Through Key West

It was lovely yesterday in town, a little warm, but not too humid and a slight breeze to keep us cool aboard Gannet 2, Rusty and I. While walking I spotted this fast moving scooter.

Silent, clean unobtrusive and people hate them for being just that. It's hard to walk distracted with these eco warriors racing down the street. Then if that's not funny enough residents get annoyed by noisy infernal combustion scooters buzzing through narrow streets.

There's no pleasing people. If you think I deserve to be strung up for my heretical support of e-bikes take heart. When I see a lovely old VW  micro van all I remember is watching my own Westfalia entering Gallup, New Mexico with snow on the ground everywhere and my bus on a flatbed with Emma the Labrador sitting behind the wheel with the dignity only Labradors have, while I rode in the tow truck cab looking forlornly at my credit card. 

It turned out it was a cold start choke that failed but that was just one of many breakdowns, blown gaskets and pistons breaking crankcases. I spent as much time by the side of the road with that van as I did later with a two stroke Vespa. I'm hoping my Promaster future breaks that streak. 

Meanwhile as the end of the month aproaches I like how the rest of the country celebrates my birthday with pumpkins and skeletons.

This year I plan to spend it with Webb Chiles in South Carolina. I've told him if he does more than mention it he will meet a gruesome fate. He is quaking I am sure. While the rest of the country gets dressed up I pretend to ignore the day. 64 this year on All Saint's Eve.

I labeled the photo above Marlboro Man on my Instagram account but I'm not sure I captured his true level of total coolness. I never looked like that while riding a motorcycle. Sigh. There are others parading on Duval also trying to achieve the nirvana state of cool:

In the dead zone you can find faint signs of life on this, the 200 block of Duval but the cruise ship stores are all still closed and empty. Realtor signs make them look a tad less desolate. 

Some people do actual work on Duval Street. Rather them than me; I'm retired (cackles maniacally as he fades into the distance).

I am convinced, despite all signs to the contrary that the future of urban two wheelers is electric. Even Key West will get it one day soon I have no doubt.

I like walking and I get grief for not being enamored of bicycles (thank you Webb, I will rent one while at your place), but these pedestrians were star struck by...chickens.

 Me? I'm struck by my van and my dog who loves me. My wife was at the dentist so she only gets an honorable mention...

Eaton/Duval Night

We finally got something approaching a cold front which didn't do much for temperatures but it does seem to have tamped down the ghastly humidity a bit. Check out in the photo below. Get your camera out of an air-conditioned car and you have to wait a few minutes for things to settle down. Usually I'm impatient and start wiping the lens with a microfiber cloth and but its bets to just wait for temperatures to equalize by themselves. Watch your dog enjoying himself as you wait:

I was on Eaton just off Duval looking at the posters advertising productions to come after we're gone at the Key West Theater. I am glad they have brought the long empty space back to life and I recall with pleasure a pre pandemic concert my friend Gary actually got us tickets to check it out. Covid would not encourage us to go to a public performance this winter so we leave town with less regret than we otherwise might. 

We closed down the yard sale after a slow Sunday but we did make about $1500 which seemed like a lot to me. I congratulated my wife and then we took a nap. My wife is friends with a Haitian pastor and she's invited his prisoners you d to collect anything they might want to help put our stuff somewhere useful other than the landfill. That will leave us camping at home for our last few weeks. Re-use is a great way to pass stuff along for others to enjoy in their homes.

As I step out the door at work the Teamsters have negotiated pretty big raises for my former colleagues. My wife looked at me for a minute and said two bucks more an hour? Sign up! And we burst out laughing. I'm glad they will get more money because life in the Keys doesn't get any cheaper but I am so glad not to have to think about all that anymore.

One thing I noticed at the yard sale was tenor of conversations with people new to the Keys looking for stuff. It was interesting to me to listen to their reactions to life in this new place. One new arrival in Marathon was really relieved not to live in Key West, home of the weirdos which made me smile. My grumble at the reduction of weirdness is clearly the perception of someone who has lived here too long. That was a thought provoking conversation.

There was the buyer who lives with an active wife and he's worried she may not settle down to a slower pace of life. I could do nothing all day he said, sweating to put his purchases into the narrow space in his car.

I stopped in front of the presbytery, the pastor's home, at St Paul's. In years past this has been a prime viewing platform for the Fantasy Fest Grand Parade. This year the parade is cancelled but Fantasy fest goes ahead anyway. No viewing platforms required, I guess. The gate was padlocked at four in the morning!

Tourism has been hot all summer. The thinking is that the desire to move is best served by visiting interesting places in the US no matter whether it's in season or not. It's not high season in the Keys but you wouldn't know it looking at the numbers.

AsI was standing there looking at details as Rusty paused at the base of every tree (no peeing, good boy) there were hung over looking people stumbling back and forth. We were supposed to be alone but Key West is the city that has a hard time sleeping this year.

And Bank of America is back downtown. They closed the office on Southard Street a few years ago and then I saw this employee-free box on the 300 block. It's a page out of Wells Fargo's book as there are a couple of rival ATMs just up the street. My bank on Summerland Key has been closed since Hurricane Irma trashed the Lower Keys so I guess inconvenience is the new customer service.  I like the trash can, it kales it look almost like a real bank.

Duval Pocket Park

There is a certain carelessness in the way Key West maintains its public spaces. It used to bug me to see decay ignored, an absence of care, and now that the city is moving faster and faster to fulfil the mayor's vision of a genteel upper class tourist destination, I see seaweed rotting on the beach and feel relief.

Slabs of cement mark the southernmost end of the "world famous" Duval Street, the heart of tourist Key West. The unsightly lump works for the seagulls.

This cheerful sign addresses an issue I had not previously considered to be a problem. I hope the pelicans know not to dump around here.

Conversely this slab of horizontal cement is a pier thrusting out into the sea, a photo opportunity with no sign of where or what this place might be. "Yay! Key West!" would be a nice background for those endless selfies taken at this spot, instead the background is a sign covered in scruffy stickers. The pier itself is about as inviting as a loading dock.

They come, they go and zip through the new pocket park built to replace a few seaweed covered parking spots that used to live here.

This is as it was:

This is as it is, so urban renewal is not out of reach:

The surrounding architecture should inspire.

Cruise ships are still in the news. The city is struggling to override the Governor's mandate that cruise ships are not subject to local control, but the latest news from the cruise ship industry is that Carnival has dropped Key West from its ports of call. According to the paper there is no reason given but that's a loss of several ships a week from Key West. 

Score one for the Mayor in her running battle with the Governor. Whether the loss of income will affect Duval businesses this far south from the bars at the top end of the street...is pretty easy to say. These places don't get many cruise ship visitors and in the past have complained about the discrimination. Nowadays Upper Duval is a mess of closed cruise ship centered businesses but down here everything looks normal and people are working:

In other news Florida's governor has promised to appeal another loss this time in Federal Court in Miami where a judge ruled Norwegian Cruise Lines can require passengers to show proof of vaccination. It would be odd if Key West did trump Tallahassee but there is precedent:  David did wallop Goliath...

Shades of Downtown

I was not in the mood to go out into the noonday sun but I went anyway as the alternative was to sit on the couch and space out or worse, take a nap. The trouble is I like naps but it was a bright sunny day and I wanted adventure.

As adventures go it wasn't anywhere close to my definition, "an undertaking with an uncertain outcome" as I was pretty sure I'd end up back at my desk an hour later.

So I fiddled with the settings on the camera and chose square format in back and white to make me work.  With the red filter deployed the sky turned a satisfying shade of dark. The beauty of digital photography is the filters are all in the camera electronically. Press a button whoosh you can have red yellow or green at will.

It was a s hot as it looks actually. Downtown surrounded by buildings the cooling breeze is not like it is in the mangroves. 

I choose to walk on the shady side of the street in summer. It's like they say about a good parking spot for a Floridian, that's always the parking space in the shade.

People seem to enjoy walking up and down Duval Street and I keep hoping I shall enjoy ti more but really I don't. 

She didn't seem to mind sitting there with a bull in her lap:

Three bars in one building:

I made my way off Duval Street and walked into Truman Annex for some peace and greenery. "Coming in hot" the scooter rider shouted so I stepped off the sidewalk(!) into the grass. 

The Presidential Gate on Caroline at Whitehead. They are traditionally only opened for US Presidents in town. President Truman used to stay in Truman Annex when it was a Navy Base and his car would trundle in and out of here. There's a replica you can rent apparently somewhere in town. The car I mean, not the President.

Like I said, find your spot of shade and stick to it.

Everyone was hunting for shade.  I once had a memorable encounter with someone at this very corner, a stranger who accosted me as I walked back to the car late one night after a movie at the Tropic. He tried to ask for directions but before he could finish, or start really, he vomited copiously very near my shoes so as I leapt back to avoid splatter (successfully) he pirouetted in a  drunken faint clutching the wall and sliding to the ground nicely mopping up his own mess. Late night movies haven't held the same attraction since.

Back to Saint Paul's shining like a beacon of sanity on an insane street.

Into my car with ten minutes to get back to work. The journey was not aided by those foul golf carts holding up traffic and crawling like oversized tortoises in the middle of the road.

I still got back in time. 
 

Duval Street At Four

I went to Publix yesterday and bought half a dozen items my wife had forgotten she wanted. Now that she is retired she has decided, in order that I may be encouraged to work a little while longer, that she will do the housekeeping. Our family has become a facsimile of a 1950s stereotype. I lack the tie and briefcase and she does not greet me at the door with a  whisky and soda but I work and she is the stay at home housewife and it is slightly weird.

Consequently I am not as familiar with the interior of a grocery store as I used to be. I remember when the height of tough political questioning on the campaign trail was when reporters (remember them?) asked Presidential candidates the price of milk to see if they were in touch with the common people. I don't think any of them were and now I too am in that exalted Presidential state.

Imagine my surprise when I was confronted by not a single check out cashier and the only way out was through a group of self service machines. I have tried these tools of Satan at other stores, notably Winn Dixie on Big Pine and I loathe them. Invariably I end up screwing up something and I have to wait for the overseer to come along and whip the artificial intelligence into shape. The machines are always screaming at me to put my items in the bag, or screaming that I put something I shouldn't in the bag. They remind me of the the misery of my teenage years, a new boy in school getting yelled at by everyone for not knowing the protocols. "Excuse me" I shout. "The machine is accusing me of stealing from Publix," I say in an effort to shame the managers of these unruly beasts. And don't forget we are all under surveillance:

The fact is every business in the Keys would like to be hiring people. I hear it is the same story across the country and it's certainly true in dispatch where we have seven dispatchers covering 15 paid positions, so I suppose it makes sense to hire artificial intelligence where people won't work for the paltry wages.

I feel my grip on the customs of daily life slipping away from me gradually. I guess it is the process of aging. I liked to try different things and take long vacations as a youngster but I came home and got a job. It was as matter of  course as calling AT and T to install a phone line in my new apartment.  I worked until I got bored and then I took off for a while. Then I came home and worked some more. I just looked for a job and eventually got one. I had as much desire for a career as I had to start a family. But I worked.

I can't tell if it's the virus that's changed everything or the Internet or ray guns from outer space but I don't feel part of it any more. Perhaps the change is within me and things move ahead as they always have. Perhaps people earn money buy selling stuff on eBay like my wife as she gradually empties our home of superfluous possessions. Perhaps manual laborers are making a living on YouTube or working from home in some manner I can't imagine. I am so used to commuting and sitting at a desk I can't think of how else I'd like to work. No benefits? No union? No contract? How 19th century my work life feels to me now. 

Perhaps it's just Key West and outside this bubble things are back to where they were.  I see lots of businesses closed, surviving stores are looking for employees and the latest numbers show Florida is heading back to a world of high numbers of infected people, busy hospitals and low rates of vaccination. I completed my vaccination on February 16th and have suffered no side effects since except staying healthy enough to show up for work every shift since.

Other than being vaccinated it's like the last year is starting all over again. I was indeed very wrong last year when I thought the pandemic would last maybe six months, because now a year and a half later the Canadian border is still closed, travel in South America is banned and Key West is a never ending circus of people looking for relief from the stress of being stuck at home. The city is packed with tourists if not snowbirds. And we can't staff supermarket check outs. May we live in interesting times.