This is the time of year when summer breaks at 24 degrees North Latitude and cold fronts start to roll through the islands creating a familiar cycle of weather that lasts through April or even May. Except of course that climate is changing and the weather thus changes too in small ways here and there for now.
It used to be that after Fantasy Fest scheduled for next week by the way, one could expect increasingly cool temperatures as cold fronts stacked up with humidity dropping off noticeably followed by a period of pleasant weather cool enough to allow air conditioning to be turned off and windows and doors thrown open. Which hasn't happened for several years in my memory.
Earlier this week i noticed an early morning walk with Rusty on my day off produced a calamitous sensation of melting. We both had to pause after an hour and sit and get our composure back, Rusty panting and me dripping. I looked at my weather app and noticed north winds predicted for this weekend. Aha! I thought,m this humidity is the predictor of a mild early cold front, excellent.
Because that's how it works, first you get hot humid air pushed up from the south as air masses collide then the cold air from Up North starts to assert itself and winds start to clock round ("veer" in sailing talk) going from southeast to south and then southwest and then as dark clouds mass to the north the wind goes northwest and brings a line of rain which clears as the wind goes due north and honks and reduces temperatures to even a slow as 50 degrees in January or February. Which may not sound cold but it can be bone numbingly damp and windy and even visitors remark how cold it feels. We had a quick such blast last winter but it doesn't seem to last as long as it did, the cold snap season.
In November and December I enjoy cold fronts but by the time March rolls around I am ready for summer and swimming and fewer people, more heat and longer days. Getting dark at six o'clock when daylight savings ends in two weeks is really annoying, especially as dusk in the tropics is short and very abrupt when you live close to the equator so one minute it's day, the next it's night. In winter it gets dark around 6pm or at most 6:30 while in summer it gets dark no later than 8:30 and at the moment its around 7:30 or so.
So when I got a lunch break and had forty minutes in hand in which to get some "shutter therapy" I went to Higgs Beach. Shutter therapy is so called by Robin Wong a photographer in Kuala Lumpur when he goes walkabout with his camera, and I find it a good way to exercise my legs and rest my mind when my dog isn't available. So there I was at Higgs Beach to find shadows and light and a desert of white sand and practice my black and white photography.
Key West's homeless population increases in winter oddly enough. Somehow they find their way down and they leave in Spring when the mosquitoes get more aggressive but just as there is a permanent population in the city of people with homes there is a population year round of residentially challenged. The interesting thing is that the city offers a multitude of services including a free shelter and programs to get people off the street but for some, public living is preferable. The homeless don't bother me but what does bother me is when they are a living symbol of social indifference.
There is a population of working poor in Key West, the people who can't get into housing in this expensive city. First they can't pull together thousands of dollars for a deposit for a one room apartment. Consider that it may rent for $1500 a month which means a deposit could run you $4500 to move in. Do that on a working salary...So instead you end up sleeping at KOTS, the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter on Stock Island that gives everyone a chance to sleep in an air conditioned dormitory with showers and so forth. Dismal yes, but safe legal and dry. Key West is not the right destination for people hoping to start their lives on a wing and a prayer.
For me, landing in Key West on my own boat, living for free at anchor and then in a marina was the way I eased into life one step at a time in a city that was never easy for newcomers. I had tried Key West earlier and found it too isolated but in the Internet era with a proper highway Key West was quite bearable and even enjoyable and somehow my wife and I found sensible jobs. It is still something of a surprise to me that a town noted for it's vacation ethic to outsiders became the place where I settled down to a proper job, a career even and all almost by accident.
In the hunt for winter light at Higgs Beach I found what I was looking for and at the African Cemetery I found a compass rose. It was as though it pointed the way forward with no idea how we will get through the winter but get through we most probably shall, with cold weather or not.
That I was heading in to work could be construed as a damper but it just made the moments shared at the table all the more precious. There is a lot written about how to spend an afternoon in Key West, but a shared plate at Salute, sitting out on the porch rates quite high in my book. And I get to do it when I want because I work nights.
My wife is in the fortunate position of having tenure in the school district but there are many other heads that are rolling as next year's budget is slashed. She has been under a fair bit of pressure at work and sitting on the beach waiting for a glass of wine was just the moment for her to vent. Luckily I had my camera to hand to record the moment.
These floating things are gaining popularity as they allow the occupant to float while being cooled by the water rising up through the mesh. Or you could just get a boat to float your...boat.
I have never been much of a fan of lying on the beach in the sun but I am alone in this, and I know for many this is the epitome of a proper vacation:
Higgs beach offers all the usual beach accoutrements, including lounge chair rentals, bicycle racks and palm trees:
And women sitting around in their underwear talking on the phone. 
One gets the impression she may be rather more dynamic then him.
I was not the only observer though I was sitting in the shade with a glass of red and a larger glass of iced water so I was a lot better off.
Key West is not known for it's beaches not least because there isn't much to them but also owing to the rather shallow water all round the island.
All the disadvantages of skiing with all the disadvantages of surfing and none of the pleasures of kayaking. I deduced that the bloke in the next picture lives aboard someplace nearby and as he prepared to close the concession stand for the day he was readying his boat for his commute.
It's faster by bike though that may not be the point. And more damnable cell phones.
Many years ago there used to be two deputies assigned daily to patrol the beach and after they were cut to save money the local population of bums took over the park and made it untenable for people not interested in drinking and fighting as beach activities. The situation got bad enough that the patrols were re-instituted to bring order to the park and it seems to be working nicely.
Salute (pronounced: Sal-ooh-tay) in its previous incarnation suffered from inconsistency as a friend of mine put it, someone with experience in the table waiting trade. Sometimes food and service were good, and sometimes less so, but prices were always fairly stiff so the expectation was that things should be good. My wife wanted to celebrate her 55th birthday on the beach and so we gave the new management a shot and it worked out quite well. We got three orders of the day's special, yellow tail snapper on salad greens with mango-eggplant salsa:
Which was really quite excellent even though the unpublished price, as it wasn't on the menu was $17:50 which seemed like a lot of money for lunch. Bruce got the roast chicken-pesto salad sandwich off the regular menu for an advertised $10, quite the deal by comparison:
And, being the unsophisticated New Mexican he is, he got his first taste of orzo pasta which got his seal of approval. We all four shared a gazpacho soup and a white bean soup which was better for me on this freezing cold day (65 degrees- 17C) than the cold gazpacho:
The regular menu is quite reasonable and includes some rather bland sounding pasta dishes, primavera, marinara, and something else I can't remember:
Salute currently finds itself in the middle of a modest, by Key West standards, political tug of war. On the one hand Monroe County owns Higgs beach but the Sheriff's department, as a cost cutting measure pulled out the two deputies that were assigned to beach patrol on ATVs. With the departure of the all terrain vehicles, and the deputies with them, the homeless population, especially in winter, has burgeoned at the picnic facilities:
The county had previously suggested handing the park over to the city but the city commission recoiled in horror complaining of the cost of maintenance- cleaning the beach of seaweed, cleaning the park of bums etc...Now the relatively new county administrator, the exotically named Roman Gastesi is suggesting turning the shambles into a first class recreational facility for Monroe County. 
And, as odd as it may seem I think the new management at Salute may have inspired this fresh attitude.
From the outside the restaurant things haven't changed that much, the colors remain the same more or less as does the decor inside the building. And the horribly noisy muzak still blares from the wall doing it's best to hatter the beach ambiance:
The food was excellent and the service cheerful and owing to the chill we were spared the clusters of local subjects lurking on the sand. Understand these aren't working poor or distressed locals, who enjoy the benefits of numerous caring social service agencies. These are people who chose to live at Higgs Beach during the winter and live out their drug induced dramas in a public park and very tedious they are too. The fact the restaurant is thriving, particular in the lunch hour I'm told, may indeed make it a decent "anchor store" for Gastesi's ambitious renovations planned for the beach. The outdoor area filled up as our lunch progressed and on a day of cold north winds it was perfectly comfortable to sit outside:
The inside seating area and bar looked snug too:
There is even a little, colorful, lounging area outside where this dude was reading the Paradise insert from Thursday's paper and sipping a beer:
I hope Salute (pronounced: Sal-ooh-tay) makes it as a vibrant part of Higgs Beach not least because people, including families, have been clamoring to get their picnic and beach front area back. Dog owners get dog park across the street for off leash romps, and parents get their toddlers off leash at Astro City and now we effete wine sippers get to eat pesto off leash at Salute, no longer moribund.
Quite the views of people playing on the Higgs pier and the fishing boats snug at anchor, protected from the biting north wind:
A nice place for lunch.
