I took Cheyenne for her favorite stroll along the waterfront, something we haven't done for a while and she greatly enjoyed her pursuit of urban excitement. In dog terms that means walking snout to ground, in human terms it means enjoying the vast array of choices we enjoy and the diversity of how we like to do them. For me a $25,000 Canadian tricycle with a loaded trailer attached is about as far from my idea of motorcycle touring as it's possible to get.
Leaving aside the concept of traveling with the kitchen sink for a moment I took a quick look at the former Waterfront Market which is being transformed very slowly into Key West's only brewpub. Apparently there are rules about how much beer you have to brew in the actual place to get that label and furthermore brewers across the state are asking for relaxed rules for selling containers of beer for consumption at home. Florida can be a devilishly regulated state in the most unexpected ways. The governor has even forbidden state workers from using the term "climate change" as though that will make the phenomenon less real.
Key West has been going through a few changes lately and I have been rather busy plugging away at work to notice all of them, or even to take advantage of Conch Republic Days which pressed on even without the redoubtable Peter Anderson to steer the ship of state. I have made a note to myself to go by his new monument in the cemetery which was unveiled last week. Anderson made a business out fo selling the notion of a "Conch Republic" as a State of Mind complete with passports, a Navy and an annual battle with the US Coastguard.
The city has a new restaurant called weirdly enough Keyviche, in the building where Braza Lena the very expensive Brazilian barbecue place used to be on Caroline Street. I'm not a huge fan of raw fish one way and the other so with a name like that I doubt I will be propping up the interior much and I doubt they will miss me. Reportedly its been packed so I may have to check it out. The brewpub has a way to go judging by the rather spartan interior, and its been months already:
They are going to have a sunset terrace upstairs in back with acoustic music I believe so Schooner Wharf may have some competition. This place looks like it might be more to the taste of people staying at the new Singh resort across the street called The Marker. Schooner Wharf is between the resort and the waterfront and it seems to me Singh might very well want to incorporate the two. I don't think I'm the first person to think of this because Schooner Wharf has been saying stoutly its not for sale. I don't suppose it is, the place is packed.
Further towards Duval Street a new housing development is promised and the land is cleared and ready for million-and-a-half dollar townhouses, no doubt in the "Key West style" because apparently the city needs more ultra expensive housing. As usual civic leadership has run for the hills (which are a long long way away) and this development will serve to benefit no one in the workforce it seems.
Sometimes it seems to me a little less spinelessness and a little more community control could go a long way. I try not to agree with the notion that Key West is being killed off but the struggle to oppose the belief is getting harder and harder to maintain in the face of the evidence.
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On the podcast front this week we have Brady of Behind Bars fame easily located and heard interviewed by myself at Travel and Safety. You can hear the thirty minute interview by clicking on iTunes or Stitcher and we would much appreciate a rating. Thank you.
The one big issue that faces people who travel on boats is where to park their dinghies when they put down their anchors and want to go ashore. For those with money one of the attractions of stopping off in marinas is the ability to tie up to the dock and simply step off the boat. For those who don't want to spend, typically between $30 and $100 a night (for a typical 30-40 foot liveaboard boat), but a night at anchor is splendid. It's self sufficient, it's got more privacy, better scenery and it's FREE! Then there is the problem of how to get ashore if you want to go shopping or see the town or buy spare parts. 
Things are always breaking on cruising boats and finding parts is a constant issue. So it is that towns that have boating populations frequently offer dinghy docks. Key West has two official such docks, one at Garrison Bight and this one, more downtown behind Turtle Kraals restaurant and bar ($6 a night or $80 a month, no dinghies over 12 feet in length, trash, showers and water included).
I wander along the waterfront from time to time and I watch the comings and goings of the water rats, many of them youngsters, some of them retirees and a very few in between, and I can't say I envy them, though I remember my previous life fondly.
I still have opinions about which dinghies make the best vehicles to get ashore, and they fall into two main camps. The inflatable dinghy made of hypalon or some such material:
Difficult to tip, easier to stow sometimes, surprisingly tough, though difficult to row. Or there is the hard dinghy camp which I think frequently ends up being the choice of the boater who lives firmly in one spot and rarely moves the "mother ship." Not generally what I call a "sailor" but more of a a liveaboard:
One of the observations I have made over many years of living aboard and cruising is that a person's mobility is in inverse proportion to the size of the dinghy. If you see a small sailboat with a large well equipped hard dinghy hanging off the stern you can bet they haven't pulled up the anchor in a long while. There is a form of snobbery among boaters about these things and people are always being judgemental about each other in the way humans tend to be. My wife and I belonged in the inflatable dinghy camp and on our Gemini catamaran we had what we considered an excellent solution for transporting our dinghy:
Some sailors think hanging the dinghy off the back of the boat in davits is dangerous at sea, but like I said everyone in the world of boating is a critic. This picture was taken while cruising the north coast of Cuba and we had hauled the dinghy from Santa Cruz California, off the back of our Gemini 105 without a problem. Some people with large boats have large dinghies. I remember being anchored in San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua when a very large "gin palace" was visiting the town and we felt like peasants when the crew of the big motor boat stepped off a dinghy two thirds the size of our 34 foot (11 meter) catamaran. They had a steering console on their dinghy, but that's a rare feature for we the little people. I found on at the dinghy dock on a regular sized dinghy:
Living on a boat at anchor appears glamorous to land lubbers a lot of the time, but when you look closer it takes effort and energy and organization to do it well. You don't want to forget anything on your shopping list because in that case you do without. 
And you may be anchored half an hour from the dinghy dock across cold choppy waters...On an afternoon when skies are gray and the temperature has dropped to 70 degrees (20C) you might miss the comfort of a commute by car: 
And while we are pointing out the most romantic parts of living at anchor let's not forget "dinghy
Then there is the problem of dinghy motors. Hardly anyone rows any more, and even though some still do almost all anchor outs rely on small, two and increasingly, four stroke motors. Which don't always start when they haven't been cared for properly:
See, there I go being critical. Actually she sounded a little miffed too when she hissed: "Just get it started!" he was commendably restrained just pulling the rope in silence until finally he was rewarded with a grudging, choking cough. I'll tell you what though, if he doesn't get it sorted and reliable he will be single handing soon enough. This guy appeared to be single handing already and he was working on a recalcitrant old British Seagull, the original two stroke outboard motor developed in World War Two. And notoriously unreliable:
Actually they are very dependable if serviced regularly and treated with the care a small engine deserves in a harsh environment. If they won't start they are horrid, as the starter rope has to be wound round the flywheel for each try:
He too suffered in silence, pulling away and guiding his dinghy with his paddle between pulls:
He was smart, though, or experienced because he carried alternative propulsion with him, even it was just a paddle. A dead motor is crippling especially in Key West harbor waters which have fierce currents and lots of assorted traffic. Eventually he buzzed off as can be seen further up this essay. There are rules about what you have to carry including lights, fixed in this case though an all-round white flashlight will do if your dinghy is slow, less than seven miles per hour (12km/h):
You need life jackets and flares to be legal and registration if your boat has a motor in Florida. And if you don't you can expect to get stopped by the Marine Patrol, known these days as Florida Fish and Wildlife and get fined if you aren't in compliance. Occasionally Key West PD gets in on the act too, and because Key West is, effectively, a border town the feds are here in force, every letter of the alphabet soup, DEA, FBI, JIATF, and no doubt CIA though I'm sure they couldn't care less if your dinghy has lights or valid registration. Naturally anchor outs fancy themselves rebels so they make a point, many of them ,of flouting this or that. I always preferred to fly under the radar and not draw attention to myself. Which is why I still have factory mufflers on my motorcycle. I am a milquetoast rebel. 
Others have solar panels like this, in Gun Cay, Bahamas, though they work fine in a marina too:
Bicycles work well for people who live at or near the docks and boaters tend to prefer small wheeled fold up bicycles thinking they are easier to carry in the dinghy:
Which they are but they are never easy to get back on the boat. Plus they are cumbersome to store in most boats and end up living on deck and rotting away...that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it! Liveaboards are identifiable too, certain clothing choices, a certain swagger perhaps because they think they live a cool "lifestyle" which I suppose they do:
"Be safe!" she called out as though the dinghy ride to the boat is less safe than a roadway commute, a touch of the high seas adventure for people who's boating tends to be limited to the harbor waters. That became the problem for me. Living on the boat and working a job turned the boat into a parked vehicle, too cluttered to sail, too tired to clean up and take off. Now I live in my house I go out on my little boat far more than I ever did when I lived aboard, even in a marina, and held down a job. For youngsters and would-be adventurers the big back pack, the small boat and the envious stares of the land lubbers make it all worthwhile:
For those seeking photographs and commentary on the life truly cruising I recommend the Log Of Whisper in my blog list, a Caribbean cruise sadly drawing to a close, recorded by a young couple with lots of pictures and stories to tell of the high side of getting out there and breaking loose the anchor. The best reason, in this opinionated land lubber's mind, for bothering to deal with dinghy butt.
When the Natural Retail Group bought Waterfront Market in Key West from local icon Buco Pantelis, everyone who cares about "things local" announced the sky was falling. There was a great deal of affection for the local grocery store which operated with an emphasis on fresh and organic, but that wasn't a national chain box store. NRG has thirteen stores between Massachussetts and Key West, ten of them are in Florida, two in Maryland and the other on Cape Cod. Key West joined the chain in March 2008.
Since then I have heard from Waterfront adherents that things don't look as good as before and that things are slipping, but I would expect no less. The place has lots of employees all wearing olive colored NRG t-shirts, a touch of uniformity that does strike a discordant note at the "alternative" grocery store:
From the outside the store looks much the same, the same Wyland marine wildlife scene remains on the walls. The name hasn't changed either on the front doors:
But inside the doors, on the parking lot side of the store I found a notice urging people to use reusable shopping bags, such that one gets 20 cents off for every such bag used, in the manner of Whole Foods the national organic chain that does operate big box stores:
And the produce section still offers organics in a community that struggles with the concept of paying more (for anything) that is of higher quality:
My wife's sister, the general practitioner, has come up with some bizarre "cleansing diet" for my wife's inflamed joints which consists of ten days of squash and rice only, so we laid into the squash section trying to find the most interesting range of squashes we could find. Spaghetti (which is a crime to an Italian let me tell you) and acorn and zucchini and some round knobbly thing that is probably native to New England and poisonous to anyone else. We got some help from the olive shirted Natural Retail Group employee who struck me as being cheerful and local, despite early complaints that management imported non locals to run the store after the change over:
Waterfront still offers the array of yuppie sauces, oils, potions and other exotica that the Food Channel on television has introduced across the land:
And the deli section still offers ready to eat meals to the delicate skinned visitors who wear their sun protective hats even indoors such is the strength of the southern sun:
Some foods are so interesting they even tempt, gradually, employees to try them:
Plonk (English slang for wine, often cheap) comes from around the world in proper looking bottles, enough variety to require some serious meditation:
All these exotica may seem run of the mill but Key West has spent much of it's existence since wrecking went out of fashion, just getting by. Wreckers imported anything they found on ships they salvaged and any tour guide in Key West's historic homes will tell you all about where there fittings came from. Nowadays island exotica comes by food truck:
And for those visitors who seek local inspiration Waterfront Market carries a few books, not just cookbooks, for inspiration:
It used to be that there was a fabulous juice bar and Internet cafe upstairs in the mezzanine, but that has gone and that's a loss. 
One acquaintance who was a fervent Waterfront Shopper told me she was disappointed with the change as she has lost a source of products she used to like to buy there. Nowadays she looks for her sodas and soy milk at other stores, including Publix the chain store by excellence. Then there is the fact that things aren't where they used to be and that pissed some regulars off. One point the disaffected brought up to me, who is not a waterfront regular, is that the new management failed to clean up the store when they had an opportunity. They tell me the place was a mess at the end of local ownership and the building could have used a good clean.There is still art hanging around though:
I'm guessing that growing pains will yield to a new generation of shoppers who will gradually forget the "old" waterfront. I remember the annual newspaper listings for jobs paying something pathetic around $7 an hour and the annual turn over of low paid staff. I am not cut out for retail work and those that struggle to deal face to face with the grumpy public have my respect, which I try to retain even when I am grumpy. They do a tough job:
Besides, you can still get a decent sandwich and an organic soda and sit outside facing the water and know you are supporting, if not a local store, local workers and a very small chain in a world still dominated by mega chains. That has to count for something, and the sandwiches are still good.