Southernmost Southernmost

The fence behind the buoy marks the end of civilian Key West and the Navy base is off limits to most people which is why the real southernmost point which is on the base is replaced by this cement structure:

Nevertheless the tourists flock to the site of the purported southernmost point in the continental United States to take their photos. 

This is during tourist low season, in summer:

Look at them all milling around patiently in the sun which for them must be quite torrid and humidity-laced.  You can come by at four in the morning and be quite alone because they don't pack the monument up overnight and put it away. 

And then if you walk up South Street to get back to your toasty car you may find yourself passing the southernmost this and that.

With a  convenient replica of the original and here, with some judicious editing you could pose here in the shade in front of the most desirable point.

Or stop here half a block from the great point and have some refreshment as close to Cuba, the forbidden isle, as you can get. Finding oneself this close to Cuba is a great draw in some people's minds.

More southernmost stuff as you get close to Duval Street. I've been to El Paso and never noticed a business claiming to be the "closest whatever" to Mexico. But here, as remote and untouchable as Cuba is in reality, the draw of the pretend relationship is ever present.

Banana leaves umbrellas and palms decorate the suitably southernmost guest house.

And this magnificent wedding cake is the Southernmost House, 1400 Duval Street.  You can pay to sleep and eat here if you like. However this too is not without controversy because the last house on the street, the one right next to the famous point has a sign on the entrance gate.

And here it is, the other southernmost house. The southernmost southernmost house. If you didn't believe me before perhaps you do now. Being the southernmost is very important to some people.

There is also a southernmost beach resort. This one is on the other side of Duval Street, not far from the southernmost ice cream store and surf shop as I recall.

I am quite fond of Hawaii's southernmost point which you can like me, view on Google maps. It's a wooden sign in a muddy open space overlooking the water. But that fails to have as much appeal as the big red marker. My friends come for their pictures, including Bill who rode his scooter from Jacksonville:

I stopped by on my first visit to Key West in 1981 on my then very modern Vespa P200 which then took me to Mexico and California:

And as I was uncertain of the outcome of the impending Category Five hurricane I stopped by before Hurricane Irma in 2017. My Vespa S150 and I both survived in the police station during that Category Four catastrophe.

No one is immune to the draw of the mighty Southernmost Point!

Southernmost Southernmost

I thought to myself if we are acting as though we are waiting for a hurricane I bet this would be a good time to visit the Southernmost Point. The buoy at the corner of Whitehead and South Streets is known to locals by a number of epithets which I'd rather not repeat here but if you see any remote resemblance to a sex toy you can imagine the direction that conversation takes. Visitors on the other hand love to line up and view this point, purportedly the southernmost spot in the continental United States. And who am I to tell them otherwise?

Actually the true physical southernmost point is nearby, behind the black fence in the picture above. That puts it out of reach to most people as it is part of the military base. I am fond of saying I listen for free to Cuba on Radio Reloj at 950am on my car radio but the US Government uses this expensive array. Our results may vary.

You can see the Navy base behind the statute of the late Conch shell greeter Bishop Kee of the Church of Prophecy. Tom Joris made the statue of Albert Kee who died in 2003  but was known for standing at the point blowing a conch shell. I remember him but he died before I arrived at the digital age of photography.

The original on the Chamber website:

Sometimes Rusty surprises me and this was one of those occasions. He sat down in front of the buoy as though ready to pose for pictures. One of the problems of living with an excessively intelligent dog is that he makes his own mind up about quite a lot of things and Rusty does not like to have his photograph taken. He is not strongly food motivated so you can't bribe him to pose. The only reason I have as many pictures as I do is by virtue of constant association and being ready instantly to grab what I can. I toss out hundreds of pictures of the little brute to get the odd decent one.

Just when I thought I had  Key West  to myself two tourists wandered up to take a picture with their brand new iPhone 11.  Using my extraordinary powers of deduction I figured they were actually construction workers in town for a job owing to the logos on their shirts and they had taken a moment to check out the monument. I told you it attracts visitors like flies.I tried to remove Rusty who suddenly decided he liked being ion pictures and refused to budge, perverse creature, and they said don't worry so I didn't. I glowered at him though and he grinned at me like he knew he was pissing me off. They asked me to take their picture together which was the least I could do and I managed it without the including the hulking brown elk in the front. Note to self: the iPhone 11 is really quite slick.

On the subject of history and Cuba this little yellow hut, freshly painted apparently is a piece of both those things more or less. In the mists of time there was a period when Cuba and the United States talked to each other. People went there on vacation mostly to do scandalous things they couldn't do here, and Cuba exported stuff to the US. And you could call or send a telegram and this is where the electric lines from Cuba came out of the ocean. The schooner Western Union was actually responsible for a while for maintaining the sea bed connection.

One of the things you have to learn to do if you live in Key West is not spend too much time thinking about what you are missing thanks to the ongoing state of uncertain relations between the two countries. There was a window of opportunity to visit Cuba recently, even for ordinary people but it was no something I wanted to do much owing to the difficult state of their economy and exploitative nature of Cuban tourism in a time of desperation. However if things got on an even keel I would love to see the old buildings in Havana and enjoy tropical mountains similar to those I have seen in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, though more majestic I am told. I will probably be in my grave before day trips to Cuba and overnight sails are regularly on the cards between these two countries.         

So the question arises, how southernmost is southernmost? Hawaii has the southernmost point in the states of the United States and they don't make too much of that from what you can see on Google Streetview they have a dirt parking lot and  a hand painted sign. Around here there is the southernmost everything. Including the Southernmost Southernmost house. That  signage on a private dwelling is part of a dispute with a nearby business that calls itself the Southernmost House. Why you would want to draw attention to your home as a potential tourist attraction I don't know but here it is:

And this is the place where you can rent a room to sleep in a place that calls itself the Southernmost House. By the time you enter Key West you are within four miles of this spot so everything is pretty much southernmost from the Cow Key Bridge south but geographic arguments persist for reasons I can't really follow.  The sun shines on the just and unjust alike around here.

Blessed are the anglers because they will have a good time whether or not they are the southernmost bait net casters.

Sunbathing is one response to all the craziness going on and I approve even though I'm not much for sitting out roasting while doing nothing. I burn my beak while swimming mostly.

Rolling in seaweed is another entirely sensible response to stress or simply as an expression of joie de vivre. And the little bastard had no idea I got the picture of him. Dog 0 Human 1.

Southernmost Point

When you live in Key West there are certain landmarks that don't really resonate much and the point as it is known has to be one of those memorable places easily ignored. The fact is I made it a point (yes yes pun intended) to walk over to the big cement buoy and see what was what.

Winter residents are starting to trickle back and snow Up North will increase the flow but there is almost never a time in the year, at least during daylight, when some few people aren't milling around. I kind of expected a  crowd and that was what I got.

I like to disguise myself as a tourist when I wander around Key West wearing an innocuous colorful shirt with a camera around my neck. Even those times I am with, or as in this case without Rusty, but I don't generally stand in line for stuff, so I walked away after getting the picture od the crowd lined up for selfies. Of course no sooner had I stepped away than more eager people shuffled forward to take my place in line. What a procession!

While we were waiting for Hurricane Irma to arrive in 2017 I rode my Vespa around the city when I was off duty and for some reason I was prompted by a voice in my head to get pictures at landmarks as there was no one in town and it was an excellent opportunity not to have to share.

Of course a few days later the Category Four storm landed exactly on top of my home in Cudjoe Key and laid waste to my neighborhood though my house survived intact oddly enough. The buoy itself took a  beating from the wind and spray.

But it's all back to normal now, happily.

Incidentally it is widely reported these days that this isn't the actual most southerly physical spot in the continental United States. That honor belongs to a spit of land beyond the fence inside the Navy base and thus not open to the public. And when I first showed up in Key West on another Vespa in 1981 I of course went to see the famous spot and there wasn't even a buoy in 1981:

In 2014 it looked pretty much as it does now:

My Town

Swimming in the canal behind my house, still a rather bilious shade of green thanks to Hurricane Irma's passage eleven months ago I asked my wife if she thought Key West has changed in our two decades living and working here. She looked at me like I was an idiot. Of course it haS she said firmly. It isn't, I wondered out loud that we may have changed and what seemed fresh and new and interesting no longer is..?  She snorted in derision.

I came to Key West in 1981 and there was no doubt the place was different. I kept coming back, visiting friends, going sailing living the life of a tropical wharf rat in short bursts before returning to real life in California where I sailed in harsh seas under gray skies through cold summers and colder winters. California was dynamic and interesting and the weather sucked. But Key West was too isolated and remote in those pre-internet pre-Amazon days for young persons like me. And then time passed and I sailed into Key West with wife and dogs never to leave.

The litany of changes that have taken place this century, for us, consists mostly in the ways we amused ourselves back when we were in our forties. My wife reminded me we used to get cheap eats on the beach at the Sands as it was known, an informal buffet place right on the water and dog friendly. We watched al fresco movies at the Atlantic Shores, the resort that was pleased to describe itself as straight friendly. Movie nights saw me chomping free popcorn with my yellow Lab on the chaise longue between my legs snoozing and oblivious to the movie crowd. Who was it on stage that handed out raffle freebies? Super girl..? Wonder woman..?  Lots of laughter and not bad movies either under the stars.

Then we had access in those pre-digital photography days to the Botanical Garden, an overgrown under attended forest on Stock Island that later fell victim to the organizational drive of a woman from Up North who mended the fences and started charging a fee and labeling all the plants. We bought pizza with Robert and carried boxes and beers out to the two picnic tables under the Canary island date palms and had supper under the trees before retreating and leaving the place to become the bums' bedroom as it did nightly. We cleared our trash of course as well. We ate at Stick and Stein and played incompetent pool and spent very little money. Or there was the buffet at Winn Dixie and the weird vibes at the Hukilau much lamented when it was torn down, Polynesia in paradise...

Things have tightened up in Paradise, where street art, bumming  a drink and standing around weaving palm fronds have  become memories for the most part. The color that was Key West, the hippy town that time forgot and that visitors proudly adopted as their away from home vibe has been buried under an avalanche of money. There is some perverse notion in me that a cleaner tidier Key West will be nicer to live in, yet despite the influx of money we still have a malodorous Duval Street with dirt ground into the paint, but we don't have the pirates or the men in tutus wandering around giving cover to those of us that like to pass unnoticed. Gone are the days you could rent cheap digs, do a couple of low stress jobs and have time left over to go fish or play a guitar or watch a sunset. When small homes in Key West sell easily for a million dollars  frivolity gets pushed to the curb. Come to Key West, pay top prices for a hotel room and see the southernmost buoy which is known to locals by several unflattering nicknames.

I admire the seashell for hanging in for now. Youth Hostel, cheaper rooms and a bit of funk. I cherish it as long as it lasts...

The Point

As though to conveniently illustrate the force of 130 mph winds the very inconvenient Hurricane Irma sandblasted one side of the freshly painted Southernmost Point buoy.

In happier times, two days before the sandblasting it looked like this as I struggled with the concept of selfie while playing tourist in a  deserted town:

This week a city employee had the task of fixing it up under the impatient gaze of visitors eager to get their picture taken at the monument marking the somewhat fictitious point. 

I say fictitious as it is only more or less the southernmost civilian point in the US with the Navy base behind it rather more so. Furthermore Hawaii claims the southernmost point in a US state even though you could say they are trumped by American Samoa. Whatever, you get the point (pun intended.)

 Certainly the people lined up to take their pictures get the point even if it has been mauled:

 Further up the street the Southernmost House which may or may not be furthest south, still stands:

And all I could think while taking that picture above was how much better off we would be if all power lines were buried. Imagine: no more wind related power outages!

Scooterbob At The Southernmost Point

When I was in Montreal last summer I met David Masse who  gave me this wooden scooter adornment to play a prank on the late Bob Leong who gave it as a gift to David. David's idea (and it was his not mine...) was to greet Bob in Key West with the wooden scooter already here! So my wife and I loaded it into our luggage and brought it home in anticipation of the Key West road trip 2015. Then Bob died very unexpectedly and the idea imploded.

Until David thought of sending the scooter now named Scooterbob around the world to celebrate Bob's wanderlust which he planned to fulfill in the retirement that never came. As I had the scooter at home here is the first stop - where else?- at the Southernmost Point In The Continental United States. Splendid.

And these are the kind passersby who stopped to do the deed for me; a brief encounter with Mr and Mrs Anonymous  who, when they learned Scooterbob was soon to be sent to Germany got into the spirit of the thing and handled my phone camera like pros.

And Friday afternoon I stopped by Pak Mail where a genial Canadian holds court with his two Labradors and together they package and ship everything everywhere. Scooterbob is now en route to Germany where Sonia  promises to show off some of Germany's finest countryside in the  company of Scooterbob.

 RIP Bob Leong of Vancouver, BC.

Safe travels in your new guise as Scooterbob, voyager extraordinaire.

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