My wife recently turned down her chance to get a blue and silver convertible Smart car. She decided we should keep her new-to-her Sebring convertible and wait for a better choice of small, more fuel efficient cars to come to the US market in a few years. I was surprised by her decision because she seemed to have really fallen in love with the little two seater. 
I doubt somehow he would have the same effect driving a smartfortwo instead of his BMW.
Others in Key West use scooters to get around town and parking really is a breeze:
Others rent and wear the sort of clothing that would get loud tut-tuts on Modern Vespa and other motorcycling fora:
Oh and they drag their feet too, the heathen. I ride a Bonneville and it deserves a picture here too I think:
Away from the hustle and bustle of commerce downtown. Of which there is plenty:
I think they meant this:
Not this:
I spotted Curt striding off across the street looking for more conch fritter supplies, so I stopped him in mid flight and we chatted about this and that. He said business was brisk (mid August before Fay) as parents were enjoying the dregs of the summer school holidays:
Then he asked me something about my work and he wanted me to confirm a rumor. he asked if its true that we get lots more calls on the night of the full moon, and i had to confess that in my experience it is a lot busier for the emergency services when there is a full moon. I pointed out I don't believe in such superstitions, but it does seem, in my experience, that we are busier at that time. Hmm, he pondered, that's odd, because the moon is just the same, only more of it is visible. He has his feet on the ground does Curt, but we had to part ways with the conundrum unsolved.
All this activity in downtown Key West was started by a man who is still alive and well and could claim to be one of Key West's first waterfront developers. They named a street for him:
Apparently his family had the land that the Pier House was built on, and that erection started the trend that ended up with all the waterfront sporting large hotels. Wolkowsky himself retired, until a short while ago, to a lonely island about seven miles west of Key West. Woman Key is the only inhabited island in the Wildlife Refuge and his house is quite visible from the water. A friend of mine had business out there one day and he said the affable old man greeted him warmly as he docked his boat and sat him down to a breakfast of coffee and Dunkin' Donuts. Somewhat to his surprise because he had thought the place remote.
Nowhere down here is really remote anymore. We have tours and taxis:
Expensive homes:
And humble Navy Officer housing converted to million dollar waterfront condos:
Thanks in large part to the spark ignited by the old man of Woman Key.
They call the chassis frame members a "tridiron" in smartspeak and those frames come in silver or black. The rest of the bodywork is plastic paneling that can be changed by simply unscrewing the various panels and attaching new colors of your choice. A nice way to eliminate dings and scratches...These 40 mile per gallon cars were conceived as urban transport and the original Smarts were 600cc, six foot long cars that could park rear to the curb in half the space of a "normal" car. In Italy they sometimes end up in motorcycle parking!
These newer models are 8foot 8inches long, hit 90 miles per hour and come complete with heated seats, air conditioning and full sound systems.
The entire vehicle is designed around the cabin which is the same size as a regular car's front seats, but the rest of the vehicle is a tad bit shorter.
I found the Smart pleasant to drive, a bit clunky in automatic and but smoother with the manual clutchless shifter so beloved of modern sporting cars. It picks up okay, but not brilliantly, and feels the bumps more than a longer car might but its a very usable vehicle incorporating a modest but adequate trunk. In some respects it is a worthy successor to the venerable Fiat 500, a simple car that offered no frills, a clunky gearbox (double declutch first gear!) and got people on the road even if they had little money.
The Cinquecento by Fiat has become an icon such that Florentine jewellers were selling them as trinkets on the Ponte Vecchio when I was visiting last year. Fiat has produced a new, more comfortable 500 as part of the new/old retro wave of automobiles led by the VW Bug and BMW's Mini, but my sister still has her original Fiat 500 in perfect condition and won't drive it anymore because she's shy and says it attracts too much attention! 
Modern Europeans are spoiled for choice when it comes to attractive small cars and my wife, while passing these paragons of economy on the pillion of my friend Giovanni's much more robust BMW 1200 two wheeler, took a fancy to Nissan's (convertible) Micra as her favorite.
For myself I still like the original urban machines, like this Vespa lurking in a Florentine alley,
or the BMW 650 I rented last June, seen here at the castle at Alviano near Orvieto: 
And modest scooters of all stripes still stir my heart more than micro cars:
Inside the Piaggio Museum in Pontedera, Tuscany, there are all sorts of vehicles that speak of Italy's need for wheels in the wake of World War Two. Piaggio's Ape (ahh-pay) is still seen everywhere on modern roads in Italy and the Third World including India where they still build them; it's a classic three wheeled workhorse. My wife cracked herself up sitting in my sister's Ape 50 "moped:"
The fruit vendor used to make his rounds in my Umbrian village driving an Ape 30 years ago, weighing the fruits and vegetables in a hand-held set of scales. And I remember the Vespa 400, real micro cars on the streets of Italy in the 60's and 70's. Now they are relegated to museums, the Smart car of their day:
And here's a gratuitous motorcycle picture, a heart throb if I ever I saw one, a Gilera single at the Piaggio museum:
Take that you urban poseurs! It would undoubtedly be hell to ride on modern city streets, but the image is lovely nonetheless, for those of us that dream unfettered dreams. 
My wife still dreams of owning a Smartfortwo convertible, she has her colors picked out, metallic blue on a silver tridiron, with the comfort package, out the door including sales tax for $20,000... but its not going to happen. And its a shame because this is the first car I've ever seen her really passionate about.
This was not a showroom in the normal sense of the word. This was a throwback to the East German style of selling Trabants, the smoky two stroke cars that passed for transportation in the former Worker's Paradise. You got what you were given which was whatever the Party thought you deserved to receive, and were happy to get anything at all, never mind the color of the body or the number of doors. The coed remarked how nice the Key West buyers had been when they received their cars, a Cabriolet instead of the Passion and how they had kindly taken what they were given (for $3,000 more- no discounts for French shipping errors!).