Front Street At Four

A nighttime walk around front street.  

 Come downtown at four.

Think of many things as they come to you.

I trail around behind Rusty and see what I see...

He sniffs and searches and i take photographs and ponder old age.

It's fun looking around an empty street. I was listening to some colleagues frightening themselves with ghost stories about murder victims walking the Seven Mile Bridge at midnight struck through by the car they were driving in, the ghost woman at the Police Station haunting the nighttime corridors and strange lights seen at the cemetery. 

To me it's all nonsense. I see nothing except what my camera records. I stay quiet while the believers churn the stories. I walk the streets at night and am undisturbed by phantoms. I dream of future journeys, not past lives.

“T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
― Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

"Not to yield" of course, unless there is a stop sign in the road.

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!

Front Street

For the last week of April, and as far as I know the last week of access to my preferred photo storage at Picasaweb here are a few of some black and white pictures I took playing around Wall Street and Front Street near Mallory Square.

Google is transitioning photo storage to Google Pics and I have been trying to figure out a work around to the closing of Picasa. I think I may be able to avoid switching to the Wordpress page I have set up. In my opinion Wordpress tries to offer too many options and choices and as a result I find it labor intensive and slow to import pictures and set up self publishing of essays and so forth. Also I am not fond of the page layout, you can see my back up HERE but for now it is just a place holder. I think I have found a way to get pictures out of my phone and onto this page without Picasa. I am keeping my fingers crossed that nothing has to change.

Dust catchers galore:

Fitpatrick Street, where they sell Kino sandals.

The Custom House on Front Street is built in the Federal style (think snowy Canadian border) and was nearly demolished after it fell into disrepair. Had the guardians of Old Town Beauty been in charge at the Historic Architecture Review Commission it would probably have been replaced with something in concrete and glass. As it is it flourishes as a very worthy and enjoyable art and history depository for the city. Well worth a visit.

I am over Seward Johnson's larger than life statues in front of the building but young Rusty was quite put off by the presence of an immobile elderly woman loaded down with groceries. He was having nothing to do with her.

The people kissing are clearly a little over sized but the shopper looks quite natural in this picture:

Picturesque Key West, Wall Street next to Mallory Square.

Hogs Breath Saloon

 I did go to Hog's Breath once to see some stage performances and it was quite good fun.  However i do very poorly at Key West visitors' favorite endeavors: bar hopping and fishing.

I don't much like crowds or noise, I am sports illiterate and have no idea how to make small talk so bars are  just places where beer and stuff costs more. I'm not sure I have this right so perhaps one day I shall steel myself to see why it is millions of people want to come to key West to see this.  

The nerd in me is alive and well so when I see a sign about the past I stop and look and think. Immigrants at work, check that out!

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