Old Harris School

This building used to be Key West's school and many people still alive got their education here. Nowadays the parking lot is used as a private pay-to-park space and the grounds are barely maintained, in a manner that seems more designed to avoid complaints than to actually officer any beauty in landscaping.  I found an article on the school from two years ago in Keys Weekly. The magazine is online and I find it as dependable as any publication and I rather enjoy the fact that Key West still has a weekly publication printed on paper in best 20th century style. The depth of this story will I hope induce you to give it a look.

by Hays Blinkman 2018:

It’s a cautionary tale for all, about big decisions made by elected officials. Let’s go back 12 years to 2006, when the Monroe County School Board decided to sell the historic Harris School at 812 Southard St. to a private owner. Leading up to the decision was a contentious 2004 school board race, when John Padget, gubernatorially appointed school superintendent, lost the election to Randy Acevedo. During his tenure, Padget facilitated a deal to sell the property to the Rodel Foundation for $6 million to create the now popular Studios of Key West. Rodel would have also contributed another $6 million toward renovation of 812 Southard, laden with asbestos and in disrepair. Long story short, the property would look very different than it does today if the newly elected officials had considered the outgoing superintendent’s plan more carefully.

Instead, in 2006, the school board voted against the Rodel deal because the offer required the creation of affordable housing for teachers (seems terribly ironic now). While the housing market fluctuated in ’06, the school board accepted a private offer from owner Peter Brawn for $4.5 million – $1.5 million less – and a very different future began for the majestic property.

So what does the property look like today? Littered with scooters, a jet ski, a large Lu La Roe trailer, and work trucks, it’s used as a monthly parking lot, and just recently, a daily parking lot, as advertised by the large plywood, homemade signs decorating the lot. Owner Brawn was issued a Business Tax receipt permit in 2009 to operate a commercial parking lot, as well as a Property Management license. Essentially, the property has become a functioning inner city parking lot in the heart of Old Town. But all has not gone smoothly for Brawn, as the property has been cited multiple times for code violations. According to Code Compliance Director Jim Young, the property has been cited 39 times since 2000 (although Brawn took possession in ’06) and 19 times since 2013. The complaints include overgrown lots, operating unlicensed business, trash and obstruction of traffic.

In May 2017, there was a formal code hearing for “Failure to cut overgrown weeds around subject property,” which was dismissed with no fines. And in April 2018, the city received complaints about business being conducted from a tractor trailer parked at the property. But the neighbors have much more to say about the old school than what’s on paper.

“We’re not sure what’s going on,” said resident Glen Kingsbury. “I’ve seen more miscellaneous things in the past five years. I have seen sex acts in the parking lot, loitering, people coming in and out of the building day and night.” There is no Certificate of Occupancy, meaning no one can live on the property, although the satellite dish atop the building could suggest otherwise.

“Neighbors did not have a problem with using it for huge event parking,” said Kingsbury, “but there was overnight parking, littering and dumping and we hope not other illegal activity.”

There is the misconception that the property is in Commissioner Jimmy Weekley’s district, but he is just a resident of the neighborhood. “I am constantly getting complaints about the school. It’s not hard to tell there are derelict vehicles everywhere and to see the trash. At least we stopped the RV parking on the fields and got the commercial lot only to park on the blacktop pavement.”

The school is in Commissioner Clayton Lopez’s district, who said, “If residents spoke up enough, I would listen; it’s all our neighborhood and of course, I want to help.” The commercial parking license expires in September but a simple payment by Brawn will keep his business license operational. Lopez may be hearing from his constituents unless the property sells before then for its $15 million asking price.

“The African Kapok tree used to be one of the most photographed trees in town; now it is covered by weeds, seedlings and surrounded by scooters,” said resident Don Dotzauer. He would like to see the neighborhood maintained and kept beautiful, noting that many residents have spent a great deal of time renovating old properties surrounding the Harris School. “I don’t thrive on conflict, but we just want everyone to be good neighbors and just do the right thing.”

I'd love to see an update but the Old Harris School as lovely as ever sits there and is home to parked cars. Too bad really but at least it hasn't crumbled into the ground. There are so many memories on this block of Southard Street. 

This essay is from 2014 and refers to the Bernie Madoff scandal that destroyed the foundation that had hoped to create an artist's colony here:

Old Harris School 2014

Beautification

More changes are planned for the city of Key West according to the newspaper. One of them I find particularly odd but there again none of these improvements should be unexpected. This city has voted to limit cruise ships, their sizes and the number of people that can land in the city. The city has a plan to reinforce and repair and enlarge cruise ship docking facilities to the tune of $3.4 million. Which allows one to imagine that grants and so forth had been appropriated long before last year's vote. Nevertheless I find myself perplexed.  

I thought the armory on White Street was looking quite toothsome in the weak winter sunlight a few days ago so I made a couple of pictures. I like how Key West looks and I shall look forward to seeing what shade contraptions are envisioned for Mallory Square. After 190 years without them the time is come to shade the square, the place where people go to see the sun go down.

And the newspaper reports that North Roosevelt Boulevard is up for a facelift. It is not attractive while being the main entry to the city. Can't argue with that, as the Boulevard is as ugly as sin and always has been. The incredibly disruptive work that was carried out to drain the road has been equally incredibly effective and I wish some important person would stand up and thank the State for the work because North Roosevelt no longer floods. I don't suppose the work will last forever given the effects of sea level rise but for now the Boulevard is easy to drive in heavy rain. 

Meanwhile the pesky Boulevard (North Roosevelt's familiar name) looks ugly. The city wanted to remove the high maintenance coconut palms lining the seawall but residents got up in arms about that. No one wanted native palmettos or similar coconut free palms. I can hardly begin to imagine what confusion will be generated by a requests for ideas from residents for a nicer looking Boulevard.

A few years ago consultants, bless their active little hearts, suggesting cutting down South Roosevelt Boulevard along Smathers Beach to one lane with an expansive median and other visual delights. That beautification scheme went over like the proverbial lead balloon as the speed limit is useful inasmuch as slow pokes can hold 30 or 35 in one lane and gatherers of speeding tickets can speed in the other lane. I would bet more speeding tickets are handed out on South Roosevelt than any other street just because people don't realize the fastest way out of town is the Boulevard no matter how fast you take the beach road. . I drive there because I want to enjoy the view but that puts me firmly in the dithering visitor category so two lanes suits me fine and I let the fine hungry speeders try their luck..

Key West is a conundrum. This is a town with flashes of brilliance and tons of disagreements and occasional bad ideas. I am holding out for a pedestrian Duval Street with pleasant stores, places to sit, flower beds creating a lovely peaceful open space downtown. I can see in my mind's eye a downtown worth visiting, not a place for vapid shopping and drinking. Why not enjoy beautiful architecture currently wasted, perfect weather invisible in the darkened recesses of bars, why not eat outside, go to the movies in the evening and hang out to meet friends without the need to explain yourself.

I saw a camper van crossing Fleming Street and I wondered what I will come back to in a  few years? 

I have no doubt Old Town will look the same more or less. If you check Key West in the state archives you can recognize landmarks and often streets and buildings on them from a hundred years ago. It's that sense of timelessness that is at risk whenever focus groups get bogged down in suggesting change. I suppose to some extent we are all afraid of change and of making things  worse.

On the one hand you have to admire the Mayor for taking the mandate for change and running with it, on the other you have to hope for the best. She has been totally hard core with the mask mandate which riles a bunch of people up but she has stuck to her guns: masks are required.

I have a sneaking feeling eventually one might wonder how people ever got by without sun shades at Mallory Square because as we know the nature of humans is to get used to whatever requirement you set down before them.  And in one sentence I suppose that sums up the greatest irritation of the virus: if it hasn't killed or maimed you it has inconvenienced your routine and what could be worse than that? I'm reaching the point that not wearing a mask feels weird on the streets of Key West...I'm glad no one will be asking my opinion about changes to the city topography because I have no idea what to think anymore.

Southard Street

Winter sunlight produces glorious colors on clear sunny afternoons in Key West. I was drawn out of the police station by the quality of the light which my new (used) LX100ii reproduces beautifully for me.

Key West really is pretty and I know how lucky I am to have these streets to wander at will. You can see why people want to make second homes in the city just by virtue of the winter light alone. 

I got yelled at pretty loudly Monday by a caller who was outraged the city is trying to enforce a mask wearing ordinance over the instructions from the governor not allowing fines for ordinance violations. The caller was spluttering into the phone by rights violations and how we all have to obey the law as though I personally were responsible for the decision making process. I am used to that sort of attitude on the phone about any discomfort callers are feeling there and then in their lives and I did what I do whoch was to offer to send help. I actually thought the caller might stroke out on the phone with me he was so far off the chain and my offer to send an ambulance took him by surprise. I suppose he expected me to join in with his street cursing festival which would have done neither of us any good.  

The offer of an ambulance had the effect, to my surprise of calming him down and he started asking me in a rational voice why the city thought it could break the law as laid down by the governor. It wasn't the time or place for a civics lesson but I explained we have had some rather prominent local cases of severe Covid infections and everyone is freaked out and officers are simply asking people to comply. Rarely are they writing fines for non-compliant people and only violent refuseniks may be arrested, we are just trying to protect a small town with lots of visitors and not many hospital beds with ventilators. Well, he said I'm going to another town that does follow the governor, he huffed down the phone and hung up after saying he wasn't mad at me personally. 

A pity really, as I walked and took these pictures while wearing my mask and I promise you once the epidemic is past I will be delighted not to wear the wretched thing. But to enjoy this beauty around me with a  mask is far better than giving yourself a bad case of the jitters and trying to find a prettier sandbox to play in, even without a mask.

Southard Street

I have been riding my new to me electric bicycle during my lunch breaks but I don't find it very conducive to photography. I bought the bicycle for a very specific reason, to try to avoid traffic jams projected for the next  year at the sole bridge into and out of Key West which will be undergoing almost overdue repairs.

In Key West the Cow Key Bridge is known as "The Triangle" as North and South Roosevelt Boulevards meet Highway at this critical three way junction. Anything blocking the bridge backs up traffic for miles so my plan is to park somewhere on the shoulder and complete my commute on my $600 Pedego Classic, lightly used six speed cruiser with a 350 watt electric motor powered by a 10 amp battery . Phew! Its as big a mouthful to describe as it is heavy to lift. This was me cruising down Southard Street with Light Pedal Assistance.  I got back to work sweat free, as I go to the gym for my exercise.

Aside from riding the bike lane at 12 mph I also enjoy walking Southard Street a one way ride away from Duval Street toward White Street. My yellow buzz bomb was rather overshadowed by the giant hump I saw on the hood as I walked by a couple of days earlier:

Walking, especially with Rusty gives me a chance to look as we go, and for all its usefulness as transport a bicycle still requires you to watch traffic more than the architectural oddities passing by.

An oleander flower (I think) celebrating the summer heat that has descended on a winter short by even Key West standards.

Rusty settled down on the sidewalk in front of Mangia Mangia restaurant, the corner building with the inviting awning.

I labeled this picture "White Ghosts on Patrol" on Instagram:

And I reserved a street corner panorama for the overloaded cyclist:

Rusty took our break in stride, paws carefully crossed.

Resuming The Grind

I spent Saturday in bed in that semi-comatose state slipping in and out of sleep familiar to anyone who has been exposed to the common cold. Rusty went walking with my wife and as soon as he came home he hopped on the bed and curled up next to me willing to accept I was, once again, bed ridden. Better at home than the hospital I dare say.

Sunday morning I felt well enough to drive into town and go for a city walk so we did, parking at the city lot behind the fire station on Simonton Street. The protocol is for Rusty to select the direction and I tag along behind. I keep him leashed in town when the city is waking up more as a sop to expectations than any real need. Rusty is entirely capable of taking care of himself, I am fond of saying I think he would survive a collapse of civilization rather better than I would. Meanwhile he knows how to cross the street safely. I'm there for decoration mostly.

 I never cease to be amazed by people who won't give a home to a  rescue dog on the grounds there must be something wrong with the dog. Sometimes there really is, driven mad by abuse some rescue dogs lose the ability to live normal lives and they are usually culled in the shelters. Most though are survivors and like Rusty they thrive when given a chance.   If Rusty were a thoroughbred with genetic shortcomings he would never have made it in the survival conditions he lived through in Homestead.

 I met Doug on Simonton street out doing his own bit of dog walking with Teeki who hopped around Rusty enough that I let him go and he wandered off to sniff his own tree thank you. Doug mentioned the coronavirus plague that has the newspapers wound up, and I between hacking coughs mentioned that I thought the 'flu was a more severe threat. I take the 'flu vaccine each year because I don't like the symptoms at all but tons of people don't and then they get their knickers in a  twist about a disease that sounds, as Doug put it laughingly like a bad take on a Mexican beer. I wonder  why they call it that he pondered. The reason (I Googled...) is because it has crown-like spikes on the surface of the virus. 

 And on the subject of the coronavirus it turns out this worldwide epidemic with fewer deaths than the regular 'flu is having an economic impact in the Keys. I never cease to be amazed by how connected everything is. The Citizen reports that spiny lobster sales have plummeted. Apparently they are a big part of the food celebrations for Chinese New Year, celebrations that have been cancelled this year. So fishermen in the Keys are out of luck thanks to the coronavirus. Bizarre.

I worked a half day overtime yesterday, glad to make up the loss of an overtime shift I had planned for Saturday and today I have another twelve hours of overtime scheduled which makes for good money and by extension less dog walking unfortunately, We have a  couple of dispatchers on vacation, one off to see snow in the mountains, the other to drive cars on more interesting roads than those he commutes on in the Keys. Plus we have two openings  and several people, like me, under the weather. I make money while I can.

The cellphone tower on Southard Street is familiar to me. It's been there as long as I can remember and even though I know it wasn't there in the 80's I can't picture it's absence. It's weird how things become familiar and even required. This corner of Southard and Bahama would look weird without this giant aluminum carbuncle rising u into the sky. And across the street is the giant old telephone exchange run by the American Telephone and Telegraph company. Old and new technologies face to face.

I can't keep up with the way the world is changing. I wonder what comes next.

Afternoon Sunlight

My sister offered to use her surplus airline miles to buy my wife and I tickets to visit her in post-Brexit Britain next Spring. She lives in Scotland and is an ardent separatist wishing an independent Scotland were back in the European Union for her children's futures. She is living through tough times as farming subsidies vanish and practices sustained by the EU are withdrawn and her neighbors find their backs to the wall as the markets for their products are in a state of total uncertainty. Yet she found time to figure out with my wife how we can get back for a visit next Spring Break. I look forward to it.

My own future is filled with certain uncertainty and where I look forward to that my sisters, all three of them, live lives of measured certainty. I  was always the wanderer which leads me to conclude there is a great deal of nature in us overriding the nurture. But that is an argument I leave to geneticists to sort out; I have a life to live.  For the first time in twelve years of posting on this page I find myself running into a mental block as i thresh out my situation in my own mind while trying to maintain an outward even keel on the page.

My relationship to Key West is changing even though my feelings for this town, and my very generous employer haven't changed. For a nomad like me to find myself able to describe Key West as home is a special thing, and as much as I struggled to think of Santa Cruz as home during my decades in California, the relationship never jelled for me. I grew up there and became an adult even though I arrived in town at age 23 and was properly an adult in body if not in attitude when I left Europe for the last time as a resident. I know my feelings for Key West will evolve into the most nauseating nostalgia after we take off until we eventually return to the reality of this place and a cabin in the sun in a grossly overpriced marina. And then the complaints about Key West's shortcomings will resume. It's what you do when you live here.

I suffer also from a slightly obsessive personality, producing a daily blog for a dozen years hints at that condition, so now my mind is focused on the future. My wife is pondering living options in the van we are staring to design which will be built in the Spring while I am contemplating maps and routes and distances and costs and photos. Too much of my life has slipped by the era of film and I have few photos of my life in the 20th century. I was born as the first human built satellite circled the Earth and i grew up in a world promising technological wonders always  "...by the year 2000." That landmark came and went and sure we have astonishing technology but not the flying cars and body transplants they promised when I was a child. I'll happily take the Internet and satellite communications in the meantime, thanks.

Digital photography has become my blessing and my curse. I cannot see an immediate future on two wheels. If I were single and dog free I would take off on a motorcycle to see the world but as I am encumbered with two sidekicks a motorcycle even with sidecar is not going to work. And let's be honest, the comfort of a van and a home on wheels wherein I can close out the world has its appeal. My friend Webb who loves an ascetic life in a small sailboat acknowledges he could make a comfortable home in a  box on wheels equipped as it will be with kitchen toilet shower (after a fashion) and heat and cold. To him 72 square feet of living is luxurious but for most people living in a shoe box would be a severe inconvenience. For me now a motorcycle is surplus.

That is where I can now focus my intensity: digital photography is difficult to master I have discovered and nowadays the technology is superb and free! The modern digital camera has outpaced me. If you look at early entries in this blog when I conceived the idea of documenting this wondrous happy place I had landed in you can see I had some good photography ideas in between the cliches but the machinery i held in my hands, an HEC smartphone was sorely lacking. Especially as I had no idea how to bend digital photography to my will.

I am attempting to remedy those deficiencies by taking on a course of photographic learning with all the intensity I applied to learning to ride a motorcycle in my teenage years when the only tools I had were magazines and books and trial and error. I have one ankle that still aches occasionally from the time I dropped my motorcycle on it when practicing a slow turn I read about in a magazine interview on how to ride better!

I ride my scooter to work and I find, much to my surprise I feel no fear after my spectacular wreck a year ago. I am extremely cautious around distracted drivers or people pulling out of side streets but riding still gives me pleasure. However I am really focussed on my desire to have an interest in something that I can enjoy with my immediate family on the road. Photography will have the added benefit of moving the story of my life forward in a creative way I hope and leave behind a few mementoes for my distant family members who want to remember the black sheep of the family who left them for the New World. Jack London isn't in it!

So I have undertaken to teach myself photography and the blessings of Youtube make this possible along with my preferred written word form of communication. I expect I shall have to get involved in video at some point, my wife thinks the future is something I should come to grips with even as I struggle to adapt to the digital present...Carrying a camera is a solitary pursuit but I can look around even when I am not alone and I enjoy the process of learning to  notice what previously was only seen.

I have taken to reading Internet forums on photography and I find the participants as cruel and nasty and opinionated as participants on any other specialized forum. This however is not 2010 anymore and with a decade's experience under our belts we recognize and avoid people "vexatious to the spirit." Easily done, though I have to say I was naively quite surprised to find rabid people posting on a forum ona subject as pacific as photography. Webb tells me sailors do the same thing and god knows I've seen them discussing motorcycles tearing each other to shreds. I ain't got no time for that.

So I try to find the knowledge I seek and the opinions I might try to trust elsewhere. I have not much interest in gear as I like my modest undervalued fixed lense camera. I like the pictures I get from my Panasonic FZ1000  and it comes complete with image stabilization and total manual control as I want it and a zoom lense that isn't great all the way but it goes a long way out and produces decent pictures in  a package that fits in my hand just about (!) and cost me $360 lightly used on e-bay. I think the camera has been on the market for five years and it has only recently been updated slightly for improved video recording. The original version is sold brand new for six hundred dollars. In the same way I want to travel by banal two wheel drive van where more driven people want to rock hop in their four wheel drive homes, I plan to keep the photographic recording department simple with my Panasonic and a smaller Panasonic camera for back up in case of failure. I have my eye on an almost pocketable camera  for unobtrusive street photography and as it has a wide aperture it could be handy in low light situations. At this stage I am reluctant to go all National Geographic with piles of lenses and big heavy cameras and bush jackets and all that stuff. I don't really like using a  tripod much as I find it cumbersome and modern image stabilization is astonishing.

Of course there are proponents of photography who only use Canon or Nikon or Sony equipment and others who only use tripods and others who...blah blah blah. I just hope to get through this adventure with some decent pictures to post here and and on Instagram. Those and some words and perhaps the occasional video will I hope tell the story and make a proper electronic diary for me to look back on when I am in an armchair in a nursing home a surprisingly few years from now. Unless I fall to a violent death failing to negotiate Bolivia's Highway of Death in the meantime.

And one final note on this work in progress, I am leaning away from my previous title for this page after I got some grief not least from Webb for thinking a homage to Steinbeck might be in order with Travels with Rusty. Especially as, upon mature reflection Rusty's time is finite and he may not outlive the blog title. I wanted it to be snappy so my current tentative title which I came up with after searching Domain Names on GoDaddy is just that, and impersonal says Webb. For the price of $12 I bought ArmchairTrekker.com which if you type it into your browser will land you back on this page. Webb still doesn't fancy this name but I  like it as it's easy to remember it expresses my desire for a rugged journey undertaken in some comfort and it will make it easy for people we meet along the way to connect online. Conchscooter.blogpsot.com is a bit of a mouthful and let's be honest "conshscooter"  is the common mispronunciation and it has the same effect on me as nails on a blackboard. The cool thing about that name given to me on a motorcycle forum fifteen years ago is when someone says they know Key West and they can't pronounce "Conch" you know them for the poseurs they are. 

Yeah and I'm never going to fall in love with wild chickens either. Give me a nice quiet clean well behaved native Ibis any day.