Stock Island

Industrial Art on the island of stock, the island through which all traffic to and from Key West drives, home to worker  housing, light industry, warehouses and body shops.

The Rusty Anchor used to be the home away from home of people who grew up around here, the Conchs, natives of key West.  

It's closed but it';s sign is still there and there are rumors from time to time that some new entrepreneur may be angling to reopen it. I dare say Roostica has taken over as the preeminent Conch eatery on Stock Island and I for one prefer it. But this was a piece of history that closed. Too bad.

"Pirates Paradise."  People do love their Key West pirates and you will find them everywhere except in the history books. Key West has actually been home to respectability and hard work far more often throughout it's past than modern tourist literature would have you believe.  For the longest time it was the most prosperous city in Florida, thanks to shipping and trade.

Stock Island is being bought up be developers and for as long as I can remember rumblings of imminent change are always swirling around in the atmosphere. Aside from some shuffling around in the world of marinas two of which are planning hospitality expansion, the rest of the island pretty much stays the same.

It's unincorporated, a part of Monroe County, only College Road to the north is actually in the city of Key West. Sidewalks are few, puddles, trash and unkempt grass are the order of the day across much of the island. Stock Island generates loyalty as it is the holdout for truly affordable, if not always pleasant housing close to key West.

 There are expensive houses here on small lots bounded by trailers of all sorts of decrepit vintage.

 Urban planning is a lost art on this island where they used to graze cows which would be shipped to Rest Beach from time to time and there slaughtered to supply the city of 12,000 inhabitants that was Key West in the 19th century. 

On my gloomy days Stock Island seems to fill that same quota, providing brawn to clean hotels, maintain services and sell food. In the morning you will see fleets of people cycling into Key West alongside the impressive lines of workers displaced by high rents to the outer islands of the Lower Keys. All of them, on the street and on the sidewalks flow into Key West to do the  work that won't pay the astronomical rents in the city. Housekeepers and servers that keep tourist infrastructure going live here:

Development plans are always in the air and sometimes in the newspaper. It is counter intuitive when the city keeps proclaiming piously that affordable housing is the biggest challenge. These trailers are vaguely affordable though they too are under threat.

Chickens run loose here, far from the tourist clap trap about them being imported romantically from Cuba. Chicken fighting has long been a  source of gambling and it still goes on, though more or less in secret as torturing birds is considered a bad thing and is thus illegal. Fights have been reported for ever in the Lower Keys but I don't think visitors would like to know why youngsters on mopeds can sometimes been seen scooping up roosters and whisking them away to be mutilated and set to fight.

There are more expensive homes here and decent apartments along side the trailers.  Rusty, like Cheyenne before him, enjoys this place filled as it is with smells, some a lot less salubrious than others.

Cheyenne who died of ripe old age four short months ago feels like she has been gone forever. I miss her even as Rusty grows into a great dog in my life. She loved poking around Stock Island and would walk herself into a coma exploring here: 

Cars parked apparently with no hope of movement as they lack even basic license plates:

 Modern stilt homes:

Old fashioned mobile homes, immobilized by the passage of time: 

Cars are everywhere: 

 And scooters too:

Rusty walked an hour and a half under a blazing sun which produced 90 degree temperatures during breakfast time. My wife was coming to pick us up so I improvised a drinking bowl from a trash can and put water in a plastic bag at a public faucet and he lapped it up:

Dogs make the walk worthwhile.

Stock Island Sense

It was one of those mornings when Cheyenne greeted me on the deck ready to go. We went and ended up on Stock Island where she made a new acquaintance. A rather self possessed small dog came trotting up to say hello and didn't get much back from my great silent Labrador... 

 No Parking in large white letters the plywood said. The requirement seemed rather urgent but I wasn't sure why.

 There was not a huge amount of activity that early. My Labrador and I were alone.

The shades of blue of the American Dream. An elderly truck, a trailer and Old Glory, under a clear blue sky.

 I wodmered if perhaps the drawers might fly open springing surprise children on the street:

 There seemed to be an air of anticipation, as though waiting for the restaurant.

 The symmetry of coconut palms:

 The lot look so sterile and empty I figured no one lived here anymore.

 This machine was parked on the street as though awaiting an enthusiastic buyer:

Two women enjoying a pause in the morning said hello to Cheyenne. She thought them fascinating to an embarrassing degree. 

 Old Glory again, this time not on a trailer but at the Fortress Temple, lying above the fortifications.

 The future and the past on the street together:

 "Please don't spend your time pointlessly in this place." Nice and blunt.

 I thought this car belonged more properly as a tourist attraction in Havana:

Cayo del Mar means Island of the Sea. As close as this lot will come to the sea is the boat parked in front of the apartment complex.

Stock Island, the other Key West.

Rusty Anchor Stone Crabs

This is the last of my three essays on the recent visit of Kirk and Jay from Seattle. My wife's cousin Kirk and his long time buddy Jay were in town for one brief night to check out family vacation possibilities for wives and offspring later in the year, and they neither of them knew anything about Key west. Only that Kirk's "cuz" lived around here. Kirk wanted stone crabs, so I sent a text to my colleague Keith who knows this sort of thing and this is what he recommended. Kirk loved it.When they drove into town Kirk and Jay stopped by our house at Mile Marker 27 and we then had lunch at Square Grouper on Cudjoe Key. That was a success, not only because the food is uniformly excellent and the service is efficient, but also because that restaurant is located in an unprepossessing barn more clearly labeled as a beauty salon (upstairs) than an excellent restaurant (downstairs). "We'd never have found this on our own," Kirk marveled as he wiped off the last crumb of fish on his plate. The Rusty Anchor in the boonies of Stock Island, a noted Conch hang out, gave off the same "off the beaten track" aura that Kirk loved. He didn't mind the stone crabs either. He was entranced by the "squid" rings- "No pretentious calamari here" he laughed. "Forget your Italian heritage, cuz!" he said to me as he scarfed his "squid" rings. They were delicious.Jay and i had fish, mine was mutton snapper rice and beans. No frills just an honest helping of fresh fish and proper Cuban sides, which I preferred over the potato and salad options.My wife joined Kirk in the stone crab dish. On the advice of the waitress they ordered the large as opposed to the jumbo on the grounds the flavor is better and there is less shell in the weight.It was a quiet night in the restaurant, not quite as quiet as I show here but I felt rather self conscious pointing a camera round the room so I aimed for the quietest corner.Jay and Kirk both thought the Rusty Anchor was the bee's knees.Our waitress was divine, a woman full of humor and chatter and she told an astonishing story of a life as a single mother moving from Cudjoe to Key Haven to be near her multiple jobs and raise her multiple children. Her children are almost all grown and scattered across the country following her footsteps on the college route from California to Key West. Kirk has this ability to draw people out and I watched, fascinated as he found shared experiences and drew the conversation along.Her son-in-law had invented an iPhone application and they were busy looking it up. She told of her other son laid off from his construction job, making unemployment and going fishing with his sister as his mate. She was immobilized after breaking both ankles in two freak accidents but she was out there in her wheelchair on the boat baiting for her brother. And so it went laughing all the time at these most unfortunate of stories. I hope Kirk tipped her enormously because she gave the meal a Key West flavor I could never have replicated.The stone crabs were the draw but the evening was quite a success for a totally different reason.How much we spent I have no idea (thank you cousin Kirk!) but he said the meal was exceptionally reasonable and included coffee and Key Lime Pie (not tart enough...the search continues for the best). Now I need some more out of town guests to justify a return visit. If you want to check out their website you can't because the Rusty Anchor doesn't bother with electronic folderol. You can find them on 5th Avenue on Stock Island and read the reviews on Trip Advisor, which are a mixed bunch. It was good for us, though this is the first time I have been there in ages. Silly me.