Day Walk

Key West never ceases to feed my eyes. 

As often as I have walked Center Street I still enjoy the buildings.

I posted this van picture to Instagram to much acclaim and nostalgia.

Absurd growth. This is winter after all.

John Keats in his poem "To Autumn" was thinking of northern seasons. Here's the first verse:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Not exactly how we see things in the Keys in winter...

These cuts in the rock wall at the new fire station on Simonton Street looked like the image of a cocktail glass. Which probably means I have been living in the Keys too long...

And a  glimpse of La Concha hotel on Duval Street is a reminder that the legendary Top bar is gone replaced by a  spa of some sort on the roof top insider the glass.

I wonder if they tell the spa customers the story about how Chardonnay was the choice of last drink for those committing suicide by jumping from the Top and leaving behind the wine glass.

Sunday Pictures

It was like Rusty saw the sign on the tricycle and posed, without a word from me.

Fausto's business hours etched in air conditioning humidity. That's how hot and sticky it is outdoors at the moment. 

There has bene a consistent breeze this August which has been unexpected and delightful. 

Along with sudden summer downpours making puddles and reflections everywhere.

La Concha Hotel on Duval Street

I am very fond of Williams' guidebook and glad to see it is still in print. And I am not fond of iguanas.

Duval Street early morning quiet:

From The Archives: The Top At La Concha

The Top is the bar on the roof top of La Concha  hotel, which at seven stories is the tallest building in Key West. It's  a bar I have actually enjoyed visiting,  and  getting there is half the fun as The Top opens to the public at three and the elevator on the ground floor is programmed to reach the top floor at that point in the afternoon but the bar at The Top only opens at 5pm. Here's the bad news, tomorrow is the last day of operation of The Top as it is scheduled to be remodeled as a massage center and spa. Actually I had thought it was long since closed and haven't been back, as these plans were announced months ago. Now the newspaper is full of the closing and Facebook has a page calling for one last party, and it all ends Sunday night, so I figured this was the right moment to replay my 2009 essay on The Top.

If you ask me, this is the best place from which to view Key West's famous sunsets, though even of a sunny afternoon it's a pretty pleasant spot to hang out for a while:

La Concha hotel guests have access any time with their room keys in the hotel elevator, but the elevator will take anyone, even without a key, to The Top after 3:00pm. The bar opens at 5:00pm and you can watch the world go by in style, if you don't mind drinking your wine from a plastic cup:

I usually drink red wine but tradition has it that suicides who choose to leap from The Top are found to have left behind a glass of Chardonnay. If you don't believe me take the Ghost Tour which leaves from La Concha's lobby at 8:00pm, they will tell you the unvarnished truth. I took myself up to the The Top, and there took a moment by myself, on graduation day last week, so it seemed churlish to spoil the evening by taking a swan dive. I drank the wine and admired the view, including St Paul's Cathedral spire and Fleming Key:

A trawler chugging through the harbor en route to the Gulf via the Northwest Channel:
A tourist with Mule Key in the background:

The harbor:

As you can tell Key West is pretty much surrounded by boats at anchor which are most likely lived aboard:

One soon to be occupied by the fish is the Vandenberg (which was sunk that year):
There's Duval Street driving straight for the Gulf:
And here are some visitors touring the town on scooters, at Duval and Eaton, with a delivery scooter in pursuit:
A less energetic visitor enjoying a book on one of the terraces inside the building:

My colleague Noel described this as the coolest apartment in Key West, and as it's on top of the Kress Building and it is owned and occupied by Key West's original developer David Wolkowsky, the man who started the waterfront hotel craze by building the Pier House: I wasn't alone in enjoying the views from the top:

I decided to walk back down to the ground floor, but once you decide to take the stairs management makes sure you know there is no going back:

Until you are back in the lobby, pausing a moment:

Before you step out into the heat, noise and confusion that is downtown Key West.

Fleming And Duval

I dropped my wife off at the Tropic a place where she likes to go for a drink, hang out and talk to the manager Lori, meet friends and do all those things that are fun for her the nights I'm working and when the snowbirds have left town and the lines in the movie theater have shrunk.She and Rebecca went to see "Certified Copy" with Juliette Binoche and neither of them were impressed by the movie, though neither felt like speaking up and leaving the film early so they ended up sitting through it. I missed out on the tedium by having to go to work, so after I dropped Layne off I parked the Bonneville at Fleming Street and took a short walk. I was wondering how come Highway One was so packed with traffic this week, after winter tourist season was over...and then the penny dropped and I remembered it is Easter weekend, reason enough for the crowds to return.Key West is an amazingly resilient tourist economy, the only one in Florida that has shown consistently good numbers throughout this Depression. And looking at La Concha hotel, a structure that has been around since the Great Depression of the 20th century (that I believe will be eclipsed in economic devastation by the one we are in now) and looking at it all I could think was "How did they get a height variance for this seven storey structure?" It's the tallest building in Key West, though it is getting close to being eclipsed by O'Bryant school and it's attendant controversy. Maybe things could be better but I am amazed one can still make a living apparently by selling sea shells inscribed with people's names...

Key West has always been an anomaly and when the shadow stats website suggests unemployment nationally is at 22% this seems like an amazingly good job. Weird.

http://www.shadowstats.com/

The Top To The Bottom

I snapped a few evening pictures from street level of one alternative to watching the sunset at Mallory Square.Me? I'd rather be up at the top of La Concha with a glass of wine in hand than milling around the chaos of Mallory Square.La Concha hotel is the tallest structure in Key West and offers splendid views around the city.I was last up there with a camera almost two years ago and my feelings haven't changed. http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2009/05/top.html Some people prefer to turn their backs on the scene and talk on the phone. It's a long way up to the top from the ground.

The Top

If you ask me, this is the best place from which to view Key West's famous sunsets, though even of a sunny afternoon it's a pretty pleasant spot to hang out for a while:

La Concha hotel guests have access any time with their room keys in the hotel elevator, but the elevator will take anyone, even without a key, to The Top after 3:00pm. The bar opens at 5:00pm and you can watch the world go by in style, if you don't mind drinking your wine from a plastic cup:

I usually drink red wine but tradition has it that suicides who choose to leap from The Top are found to have left behind a glass of Chardonnay. If you don't believe me take the Ghost Tour which leaves from La Concha's lobby at 8:00pm, they will tell you the unvarnished truth. I took myself up to the The Top, and there took a moment by myself, on graduation day last week, so it seemed churlish to spoil the evening by taking a swan dive. I drank the wine and admired the view, including St Paul's Cathedral spire and Fleming Key:

A trawler chugging through the harbor en route to the Gulf via the Northwest Channel:

A tourist with Mule Key in the background:

The harbor:

As you can tell Key West is pretty much surrounded by boats at anchor which are most likely lived aboard:

One soon to be occupied by the fish is the Vandenberg:

There's Duval Street driving straight for the Gulf:

And here are some visitors touring the town on scooters, at Duval and Eaton, with a delivery scooter in pursuit:

A less energetic visitor enjoying a book on one of the terraces inside the building:

My colleague Noel described this as the coolest apartment in Key West, and as it's on top of the Kress Building I speculated Jimmy Buffett may have kept it for himself (he shares ownership of the building with Fast Buck Freddie's owner): I wasn't alone in enjoying the views from the top:

I decided to walk back down to the ground floor, but once you decide to take the stairs management makes sure you know there is no going back:

Until you are back in the lobby, pausing a moment:

Before you step out into the heat, noise and confusion that is downtown Key West.