Rusty Meets Don Quixote

Elsewhere I write about my impressions of Ft Myers revitalized but this essay is about one aspect of that revitalization: public art. Not only was there an art show on the streets, but Rusty got turned on by it too.

It's a show strung out across Ft Myers' River District, the old town. Allure Your Senses LINK and it involves a lot of statuary. I liked it and found myself enjoying discovering the next piece. 

 

The funny part was Rusty's reaction. He seemed to be able to see the shapes of metal in the same way we do. A dog welded in metal looked like a dog to him. I was surprised.

 

However when we came to the snail, caracol in Spanish, we neither of us knew what to make of it until I read the description.

 

I mean, not to human or dog eyes does that look like a snail. Interesting though but not a literal rendering. Rusty sniffed and moved on.

 

Here's another dog but the dude surprised me. I am surprised the league of prudish women hadn't marched out to cover up the offending member. Ft Myers apparently has the capacity toi surprise us old stereotypers...

 

It was great fun spotting the statues and I know I didn't find them all.

 

This one nailed Rusty. He pulled back on the leash and wanted nothing to do with the horse. I walked up to it and banged it with my hand ut he wasn't convinced. He can definitely identify  three dimensional shapes.

 

No trust at all:

 

And the last picture I liked the most, it was the first statue I came across on or walk. Dominoes:

 

Rusty Goes North

Spring Break means a week off for my teacher wife. With some slight adjustments to my schedule I too had much of a week off so that meant - road trip! Alligator Alley at dusk:

We stopped at the Miccosukee Service area for their clean bathrooms and a romp for a small brown dog who has slept in perfect order on the back seat of the car. The bench I created was barely enough for Cheyenne but three Rustys would fit.

Rusty loves running in the wilderness and I like walking him there. He ran and romped, at home in the field. It was a joy to watch him.

Then he came back to the car to wait for his elderly plodding guardians.

He has learned to stand by the trunk if he is thirsty. That's where his (Cheyenne's) waterbowl lives.

He seems to enjoy traveling. And sleeping on our bed with us.

More wilderness. More happy Rusty.

He is a different dog and he is learning fast. He travels well and now he is no longer afraid of elevators. Other dogs worry him, doors are a puzzle but elevators are now his domain. Good boy. And no, he doesn't seem to feel the heat and therefore he doesn't sit in puddles. Double good dog.

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Working In Fort Myers

Fort Myers is a pretty little river town, but I've seen enough of it over the past year to last me a lifetime. Indeed a life time ago I lived there for a few months and did not much enjoy myself. I am a political creature and living in a place where conservative politics are just assumed to be the mainstream leaves me at a disadvantage. The weather is not the greatest either with frost in the winter, sometimes, and tons of rain like you have never seen every summer afternoon. And yet, I admire Ft Myers' renaissance in the 1990s. The city is clean and tidy in a way I wish Key West could imitate, downtown is lively with bars and sidewalk tables, restaurants and music, art and theater. 

It's a five hour drive from my home in the Lower Keys, up the Overseas Highway, onto the Turnpike at Homestead, then I-75 across the Everglades to Naples...

...where monstrous black clouds gather in the afternoon and then eventually we arrive at the airport La Quinta on Daniels Parkway. My wife likes to shop at Costco and Bed Bath and Beyond and Target and Trader Joe's and all that stuff and then we meet Jeff and go over whatever outstanding issues to move our app-in-the-making forward. The past year has seen us meeting on my weekends off, that is every other week as we tried to figure out how to make 911buddy work, how to configure the drawings for the patent, how to plan our marketing campaign and how to pay for it all.   

Consequently Cheyenne has seen more than her fair share of  downtown Ft Myers in the early hours of the morning. It's a fifteen minute drive from the hotel and the old girl loves trotting around early on a Sunday morning chasing down pizza crusts abandoned in parking lots by heaven knows who the night before.

Ft Myers has done a nice job of preserving these buildings, keeping the streets clean and so forth so I am forced to wonder why Key West is so cavalier about it's own architectural heritage.

The pause that refreshes while I stare at cornices and sky and ponder the meaning of Life.

Is it just that Key West needs to project itself as more edgy, more on the margins of stolid middle class respectability? Do grubby storefronts and broken sidewalks represent the wild side of family vacations? 

I find it puzzling, perhaps because I don't view Key West as being that far off the beaten path. I mean, when you go to Key West you haven't fallen off the edge of the known universe...it isn't an Open City like Tangier in the 40s or Shanghai in the 30s, dens of iniquity and vice where Anything Goes. 

Perhaps I have answered my own question. Ft Myers is nice and clean and tidy downtown (it is certainly a bit more raggedy in the fringes where industry, car sales and the African-American community live) and is thus more familiar. No Fantasy Fest madness, no reputation for...what is it Key West is known for? Gays, wild parties and wretched excess. 

So I guess I can't have Key West be wild and devil-may-care and clean and tidy. I guess I will have to learn to take it as it is.

At some point in my life I will get to spend my alternating weekends off at home. 

Ft Myers - A Moveable Feast

You wake up far too early, but not early enough. Cheyenne's awake and that means it's time to go walking. And because you just spent the night in La Quinta - the dog-friendly chain - you can't be in Key West.

The airport La Quinta is twenty minutes from downtown and Cheyenne likes downtown. We've been here before, practically every other weekend for a year as we have worked on our new business. My partner Jeff lives in the area so this is where we plan, brainstorm argue and cajole and reassure each other. It's exhausting so a calming dog walk is a great way to start the day.

I sent this picture to my buddy Nick who is wrapping up his Lexus lease. Nick likes to drive do naturally he lives in Key West, which is a long story but lets just say his mother lives in Key West. This Scion is what he wants next and I was quite proud of myself for recognizing it as such. It's quite pretty too.

Cheyenne likes downtown Ft Myers because it turns out they party hearty in this town - more on that in a minute. More importantly I like Ft Myers because it's full of little surprises like this architectural motif. An Arab doorway in this town?

The city I lived in decades ago has changed, not surprisingly, but in some respects it has changed for the better. Downtown is full of places to eat drink sit out out, sit in and listen to music. They also try to respect and remember their history, as illustrated by the historic plaque placed somewhat inappropriately on the fountain in the square. Better that than the alligators used to draw tourists decades ago.

Pretty spot.

As to why Cheyenne likes coming here every couple of weeks, that's because some things haven't changed in this town. This pretty downtown doesn't stop people from discarding surplus food wherever they stand. Even fifty feet from a trash can Cheyenne could find pizza crusts parked in flower pots, slices in boxes on the ground...she even found a Mcdonalds sandwich in the street.

Ft Myers is not a hotbed of intellectual ferment. It's a provincial town where pink Crocs, weird accents and peculiar humor have no place. I liked commuting by bicycle and every night as we closed the shop someone would ask if I was tired of riding yet. Nope. If I wanted I had a motorcycle but not having a car made me weird. It got tiring. However this corner of conservative Florida has warm weather and superb beaches and...Germans? Yup. They love coming here. Now the Euro is in the toilet I'm guessing the flood of German vacation home buyers is drying up.

You can buy houses here for prices that would make a Key West house hunter weep. $250,000 for a four bed, four bath with garage and pool? And I dare say a nice kitchen, proper air conditioning and no drunks crashing in your flower bed or shitting in your driveway at three in the morning. How d'you like them apples, hip Key West?

Ft Myers is a river town do if you want to spin in salt water you need to drive a half hour. Mind you, you need to drive a half hour to go practically anywhere as Lee County is the poster boy for uncontrolled urban sprawl. The thing is urban planning is an instrument of government devilry which is not electable here so the core of the old city, platted on a frontier Army fort built to keep Seminoles at bay, is surrounded by an infestation of neon, franchises and familiar chains. Useful but dreary, which makes the revitalized downtown even more valuable. And look how clean it is, aside from the stray pizza crust...

Forty five minutes under overcast skies and herself was done. She doesn't want breakfast my puzzled wife asked as Cheyenne walked past her bowl. Nah I said as Cheyenne passed out, she's had it already.

She had a hard life before they dumped her at the pound and I guess she likes what she's used to, even if it seems weird to me. I'd like it if she slept on a bed but she is her own boss in retirement and if she wants to sleep on the floor or eat pizza for breakfast, so be it.

 

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Industrial Art

On a recent trip up north my wife went shopping and I was let loose with my camera, my ceaseless thoughts and my dog. Not necessarily in that order. Coming across the wreckage if a pay phone I was tempted by the gods of irony, a photo of the outmoded phone by the modern pocket model. A phone book? Hmm, Google works much better...

Target for Cheyenne is much less of an experience than your average small town store. Far fewer food particles for an inquisitive Labrador to hunt down. And these unconsidered trifles require much harder work.

I was amazed by the size and scope if this glass wall. These bricks used to be desirable collectors objects in some places I lived, cool symbols of a different era.

Target went to town with them.

Call me mad but the back areas of the mall looked Art Deco inspired to me.

All was not lost for my dog, never one to give up the hunt.

It's not Miami Beach, but the colors and shapes inspired me.

Perhaps I've been spending too much time in the Keys where fortresses like this are nowhere to be found ( happily).

Life sprouts in the unlikeliest places:

We took off across the parade ground to take the fort by storm...

 

Bizarre looking, toadstools of modern fire fighting utility, all properly labeled.

"Vision Drives Us. Passion Defines Us." When a mall management company uses this kind of slogan you know vision and passion have reached the peak of their over use, and soon management Gurus will find some new fake marketing emotion to drive us crazy with a new manufactured "passion."

Sometimes Labradors over do it and then they have to rest.

That's okay by me, I can enjoy sitting for a spell. I have a smart phone loaded with books; try reading a book on your pay phone.

 

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