A Friday Night

In  a  life  filled with much time allocated to physical exercise and a fair bit set aside for work each week the rest of my day is dedicated to sleep as my bones and muscles continue the tedious and lengthy process of healing. That  leaves some time set aside to do something other than paying attention to Rusty. If music be the food of love, play on, Michael Robinson. 

Learning to live in a new body filled with metal plates and held together with steel pins requires patience with oneself as stamina is much reduced. An evening nursing a glass of wine combined with a glass of beer with dinner, leaves a trauma survivor like myself ready to pass out by 9 pm...So a gentle evening at the Gardens Hotel listening to Michael thump the ivories is just the ticket. 

And the Gardens Hotel has the self service wine dispenser of many years standing and it still works very well. I had a glass of dry Greek white, evocatively labeled from the vineyards of Santorini. I had no idea that place had room enough for lands  dedicated to the vine.

Michael had set aside a table at the back of the room for us with a bird's eye view of the piano. He was alone last Friday, his partner Eric was away invigilating university stuff where he works I believe, and thus left Michael togo a little while. I usually play ballads the pianist mused with a wicked glint in his eye, and proceeded to knock a few more spirited tunes with the loud pedal fully deployed.

He did not hold back. I wasn't sure our friends were in the mood so I offered them an out by suggesting we cut out to dinner. I was quite delighted when they didn't leap at the suggestion and we sat firmly in our seats until it really was time to leave and eat Thai food.

The day was overcast yet the heat was enough to keep visitor around the pool and in it. The views of course are lush in a hotel by the name of The Gardens...An American in Paris came belting out of the machine and floated around the rafters.

The hotel is quiet and genteel and very comfortable and filled with knick knacks at every turn.

MisoHappy on Southard Street was pleasantly intimate: 

 Chuck and I work out at the Broga Studio and we end up talking about the wild conversations Sean our instructor enjoys, a man of no filters and many opinions and a provocative sense of humor, Wayne his partner (in the yellow) is sick of Broga and tired of hearing about it so he and my wife decided spontaneously to start a knitting club to offset the exercise oriented conversation.

 I rejected twigs in lieu of cutlery preferring to stick (pun intended ) to my European roots, a culture that has long since embraced the fork as the most sensible way to eat.  Asians in Asia use sticks very effectively but in their culture the bowl is brought to the mouth. In our effete Western idea of good manners the plate stays firmly on the table but the chopsticks are used to convey the food perilously across our chets some distance to our mouths. Makes no sense, combining the worst of both etiquettes...

 The whole fish was excellent though even when eaten using twigs.

A culture laden night out in Key West. Sleep was welcome after all this activity.

Gardens Hotel

It's  a low key spot, a good place to gather together before tackling the demands of dinner in town, as a group.

The self serve wine bar is a great feature. You buy credit on a  proprietary card and you use it to dispense wine of your choosing, by the taste or half glass or a full glass as you like:

Hotel guests have a pool surrounded by the garden, visitors have a cool crisp interior to sit in if they don't want a  sweaty outdoor bar.

And Michael Robinson playing the piano.

And the hotel cat to see you on your way to dinner...

Panhandling As Riposte

Somebody other than me saw this proposal in the paper. I saw this anonymous comment in the Key West Citizen and the wheels in my head started turning. "Right across from the beautiful green property..."

Sure enough the hotel is lovely, an oasis barely a block from Duval Street, with a piano, a self-service wine bar a swimming pool surrounded by the lush greenery that makes Key West a tropical dreamer's stereotype...

And for years the neighbor across the street was the older city hall and cranky broken down fire station. The building leaked badly in Hurricane Wilma and the mold rendered the building outdated for civilian use.

The firefighters at the Simonton Street end of the building toughed it out for a few more years...a decade actually. Plans were drawn up to ... have a protracted public debate about what to do here. Build a new city hall? A multi-story parking lot? A new fire station? It was anybody's guess and everybody had a guess to throw in the pot.

The owner of the hotel had a loud opinion and boy she was pissed. She started a campaign to defend her hotel against the possibility of dust, construction crews, road closures, all part of a city plot to drive away customers from a small local business etc...etc... The nuclear threat from North Korea was as nothing compared to the construction threat on this block of Angela Street.

In the event the Mayor spoke quietly and carried a large stick and the city fell in line behind his idea to put city hall on White Street and build a proper fire station with a refreshed parking lot. And so it came to pass. Nice eh? And yes there was some construction work but I don't think it was unbearable for neighbors. Maybe it was, who can say, it's all done and peaceful now. The dust, actual and metaphorical has settled.

So why on earth would the city even remotely consider putting a panhandling zone here? No one knows, no one has a clue. Me? I don't know but in life I do know payback is a bitch. And the City of Key West has bigger nuclear warheads than any pissed off local business.

The lesson here is one any incomer to "The Island" would do well to take to heart... It doesn't matter how long you've lived here or who you think you know. You aren't local enough or important enough to take on the real power structure in town. Come on down, be happy and don't rock the boat. I mean who wants these guys, currently defacing city property, for neighbors?

Sure you have First Amendment rights in the Conch Republic but the people in charge have a first amendment bigger and longer than yours.

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Wine By The Taste

My wife the social butterfly wanted to enjoy an evening out and a colleague of hers is she said, an accomplished pianist. So we made our way downtown to the Gardens Hotel.


They have an outside bar by the pool and a wine room inside with some newfangled dispensing system that has arrived in the Keys, in this very room. Take a glass and start tasting at will.


To pay, simply put money on a plastic card and with glass in hand you are free to wander and taste as the fancy takes you.


The instructions are pretty simple and they pop up on a screen.


Select your wine and press the appropriate amount.


Brilliant, huh?


The actual reason for our presence was Michael, formerly a professional entertainer and now happily employed as a very respected tutor in the school district.


The Gardens just a block off Duval Street on Angela is a million miles away from the rowdy bars of Lower Duval.


I showed this picture to Chuck and he demurred, "It looks rather gay," but that being the case nothing lost we agreed.


I hope this erection isn't gay, but whoever glued a million sea shells to whatever is underneath deserves a round of applause for patience if nothing else.


The Gardens is a good place for relaxation so we did just that.


Michael was joined by another Michael and the duets flowed as freely as the wine. The ability to get a spritz of wine in the glass means you can actually taste a wide range of wines one might not otherwise venture to try.


It was a warm and inviting evening.


Darkness was falling and we had dogs at home that needed attention. Chuck had Wayne too but we hoped the dog keeper knew how to look after himself for a few hours.


It's very pleasant to have one more civilized place to have a drink downtown.

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