Water By The Spoonful

We  went to see a very intense play which was part of the Red Barn's Summer Series, a reminder that tourism now never sleeps in Key West. Water By The Spoonful was a remarkable performance and left me wrung out.

As we walked away I had a lot to think about, not least that as much as I disliked my own upbringing it was nothing like the combination of Iraq veteran (from New York's Puerto Rican community) and an intersecting bunch of drug addicts. Yet it was a totally absorbing story and I came to no conclusions why I got sucked in so much and one can only say it was imaginative and well written and performed with power on our local stage.

It was the first time I saw an Internet chat room depicted on stage and that in itself was interesting. The four characters were illuminated as they spoke their messages and they stared across the audience as they spoke giving a sense of the detachment of posting in an online forum. It was surprisingly effective.

Key West at night is delightful especially when  its  hot by day. 

My favorite time to be out is  after four, when the bars close and alcohol can no longer be sold, but before six when commuter traffic starts to wake the city up again.

The city belongs to me and Rusty and strange messages make even less sense than they do in broad daylight.

St Mary's minor basilica on Truman Avenue:

A walk in darkness, always worthwhile.

A Matter Of Time

"It's unusual," my wife said. "I don't recognize any faces here."
"Not surprising," I said. "I figure I'm the youngest person in the audience. By a long shot."
"It's not that I expect to know someone," she went on as we waited for the lights to go down. "But I almost always recognize a few faces in the audience."

We have been living la vida loca lately with too much to do and not enough time. A common story, so we decided to treat the problem in an uncommon way. We decided to to not only make time to do stuff, but that we would actually follow through - that's the uncommon part. At least so far...

Of course a few business details had to be wrapped up at the house before we got away to drive to the Big City, so time was pushing us into a corner...Cheyenne doesn't leave the house much these days, she sleeps and eats and staggers around on very unsteady legs, a really old dog suddenly who fills me with sadness and nostalgia (not that I ever let her know). We wished her a cheery good night and launched ourselves into the cool of night, not too coll, but quite dark and debated dinner. Our initial plan of seafood at Alonzo's yielded to the reality of time so I suggested Sandy's for a fried fish sandwich which we shared so not only was it quick but it was also cheap. We sat at the counter, the view rather prosaically that of White Street after dark and drank coffee and shared fries. It was companionable in a student-era kind of way. A group of real youngsters stopped by and started talking about how authentic the food was and I was reminded that this is winter and visitors are always looking for the "authentic Key West." They looked like surfers who lost their way to Laguna Niguel. I privately wished them luck in their search for truth.

Downtown we parked and I fed the meter five bucks for two hours which seems like a deal compared to the cost of a parking ticket and I didn't feel like rushing across town from a backdoor free parking spot so I paid to park and we strolled. It was a lovely night, not at all cold, velvety dark and perfect for two people to amble. The windows were wide open at the Bull though we had no time of course to pause for a beer. We had a play to watch.

They offer alcohol at the Red Barn but we had to stay awake and drive home besides we were full of Sandy's cafe con leche (so authentic!). The play was a Neil Simon farce and I found a synopsis on my phone...so modern...which I studied as we squished into our seats in the middle of the row in a  sold out house. Wikipedia to the rescue!

We had determined we wanted to do something other than work just three days prior which left me a bit short on actual knowledge about what we had come to see...The set was a Ukrainian village gorgeously rendered by Rick Worth in this picture from the Red Barn website:

I was struck by the fact that the older actors on stage, Key West stalwarts had the smaller roles most of them but they were so proficient in this and worked so well as a team as the village idiots they outshone the raw young talent of the love struck leads. But hey we laughed and I enjoyed the overtones of a world gone mad with stupidity...until I noticed the age of the crowd.

"We just love it here," I overhead someone saying, that sort of comment that sounds somehow patronizing coming from people who live here but a few months of the year. You only get the good and the bad, the ugly and the sublime through the grit of living here all the time. I wish people who think they "love it here" would give themselves the full true measure of commitment. I have heard it said that the reason that residents of San Francisco hate it when visitors call the City (as its known to locals) "Frisco" is because they fell that the nickname, never deployed by residents, expresses excessive unwarranted intimacy with a city too beloved by outsiders. It's an odd sentiment, bewildering perhaps, but I find it applies to my feelings about Key West.

I looked around at the sea of old people and I'm sure the theater is glad to see paying bottoms in seats but I had flashbacks to my past living in God's Waiting Room (St Petersburg) when it was a  much less dynamic city than it tires to be today. I got the feeling that Key West is becoming what St Pete used to be. It unsettled me to feel like that, and I expressed the thought to my wife as we ambled across the courtyard back to Duval Street, after the play.

I think the earth shifted slightly in 2008 and the economic crisis knocked places like Key West out of reach of people who thought they could afford the occasional high cost fling, people who come to town, drink for a week and go home and adjust their second mortgage on their home they thought of as a piggy bank. Nowadays only the elderly wealthy can afford winters in Key West it seems and Duval was relatively quiet as we walked back to the car on a perfect January night. Food for thought. Meanwhile we had other food thoughts on our minds.

We stopped for dessert to go from Kennedy Cafe, the Uzbek restaurant recently remodeled and looking lovely. We had dessert wine at home to go with the Napoleon and the circular baklava and Cheyenne was waiting for us, now more than ever cherished for the simple fact of still being there to greet us, waking suddenly from sleep, surprised and quite possibly pleased to be awoken.

Time passes things change, we come and we go and permanence is made transitory. I hope young people rediscover Key West, and find it an affordable base from which to be creative and thoughtful and high spirited, and a good deal less like the retirement center it feels like it is slipping into.

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Key West Staycation

During our  recent Spring Break in the mountains of North Carolina I found myself reflecting on the fact that two and a half million people visit Key West each year on vacation. Far too many I sometimes think, but they must be on to something. Then I'd look out of the window at another dank cold mountainous day and ponder the news from my phone that Key West was 82  degrees and sunny -again! 

So when we found ourselves with a weekend off and no chores to do I said we should have a staycation be it but two days long. On Saturday we stayed home, watched movies, ate and drank and swam in the canal even though at the time it felt more like a chore than a pleasure as the water could not have been much over 75 degrees. It seemed like a contrast to indulgent living and made a blanket on the couch feel much more sensible. Then on the Sunday afternoon we left Cheyenne home to get some extra snoring time and we drove the convertible into town.

We parked the Fiat 500 on Windsor and walked a couple of blocks through what is essentially a no parking zone on Olivia (unless you are lucky and enjoy particular favor with the parking gods) to the little white house that is Seven Fish . They require reservations and they startled me with a phone call in the morning to check our six o'clock reservation stood. Yes I said firmly, dinner for two.

I like Seven Fish, an intimate home setting that some complain is noisy thanks to the wooden roof and lack of insulation. I suppose it is a bit noisy but oddly for one who hates noise I find it comforting. I had no trouble sustaining a conversation and the sound of a room filled with happy diners gave a pleasant background to dinner. And it was intimate enough I felt inhibited from taking pictures so their website photo, rather inadequate above, will have to do. We shared a mushroom quesadilla to start and then shared gnocchi and the snapper special main courses washed down with four assorted glasses of white wine.  It was a properly leisurely meal. Seven Fish is supposed to be moving to the former Kyushu Japanese restaurant on Truman but they say there is no immediate schedule and I'm glad. I am fearful restaurants lose their edge when they grow and expand so I recommend Seven Fish before their distant move eventually becomes a reality.

 

The next part of the program was a play at the Red Barn Theater which I had spotted and was quite looking for to.  Set in Ireland of a few years back (possibly) the story concerned a pair of  rural families whose young offspring seem destined to marry eventually though the outcome is never clear. It's a comedy though with the sort of tragic overtones only the Irish seem capable of bringing sometimes to the merriest of situations. The Red Barn is a delightful hang out, just off the noisy 300 block of Duval, yet locked in a world of its own fronted by the expansive brick courtyard with lots of scooter and bicycle parking and vehicle parking for those with particular needs.

I greatly enjoyed the performance of the two elders and the two younger members of the families. Their accents were convincing, which surprised me slightly, the pace was brisk, all over in 75 uninterrupted minutes, and the stage settings were evocative yet simple. I found the characters in "Outside Mullingar" believable and the plot though convoluted, intriguing. Not surprising really if you have heard of the play (and film) called Doubt which was created by the same playwright.

Naturally the staycation had to be prolonged a bit. This involved a stop at my preferred ice cream place- Flamingo Crossing and I include the Trip Advisor link so you can see what others think. I don't buy ice cream for great service, but for great ice cream and they have it. I've never had crappy service either but I know what I want, I ask for it promptly and leave a tip. In an underpaid over stressed town like Key West its not rocket science. I have no idea why you would ask for familiar flavors here, as they have all sorts of tropical fruits and their own take on Cuban Coffee if, unlike me, you like coffee flavored food. I like to get Soursop, which in defiance of its name is soft and creamy and sweet and perfumed. My wife had the more sour passion fruit and guava flavors.

A small boy  in front of me (just out of the frame above) was whining to his father about some unidentifiable human rights injustice and they were clearly British. I leaned over and looked the small boy in the eye and said: "No whinging!" which English-ism startled the child into silence. "See?" his father said smiling at me, "...there's someone else from England here." Thus the ice cream purchasing proceeded in serenity, the small boy staring at me with big round eyes. My wife and I took seats on the deck out front and watched people walk by, the zombie effect of being on vacation and not knowing what to look at nor where to go.

One is supposed to remind oneself from time to time that one is lucky to live where others come to play and all too often the effect is to create aggravation at their inconvenient occupancy of streets, parking, restaurants and stores and everything. A short visit into their world is a useful reminder of why they do it. Consider the staycation a success.

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