Mallory Square Sunset

I took Rusty  downtown for a walk and I decided to incorporate the sunset celebration as part of our stroll. The crowds were thinning by the time we got there but there were still several acts swallowing swords and juggling fire. 

I wanted a knick knack for my wife  and I like the fact that stuff sold here is advertised as being made by real people not imported from those places that specialize in far east mass production. The acts and the vendors are part of a cooperative that pays to rent the square for the evening gathering and supporting them helps that along as well. 

 Rusty meanwhile was making friends as only he knows how. 

There was some preacher from the Upper Keys explaining the Bible but I didn't overhear any particular revelations I've not heard before. He was very enthusiastic though and he bellowed away  through the cold north breeze.

A cruise ship at the middle pier, the one in front of Margaritaville Resort rose up over the proceedings though there were no passengers left at Mallory Square, easily identifiable by their sticky badges issued when they go ashore. A short while later I saw the ship pull away and spin around in the harbor when Rusty and I were walking more peacefully at Truman Waterfront.

 It looked quite lovely actually, a huge wedding cake of lights in the darkness...

Back at Mallory Square the sunset was proving worthy of it's reputation. This whole bizarre business of toasting the sun's final performance of the day was started by Tennessee Williams as I am sure you are tired of hearing from tourist sources. 

The thing is it has become a commercial enterprise with  vendors and performers paying rent for their spaces and the non profit that rents the square from the city is managed in some manner by a  collection of these people. This formality gives the sunset celebration a certain quality, rare in Key West of reliable longevity. It's been going for years and there are no signs it's going away. As long as there isn't a  cruise ship at the Mallory Square dock blocking the horizon the celebration goes on. And the Mallory Square dock is too small for most modern cruise ships and the sunset limitations make it pretty undesirable as a place to stay over night for the big ships.

I found I still like this event. I'm going to come back without Rusty but with my wife and a handful of dollar bills to pay tips to performers, take photographs and enjoy the show.You can buy food, jewelry, artwork and have your fortune read. What more could you possibly want at a happy street fair in a town where everything costs money and far too much of it. This is a place to wander, and kick back.

Home many times have you wanted to talk to a psychic under an umbrella on the waterfront in the coolest little beach town you've ever heard of? Don't listen to the tired voices that bitch about the old days and the cookie lady- may her memory never grow less- what you have here may not be 1970  but it is still a little funky and easy going. 

The performers will drag out a two minute act to 15 by virtue of their patter, participation by audience members and the old Key West standby of asking everyone where they are from. I am terrible at audience participation events so I stick to the back and avoid eye contact at all costs. Everyone around  you is having fun so you don't have to be put on the spot if you don't want to be. And these performers make a good living doing these off beat jobs. 

This guy was wailing his saw on our way out of the square. Bob from Knoxville Tennessee had decided to come to Key West for a couple of weeks and try his luck and I felt lucky to have run across him and his musical saw. Musical saws are a big deal, on the level of sub-culture in Santa Cruz where I lived for twenty years and Bob was surprised I even knew what a musical saw was. I hope he comes back next winter.

Then some anonymous arse let off a loud thunderclap, a firework or cracker of some sort most likely, and the evening went really bad for Rusty who had been holding his own in the crowds. He looked frantic and started tugging and looking around like he was back in the fields of Homestead being hunted by angry farmers who hated the strays dumped in the Redlands. I grabbed him and failed to reassure him but that's PTSD. We waited till he was ready to move on and then I took him to run for a bit at the waterfront far, as the poet put it, from the madding crowds.   All better. 

Mallory Sunset

By day Mallory Square is just another tourist attraction, a brick paved area inhabited by residentially challenged, passed through by visitors afoot or on bicycles. It's named, oddly enough, for the man who made his name in history  as the Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory. In the photo below that I took a couple of years ago you can see the monument to the USS Maine, the white plinths, which ship sank in Havana Harbor in 1898 precipitating the war with Cuba. 

Nearby there are more reasons to visit the square as, for instance you might want to stop by the aquarium:

And then the sun starts to set and crowds start to shuffle this way as do the vendors and their carts:

And the ocean looks especially lovely:

Rusty was on a test run to see how he copes with crowds:

He did great:

Attracting babes as always.

The spectacle that evening was on the water as far as I was concerned:

But on the brick pavers the crowds were checking the acts and each other.

And the knick knacks and art work.

And the music.

It was all very exciting for one small brown dog of my acquaintance.

Rusty didn't even eat his dinner, he just passed out.

Mallory Sunset

I have never managed to grasp the essence of Sunset in Mallory Square in all the years since I started posting photos here in 2007. I don't think this effort from last Fruday evening does any better. I came by to get a dog collar to my wife's specifications and as a further extenuating circumstances I was on my way to work but there is an absence of ease in this place that gets to me at this time of day.

It is said in Key West that Tennessee Williams came by the old decrepit Mallory Square armed with alcohol and toasted the Suns performance in setting so beautifully before him. The concept of sunset as performance art took off and now the daily sunset is a staple of tourist literature. Come to Key West - watch the sunset. An hour or so before the appointed time the earth tilts ever so slightly and like loose change the tourists wandering Lower Duval find themselves impelled to slide west moving ever faster like supplicants for a revival meeting at the waterfront, an act of devotion to thank the sun and admire the eccentrics who make Key West into Key Weird for their edification.

And that's where it goes wrong for me. There are all these people standing around waiting to be entertained and into their midst I wander. The acts are variously entertaining or breathtaking or amusing because nowadays a waterfront martini would not only be illegal it would also be inadequate entertainment for the television generations. So people perform. They swallow swords, walk high wires, set light to things and make cats jump through hoops. And they make a very living wage doing it.

The hangers-on sell stuff. Food and trinkets and...dog collars.

And all of it is controlled and regulated by a not for profit organization that rents spaces on Mallory Square and supervises the evening event every day. Except when smaller cruise ships tie up at the dock and block Appolo's performance.

Meanwhile the sunset is also big business on the water and people pay to see the sun setting while afloat.

A bit of banter and...let me reverse that thought. A lot of banter and a little action is the way to get tips as I discovered when I worked as a boat captain.

These are the vacation memories taken home to the snowfields of Iowa and Indiana and Michigan.

And coconuts. Don't forget that imported symbol of Key Westness...the coconut. The city authorities have wrestled and do wrestle with the fecund imported tree that produces tons of foliage and lots of nuts and was imported to the Keys to make the islands look right. And they do a very good impression of it too. The city wanted to replace the coconuts lining North Roosevelt Boulevard with trees native to the state and a lot less work to maintain. That plan caused an uproar and any idea of civic parsimony was tossed out by the tax payers who demanded expensive nut-dropping trees be maintained above the sidewalk.

I met this dog from Indiana enjoying a 65 degree evening and as I was in the throes of dog loss I stopped by. Rather than the joys of ownership I got an unnecessarily lengthy discussion of dog death for my troubles but I got to feel dog fur again.

And just to prove how untropical Key West can and will be from time to time the workers at El Meson de Pepe were putting out gas heaters to render the atmosphere more properly bearable.

And so to work. Mallory Square sunset celebration still escapes me. I like it, I just can't photograph it. Yet.

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A Somnolent Mallory Square

I took a quick look at the coming attractions board at the Waterfront and I saw two maybe three plays that drew my attention. Hooray for snowbirds!


Winters in Key West are like summer camp for adults from big cities. They come to Key West for the sunshine and bring Art and Culture to the natives who have spent the summer in intellectual indolence swimming, fishing and drinking in the air conditioning.


In winter we seek our shirts with collars and shoes with laces and line up to see what the world outside has to offer. They sell us reduced price tickets, to teachers and military and students and employees of other worthy causes and we get to tug our forelocks and have a laugh in the stalls. It is great fun, then live performance, and gives a two world distinction to Key West that I have never enjoyed anywhere else.


The Waterfront Playhouse is a converted wharf building from the days when Mallory Square was a working waterfront, and in summer it, like the locals, snoozes until the time comes to gear up for another season of live performances.


Mallory Square itself has a live performance every night the sunset isn't blocked by a parked cruise ship, though when I am in town to work I have to leave before the action starts. Dinner time for pigeons is a pre-attraction event.


Stephen Mallory was an important person when they were casting around for a name. That he ended up most notably as the Secretary of the Navy for the Confederate States of America is unfortunate, such is the risk of naming things after living people. It curries favor among the powerful but the Romans, smart people, forbad the practice. Conchs should learn from them but history means little and even today landmarks are named for the living in these islands.


So much is history forgotten, who would wonder at the name of this place most famous now for a circus atmosphere at sunset?


Performers make a good living doing acrobatics accounted by comedic patter for a couple of hours before the sun goes down. Tennessee Williams is credited with starting the practice by standing somewhere here and toasting the greatest performance of the day as the orb sank out of sight. From the cheerful homeyness of a bunch of friends subduing boredom with alcohol the city has developed a must- see attraction on the waterfront. Key West never ceases to amaze me.


Movers and shakers want to spend millions to widen the ship channel to accommodate a new generation of ships that will haul 6,000 passengers, twice as many as the Majesty of the Seas, shown above docked at Pier B.


Opponents argue this move, like the introduction of mall shopping on Rockland Key will wreck Key West. Developer Ed Swift had a passionate editorial in the paper this Sunday arguing that the tide must be seized at the flood else the opportunity will pass and we will miss the next generation of income from super sized cruise ships.


Where I ask myself will the oil come from to build and power this super sized technology? Does nobody understand that the world's population has doubled in the fifty years I have been alive? How is infinite growth possible? I stand on the sidelines and watch and wonder.We are ingenious creatures, we humans, and most likely we will be surprised by the human drive to build and grow to exasperation. Some might say I lack imagination.


There is a lovely 19th century touch to Mallory Square at this hour. Away from the parking lot a raggedy-ass squad of performers who use nothing more technological than their human skills and a few simple tools entertain crowds every single evening who spend the rest of their humdrum lives sprawled in front of beeping glittering electrons in isolation at home and at work.


Here, the bicycles and wooden carts and pieces of string and metal tubes render the world magical for a little while for people who have forgotten how to gather in public spaces and walk and talk and marvel the same way their ancestors did, before technology overran us all and assigned us specific tasks in a world that doesn't allow our stories a beginning a middle and an end in our mundane daily tasks.


They stop and talk and lead the crowd by example. No rush to deadlines here, one imagines. However securing a prime spot on the square is extremely competitive and a very hard fought lottery behind the scenes. Laid back is relative!


And they come, in droves to watch and marvel and laugh in public. It starts as a trickle but by December it will be a thick swirling crowd of people.


Me? I have to go and answer the phones and talk on the police radio and listen to tales of misery, stories that have no beginning and no end in my life. They come and go all night.


Technology giveth, in my case a Bonneville, and technology taketh away, in my case the time, today, to stand and stare at the magicians of somnolent Mallory Square.

It's lucky I enjoy my technology driven job!


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