. Very cool.

So, now its confession time. This last park I could not find. I was under the gun because I had to meet my wife at her workplace on Stock Island and I left it for last. Hell, I didn't even know up till last year that this place even existed, which isn't surprising as it is purely a neighborhood park and I have never lived in this area of identical, suburban streets lined by CBS houses, garages and proper, all American sidewalks. I discovered Cozumel Park one night when an irate caller got on 9-1-1 to tell me noisy people were playing in the park at two in the morning. I immediately went out to find it myself and check the area so future callers wouldn't catch me by surprise (They found a dead, smelly, seven foot shark nearby a couple of weeks ago. At 2 in the morning again. Key Weird). Its impossible to stumble upon but neighbors seem to enjoy the hell out of it. This was by far the most used park I visited in this small sampling:There were tons of parents with toddlers, strollers and people hanging out chatting and watching the youngsters tossing a ball. It was a perfect end to a hard fought tour. Key West, a livable place to live. Oh and its not on Google maps, but if you can find 19th Terrace you will be close. Please don't tell them I sent you, they seem to like to keep it to themselves.

And I still made it on time to meet my wife at her work place across the bridge.