Statues Zombies and Social Chatter

When yesterday morning I walked Rusty downtown and Key West was empty, more so than prior to the usual hurricanes of recent memory, I thought these statues of the late Seward Johnson would be the only inappropriate social gathering I might see. Wrong!

I fear that in the not too distant future our governor will join those who forbid sauntering outside at all, and in Italy and Spain I read you can only walk your dog within a quarter of a mile of your home. Fines are being levied. So when I saw a couple of newspaper readers on the waterfront at Margaritaville Resort I figured they knew enough not to get close and if they hadn't wiped down the benches more fools they.

 But of course not everyone was so aware and a gathering of yoga matted bicycle riders formed at the end of the walkway, next to Admiral's Cut to share endless loud stories and copious quantities of Covid-19 no doubt. I don't think they were Spring Breakers who have happily evaporated back whence they came to infect those closest and dearest to them. 

There were a few people out and about early in the day, mostly other people walking dogs, and a few joggers and cyclists of one sort or another.

It seems like social distancing has become the new normal and a very good thing it is too. When I get home after walking and neither sitting on benches or touching anything the first thing I do is put my clothes in my laundry hamper. Then I take a shower and get clean clothes. It's become a routine.

Some people might call it a ritual but I haven't yet cottoned on to the idea that a routine becomes a ritual unless some higher power has been invoked. Taking a shower is routine in my home. Ablutions before prayers might be a ritual I suppose if I believed in such things.

Oh and while we are looking at a lucky few jogging through an empty Key West I'd like to make one other point of what irritates me most today (aside from the world appearing to end). When did "multiple" become the only way English speakers describe more than one of anything? If you come nearby and start telling me about multiple this or that I do believe I will violate the six foot separation space and share Covid-19 with you. Try saying "many" or "several" or "a few" or find your own thesaurus. I'm sick of distracting myself on YouTube and hearing multiple speakers droning on with multiple rhetorical questions about multiple aspects of photography or vans.

The Bodyzone gym closed the other day. That was okay as my immune deficient wife and I had already agreed to stop going. However when the small local gym near our home on Cudjoe Key also closed desperate measures were called for. My wife got out her rendition tapes and started us on a course of CIA approved interrogation techniques. The label said it was home exercise plans but I can't feel my legs and I'm pretty sure I am ready to tell anyone who will listen whatever they want to hear. My wife ignores my protests and keeps pressing on. Apparently she doesn't think I am properly broken yet. I am allowed to swim in the canal of an afternoon behind the house and that relieves the aches a bit. A gin and tonic later does its part too, as we soldier on in isolation.

Nearly nine o'clock on a Monday morning and Greene Street looks like the epicenter of a pandemic. All it needed was a few zombies to start giving me the creeps. When I got home my wife yelled through the shower door that a virologist on the radio thinks this can go on for more than a year.  I was not terribly polite when I refuted that suggestion. There have to be better ways to die than watching humanity crumble. My friend Webb is not fond of social media so I thought of him, hunkered with his wife Up North under a blanket, a thin one, of snow. He sent me pictures of lovely leafless trees covered in snow.  Back at you sailor man:

Someone headed yesterday morning for Federally approved social isolation west toward The Lakes or maybe Fort Jefferson. There was a decent breeze too, which is better than snow I think.

Key West's Third Man

There is a notion floating around in the contemporary photographic universe which posits that black and white photography is somehow a way to posture and add an arty label to mundane photos. I am not in a position to argue the merits but for me black and white is just another way to take a photograph. Night photos seem an obvious time for the monochrome effect but even in daylight I like to think about the possibilities of black and white when color is not necessarily called for. As for artistic pretensions I prefer to  try to tell stories with my pictures than create High Art. 

I do like the  effect of the black and white pictures as they remind me of the film noir genre produced by Hollywood, and others in the mid 20th century. Take for example that great mystery of a film which put its  musical score front and center as well. Mercifully I'm not claiming to be a composer at least.

I grant you it is a bit of a stretch comparing 21st century Key West to the rubble of Vienna after World War Two but looking back at this handful of photos puts me in mind of The Third Man. The British Film Institute says it's the greatest British film of all time, so I suppose my modest photos ought to be good and artistic!

 In the event I was wandering around the custom house and the shadow and light were wonderful. It's part of that strange anomalous mystique of key West. This is the town you associate with wooden houses, bright colors and picket fences overflowing with tropical foliage. That's my Key West. 

But when you look around there's that other town, the brick buildings and scabrous plaster, the light falling at an angle and the darkness...I love it.  This is Margaritaville Resort in the early hours as quiet as if it were unoccupied:

 Check out the Custom House Museum from a slight distance, across from the resort:

 And round the other corner the waterfront side, in color yes, but all washed out with himself bring a touch of the usual to the scene.

We ended up not walking far but in the expanding circles we made there seemed to be lots to look at. 

 I've seen a few of these stickers show up around town as though gentrification can be held back by thinking about it.  Money talks and eccentricity and non conformity are on the wane in Key West.

 I saw puddles on Wall Street near Duval:

 And this picture of Exchange Street looking toward Front I've taken a few times.

We turned our backs on it all and Rusty led the way to the car. He was ready for mangroves and wilderness and fewer human artifacts. Not at all like Harry Lime who needs to have people around him to keep himself in business.

Margaritaville

I am not what you might call a barfly. I find my capacity for noise to be limited, and as I grow older my tolerance for alcohol seems to be weakening, perhaps because I don't strengthen it by drinking. The fact remains that sitting at a table, conversation drowned out by noise, staring at a bottle of Red Stripe, does very little for me, though I do like Mile Marker 24 just fine, even sitting three feet away:

When I listen to Mile Marker 24 and compare them to the sainted Jimmy Buffet I have to conclude that to my tin ear Howard Livingston has a much more pleasing voice though Mile Marker 24 sure knows how to celebrate in song the Margaritaville world that Jimmy Buffett's tireless efforts have brought to the masses everywhere. Dave Herzog used to give steel drum lessons in the marina where we lived and it was delightful to be out walking Emma at night and listening to them tinkling away across the water. I was watching him enjoy himself while my wife renewed acquaintance with her former boss Raiette also seated in the front row:

Aside from meeting up with old friends...here is Dave's wife Barb, transformed from marina manager to roadie and camp follower and looking very good for the change:

...Margaritaville (the real cafe not the imaginary place) was offering its services as part of the annual Boys and Girls Club fundraiser, with a buffet thrown in (the one you eat not the one you listen to), Cubanroastporkchickenshrimpsmoked fishhush puppiesandKeyLimepie in the style of Ratty's picnic in the Wind in the Willows:

The food was very good, helped along by insistent hovering waiters pressing free drinks on us. My wife is better at saying no than I am, and she got out with just one Amstel Light under her belt. I belted two Red Stripes and immediately felt the need for a snooze.

There was a crowd all right but it wasn't the crowds of years past and I wasn't the only one to notice that the raffle items were down in numbers and magnificence this year. It's hard to discern how badly the Depression is hitting Key West, because there are foreclosures and people have lost jobs, but this is one of the slower times of year with snowbirds gone and school vacations not yet started.

In keeping with our frugal habits we managed to win nothing at all in the raffle though my wife was bursting to get the $50 certificate to Town N Tavern, the eatery inside the Marriott Beachside. one of the few hotel related places we seem to eat in. I should have preferred the melodies of Mile Marker 24 but I used the break to point the camera around the room, a Disneyesque recreation of some island place somewhere (St Barth's maybe, where the original "Cheeseburger in Paradise" is served at Le Select, I am told):

Whether or not you like the affable Jimmy Buffett, and why wouldn't you, you have to wonder about the cult of personality, whether it's Leonid Brezhnev, Tom Cruise, Fidel Castro, or this dude:

I dated a Parrothead many years ago, a woman who had tried living in Hawaii but who came back to foggy California unable to sustain the dream when faced with the reality of island life, yet she clung to the music and the palm trees and dream of a place called Margaritaville. It was a brief relationship doomed to failure as I am too practical to dream the dream without giving it a shot. And on a more practical note if you start thinking you might need the loo at Margaritaville you might want to get on with it early in the proceedings. Leave it too late and you might not make it because the facilities are miles away down dark corridors heavily festooned with the dream of Somewhere Isle, and you might get caught up checking out the artwork to the detriment of your bladder:

As I was tottering back, relieved to have made it in time, I heard another couple rasping their way up the innumerable flights of stairs, joking between breaths about needing to bring camping supplies for the trek:

Ah yes, the reality of building a bar in a small corner of a small island, a place that would seem indeed to be too small to contain so many dreams, you have to put the toilet out in the back 40 somewhere.

I hope the Boys and Girls got plenty of cash; I was happy to make my small contribution and spend a pleasant couple of hours not making conversation with my neighbors.

The Happy Cult

It happened one day a few years ago that I was working in the shipping department at Fast Buck Freddie's and I'd just come in from the alley in the back of the store when one of my co-workers came up all in a lather and said; "Did you see Jimmy back there?" "Jimmy who?" said I, "Jimmy Buffett,of course, someone said he's out back." "No," said I, "but there was some bald dude back there." Which it turned out was the person I had exchanged pleasantries with while I was taking a break from humping stuff into the store. That's as much as I know about the mythical Jimmy Buffett, a singer who inspires a following, some people describe as cultish:Jimmy Buffett's public story is all American and it's tied tightly into Key West, where he washed up years ago with a guitar and a desire to sing and those modest beginnings turned into a worldwide following and fortune and all the trappings. Everyone wants a piece of him and now that the Parrotheads are in town you can overhear guides telling and retelling the myth all around town, his first drink here, his first song there and so forth:I am really vague about all this, but I believe it's called the meeting of the minds or some such and the acronym MOTM can be seen all around downtown this weekend:Buffett no longer lives in Key West but he has a music studio on the waterfront and he owns part of the building where Fast Buck's is located, so my meeting him in the back wasn't exactly an outrageous coincidence. That's the building wherein his restaurant is located:Margaritaville is where Buffett fans show up year round. Frankly if all cults were like the Parrotheads I'm thinking the world would be a better place. The music is easy to listen to, the theme of the gatherings as far as I can tell is a bunch of people hanging out drinking until they collapse whereupon they all go home and plan and scheme to do it all again. Mothers need not fear for their daughters when Parrotheads are in town and the police department doesn't call for back up either. Perhaps they should:The "nuns" who descended on Officer Fernandez brought out all his latent shyness as they crowded round and demanded their picture be taken with him."We're drinking to save your soul !" they cackled at him as they shoved bystanders aside to get their pictures taken. I could well believe it, the bit about his soul; it was barely one o'clock and they were tanked. These cultists are all about being cheerful and they exuded happiness as they stood around in the 500 block of Duval waiting for the music to start. The street had been blocked off since morning with a crew of workers feverishly assembling the band's platform: Early in the day there were the unmistakable signs of a Buffet gathering on the streets of Key West:And then Duval got blocked off, always a sign something's about to happen:And they wheeled out the food stands and the barbecue and the beer and the party began.

It seems you need never be too old to be a Parrothead:

Or too young:

Michael the Palm Weaver was doing a land sale business in his usual spot:

And the evidence was there on the street:

They don't call them Parrotheads for nothing:

There was one dude walking around looking sinister in a top hat. I don't know why but they do give a person a sinister air:

And pirates, who failed miserably in the sinister looking contest, appeared to have taken over La Concha, the hotel whose balcony overlooked the proceedings:And a final thought as winter closes in, from the bus of the band that played to the crowd:Which would be, of course, Key West.