Trumbo Road

I noticed construction on Trumbo Road so I rode out and so lots of work more or less in progress, or would have been in progress had there been any humans present. 

This is an essay that requires me to dig in the Conchscooter archives so here's one from 2010 when I walked Cheyenne along there in our first year together:

So it appears a "proper" seawall will replace the rubble and bushes and stuff along the water. It has been a useful if informal parking area but I suppose that may have to change. Perhaps there will still be parking along the water...Meanwhile the city's second dog park seems to be going from strength to strength if social media is to be believed:

The school district has property here on the waterfront, seen in this picture from 2013 which also illustrates the rather informal nature of the land where it met the water. Anyway the district has a  bus yard here and administrative offices on a big chunk of waterfront land which they have made noises about selling for a while. 

In this town it wouldn't seem hard to make an absolute fortune from such a nicely situated piece of open space though the district has made or failed to secure some rather peculiar land deals in the past so don't be surprised if they manage to give up this gift from the gods for pennies on the dollar. 

And here I was seven years ago (!) with Cheyenne in the same spot as workers worked on maintenance for the landing craft that deliver supplies to Sunset Key. If you order furniture say the delivery truck will come over on these things, which is how I got to wander round Sunset Key many many years ago when I had a job on Duval Street.

They are still there and there is some pavement in front of them now:

Change is in the air. Good change probably on this forgotten street.

Impromptu Dog Park

My wife said "There's a dog park there as we walked by with Rusty. So there was; who knew?

 I don't know who had the initiative to close off this piece of open space by chaining a couple of gates closed but the result is a place for dogs to play very close to the heart of the city.

Key West is a strange town where travel of even a mile or two is considered "far" consequently there tend to be two of everything of note to allow successful businesses to reap customers deep in Old Town and further out as well.

The idea of transporting one's dog to the south end of White Street might seem too much to a city resident hovering near the north shore of the city. The question is: how long will this delightful space stay open?

The rather expensive Steam Plant Condos overlook the shaggy antics field and one wonders how long they will tolerate plebs disporting themselves with gay abandon in this dog field...Besides which open space like this within sight of salt water might be worth more to some people as cement and industry rather than just as a place for dogs to play. Hard to imagine I know.

Rusty quite enjoyed himself to my surprise. He is not fan of packs of dogs running around in a dog park. Cheyenne wasn't either but she defended herself. Rusty gets overwhelmed.

 It kept him entertained enough for him to need to use the facilities thoughtfully provided:

There is clearly a group of happy dog owners here ready to equip the place for their beasts:

And across the street the Ferry Terminal, still known to some as the Buquebus in remembrance of the Argentine ferry service that got the place built for them and then failed to make money on the boat service. Key West Express is the furthest boat while the smaller closer boat is the ferry for the Dry Tortugas day trips.

I played the the shadows and light in the body of water known as the Key West Bight. This corner used to be known as the Toxic Triangle when the Steamplant used to generate electricity and spew noxious outflow here. I used to have a friend who tied up his boat here for free on the seawall a long time ago. With a name like that I guess no one had the heart to charge a fee to live here. These days its valuable real estate.

 It used to look like this from on top of the Steamplant power station:

The good old days of a commercial fishing fleet, a noxious power plant and a toxic brew in the seawater they said. All grist for the developers' mill today.

Cloudy Evening, By Smartphone

I caught this image from Trumbo Road looking southwest toward the city. I thought the cloud cover was impressive, even though I'm sick of cloudy days. I took a picture, with my Android phone, no tripod, no film and who knows what the image might look like were it blown up or printed. But that is not my way, and fine by me I thought...

Then I read this article in Britain's Guardian newspaper:

The death of photography: are camera phones destroying an artform? | Art and design | The Guardian

 

I love digital photography; it has liberated me. In the old days photography was terribly expensive, not simply the cost of developing but also the cost of film and the price of simply taking pictures. Imagine taking a picture and not knowing how it would come out! That was skill and luck and determination combined! If the shot mattered you had to take several pictures bracketing the exposures. If you were organized, and I wasn't, you noted the speeds and settings in a notebook so when the film came back you could compare the results with the intentions. Nowadays who thinks of that? Not only can you see the picture instantly, you can also open the appropriate page and the digital camera has recorded all the settings for you! Amazing.

I tried using a darkroom in school but I hated the chemicals and I disliked the whole business of fiddling with paper and bottles in the dark. So though I lacked the control I had over the black and white images I went to color which was more fun when it came out well, but the development process rapidly became so automated the pictures came back washed out, badly cropped and generally treated with indifference. Nowadays I can use digital effects when I take the picture or even afterwards if the recorded image isn't the way I want it to look. All in my phone! Then with a click I upload it to my Picasa account where it is stored and available for use in my computer when I want it. The technology is amazing.

Above we see the future of Key West, another huge hotel by Pritam Singh springing up behind Schooner Wharf Bar. Below we see the present, a city occupied by panhandlers bugging the tourists that feed us all. Pictures courtesy of my unobtrusive Smart Phone!

It costs me pennies to use my Google Blogger and Picasa accounts, but I fear the true price we pay is loss of privacy. These free, or nearly free accounts are sold by the providers to their advertisers. We are the product sold like chattel. And as we have seen thanks to Edward Snowden something digital is forever. Scrub your computer and the words and images can still be retrieved. As a result my blog rarely says anything about certain subjects and is for me, a worker bee dependent on my job, simply a trove of pictures about where I like to live. I have opinions and I express some of them as is my right, and yours to disagree. I don't have any deep dark secrets in my life, I could hardly have undergone the scrutiny I did to get a job at the police department had I been nurturing some fireball of horror in my past. But we are all flawed, layered people that the Web seems to try to unravel a little bit too much. To me that's what we have to guard against, not the death of decent photography.

Professional photographers are bound to lose out, as in every technological innovation or political twist. When President Reagan changed the rules for broadcasting news readers like me lost out big time as our bosses were no longer required to broadcast news in the public interest over the public airwaves. We've seen what that rule did to consolidate ownership of broadcast outlets. A colleague of mine described us as "the best buggy whip makers in town" and we changed professions. I miss my days as a radio reporter, but I wouldn't want to do it now with the emphasis on garbage news gossip and "tips" as the format. News has been replaced by tips on how to improve your waistline, love life or cooking skills. News? Really? I get my news online and I hope I have the judgement to sift the crap from the newsworthy and reliable. Certainly the mainstream is all crap, unhappily because real news makes you think, it requires mental involvement.

I don't know whether or not amateur photography rots peoples' brains, or deprives us of the ability to see. I don't think most people use their phone cameras much, not to record the day to day beauty of their lives, the dimple pictures of their worlds. If they find I wish they would post them. I think my blog is unique, and if not unique it's a format unusual enough that I can't find many other bloggers who simply photograph their worlds, and the periphery around those worlds. The streets, the parks, the crowds, the shops, the beauty of daily living, and I see lots of unrecorded beauty and humor and intrigue in my islands. Like the article says, everyone seeks a picture of an event or famous face but from what I can tell that which they see everyday they seem to ignore. I wish I could go online and see a resident's view of Buenos Aires or Port Stanley, Haïfa or Aquaba, here or there. A story to go with the pictures, a phrase to make me think would be nice, a meditation on the place, an argument or a conversation. So many blogs are family scrap books, some actual, some disguised as informative. Photos are few or small or repetitive. Content they tell us is the key, and photo content will keep photography alive and it needs to live, in all of us.

I'm not very good at seeing people properly, of capturing their essence. I wish I were better at it but it is my Achilles Heel, and I live and adapt. People with phone cameras do the same, and professional photographers will have to do the same. Buggy whip makers all.

 

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Lounging In Key West

Entering Key West these days seems like one passes an endless construction zone. Supposedly it will be done by July, but we have the winter crowds to get through first, and they will do their bit to clog the streets.

I confess it's too cold for me to go swimming anymore unless it were a calm day and a heated swimming pool. Visitors seem to suffer no such compunctions, and beaches will be crowded. Look at them, it gives me goose bumps to think of a beach day in 77 degrees.

Key West doesn't always lend itself to inward contemplation you'd think despite the abundance of yoga spaces, but this is a more reflective town than the image might suggest. Water views will do that to a human.

I walked under the bows of the Fort Myers Beach ferry, impatient passengers waiting to disembark, for their day at the beach.

A local lounger put their impatience to shame with his brown bag dangling by the water's edge. I have no idea what he saw in the turquoise waters beneath his feet.

You don't have to be a local to contemplate your navel in Key West. You can do it on a rented bicycle in a crisply starched t-shirt.

A tour bus driver was taking advantage of a gentle cooling southeast breeze to let him sleep in silent comfort. Not quite silent comfort...

These people, the bus's neighbor, could have learned a lesson or two from the coach driver. Their RV was buttoned up tight in the breeze with a muffler-free generator rattling like the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Their joy ride indeed, 32 weeks in and blessed with a busted muffler. As these charmers plan to visit all the national parks one can only imagine they will be leaving their mark in those natural, silent spaces with their self propelled jack hammer.

I moved on to lounge elsewhere, lots of quieter spots if you know where to look. No ice storms here.

 

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Sublime And Ridiculous

I have walked many cities around the world from Calcutta which turned into Kolkata when I wasn't looking to East Berlin which vanished one day in October under a capitalist load of mid winter bananas and multi colored neon advertising. Other cities I have walked have lasted longer and are more conventionally appreciated than Key West. St Paul's on Duval isn't the cathedral at Rheims and La Concha isn't the Hassler Hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome Luxury 5 Star Hotels Rome, Hotel Central Rome, Hotel Special Offers Rome, Luxury hotel Italy . But Key West is Key West. I'd rather stay at the Eden House than the Hassler anyway. Key West Hotels | Hotel in Old Town Key West | Eden House Hotel, Key West, Florida, 33040

So far Key West has managed to avoid becoming all of a piece. By that I mean this small town is a city that has signally failed to unify it's theme into one story. Real people live here alongside the pirate tourist myth, millionaires come to Key West to slum it in the tropics in a town where chickens walk the streets and drunks vomit in your landscaped yard at four in the morning. And woe betide you if you complain, Key West does not need you and you can return to conformist suburbia anytime.

But if you do you will miss world class sunrises such as Moscow could only dream about. You wouldn't see the charming little antique stores masked by vast spacious modern trucks advertising them in turn.

History is everywhere in Key West. Perhaps this little town lacks the Circus Maximus that Rome treats as dreary useless open space but it has it's signposts to the past abandoned with the same aplomb that Sarajevo pockmarked it's ancient Mussulman souk with unrepaired bullet holes during the recent internecine unpleasantness in that unhappy country.

I am no fan of public chickenry but I far prefer that we celebrate the "former fighting cocks of Cuba" (a chicken myth on a par with the history of buccaneering in Key West). Instead my eye is drawn to the empty beer bottle abandoned on the garden fence. And you thought I was exaggerating when I spoke of passing drunks vomiting in your yard? Alcohol fuels vacations, parties, gallery openings, fund raisers, funerals and anyplace where two or more peope are gathered in anyone's name for any reason whatsoever.

This funky little town produces world class art and literature and on occasion food. It bathes in a climate a few people would kill for. Others think its just too hot but weirdos abound and everyone has a right to enjoy snow and sleet and slush if they so choose. The great joy of walking Key West can be what you make it, treading in the steps of great writers on vacation, pursuing paintings made in the tropics or, if you are off kilter like me seeking out oddities that thrive in the rich loam of creativity that sinks into a heap at the end of the road. For instance do any of us want to know what "unsalted solids" are and which restaurants use such deliciousness in their menus?

Love is always in the air in Key West ad if love falls short one night stands could be the next best thing. Cheyenne is a creature of purity and she pays no heed to sudden infatuations. She struts on by radiating disapproval like a Russian babushka or a Cuban abuella who has seen it all and despairs of the lower impulses of human nature. Cheyenne's admirers are everywhere.

Parked next to Harpoon Harry's we see the full range of sublimity and ridiculousness. This is a town that encourages cycling and yet the newspaper is full of anonymous rants of drivers who argue cycling is perilous and inconveniences rapid travel. Others think scooters are purposeless machines designed to kill on contact and other still argue that driving a sat spacious vehicle the size of a cigar maker's cottage is an absurdity in its own right. That an uncountable number of two wheelers can fit into the space of one truck makes a point, though such comparisons create discomfort.

I was asked what he worst thing about living in the Keys is for me. Because I choose to live outside the city the various frustrations of an alcohol fueled tourist economy bypass my suburban home and for me the limitations of a single highway rate high on my list of irritants. Check out the yards of signage on this business, the place that repairs my electric motors and pumps, they are an attempt to keep order on a disorderly society. I watch tourists cross streets against red lights putting their intoxicated bodies at risk, chancing the destruction of their dust catcher souvenirs under the wheels of an urgent vehicle struggling to leave the gravitational,pull of Duval Street. They think it's Disneyland is he common complaint. Visitors prefer not to treat Key West as a real place.

The climate is lovely if you like heat but humidity, rain, salt air and seawater corrupt more efficiently than the rust and moths of Biblical fame. I am not delicate when it comes to sanitary requirements, I have used toilets in places that would make your hair stand on end at the mere thought, but I cannot understand how the exterior of a store that sells high fructose corn syrup that passes for food can look like this on the outside. Many people come to Key West because it is exotic, they think, but not likely to test their ability to go "native" in some alien culture. A lime of paint and a fresh poster might enhance that belief, you'd think.

The electric bicycle has been around for a hundred years and is just now finding its place in a world running short of cheap energy and long on harmful emissions. Key West, a small flat town of almost Manahattan-like density is perfectly designed for the electric bicycle to make a comeback. This rusting hulk, sinking back to entropy, overgrown by weeds, forgotten and unused, left behind in apparent perfect working order symbolizes for me the hope and the loss that Key West ends up embodying.

"NO"

"NO"

"NO"

So in that case rent a fishing boat and go out and do all the netting you can stand. You just have to,pay for it.

What is so particular to Key West is that one can hardly understand what is sublime and what is ridiculous. The parameters of the world Up North don't always apply here. Sometimes they do but sometimes they don't and you can't tell when they do and when they don't. Is a smart cabin cruiser tied to the tottery wooden dock sublime or is it overkill for a funky former shrimp dock? For me the sky blue, ridiculously bright skiff is sublime, simple functional and easy to run. It would make a terrible place to sleep but a fine place from which to swim. Or net. Or fish.

Key West Is the great leveler, the city where wealth means less than connections. How often do I hear people complain that they paid large sums of money to rent or buy a home in Key West and they shouldn't have to put up with any of the complaints outlined here. Sorry, I want to say but Key West isn't going to change anything unless the people who own the city want it to change. Pay as much as you can afford, but like a new employee promised a better rate of pay "later" expect what you see to remain as long as you also remain in the city. Change does happen but nothing you do say or want will make it happen

Come and spend your time and your money, bring a luxury boat or RV or a pocket of cash or a limitless credit card and enjoy what you can. I love living here, I enjoy the helplessness and the consequent absence of ambition. In this way Key West is truly different from the "mythical mainland" incomers like to talk about leaving behind. Here ambition will get you nowhere, or at best it will get you a one way ticket to Palookaville in the time honored phrase from the Hollywood waterfront. Or possibly a ride out to camp in the lovely and wild Dry Tortugas, the most sybaritic of wild and undeveloped National Parks. No cliffs to climb, no bears to fear, no trails to hike, nothing more strenuous to do than take a gentle swim and a warm seat under a sea grape while the sun goes down. Beer and pizza on the ferry on the way home...

Why Henry Flagler wanted to extend the railroad to Key West is a bit of a mystery. Ostensibly it was to ship winter tourists to the sun and winter fruits from Cuba to New York. Reading between the lines it seems more likely he just had a burr up his butt and needed to satisfy the itch as only an oil baron could. In the event the railway made no money and roused the ire of people who preferred slow complicated access to the outside world by boat. The railroad and it's seven hour connection to Miami would ruin the island way of life they said, preferring to make the trip by bridges and two ferries and a full day's drive at least, to get to the Big City in 1911.

You can buy a piece of paradise, throw up a fence and call it good. You can tell people how things get done Up North and how much better things would be down here if only... But in the end you will just end up pissing people off. If you want efficiency and effectiveness, vision and planning, there are better places to live. If you want to practice letting go live in Key West. A life without ambition really isn't so bad. Sublime or ridiculous? You decide.

Me? My ambition extends to trying to figure out how to grow ivy over a wall like this:

I hope Key West remains a mixture of sublime and ridiculous scenes, that ambition sinks into entropy like the electric bicycle, that somehow this mixture of evanescent hope and down to earth difficulties remains in the same precarious balance into the years ahead. I shall play my part seeking to disturb as little of the loam of eccentric absurdity and failed argumentative development as I can. I shall complain, as one does, yet not expect change or improvement. The next time someone bothers to ask what is the worst thing about living in the radius of Key West I shall say 'sub tropical entropy' and then I will smile and say that's the best thing too.

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