To Snow Or Not

There was a question, perhaps rhetorical, about the possibility of familiarity breeding contempt when it comes to the bright colors bathed in constant sunshine that is the lot of a Florida Keys resident. The short answer is, no it never gets boring, and no, I never take it for granted. Every day is a fresh reminder of one of the chief pleasures of living at 24 degrees north latitude.Yesterday I was training a new dispatcher in the arcane science of the police intranet system that connects law enforcement agencies across the country. We spoke briefly to Nome PD where daylight is down to 9 hours a day, ("It's not that dark, we are below the Arctic Circle," their dispatcher told us slightly defensively), and I'm not sure if my trainee was more impressed by the secure law enforcement network or the notion of policing snowdrifts.
Its getting to be that time of year when it starts freezing Up North and so we have to start policing bad parking, bad public drinking and bad bums begging for money at the tops of their voices on street corners in the Southernmost City. The trick to enjoying life in the Keys is to leave behind as much baggage as you can, and to learn as fast as you can to take things as they are. especially if you come from some button down community Up North where skittles are lined up, i-s are dotted and t-s are crossed. In Key West things just don't work that way. The confrontation brews when people who are used to order and cleanliness come up against chaos and small town clubbiness.
So snowbirds flutter into town each Fall and discover that things haven't changed since last year. And they sure as hell haven't changed either, so disorganized parking, public displays of begging (beggars like warm winters too!) and apparent municipal indifference set them off. What to do? Why, call the police!

Its hard to explain to well dressed people why its okay for smelly people to occupy city parks during the day, but the Supreme Court has outlawed discrimination on the basis of hygiene so its hard to get police officers to arrest people for being dressed in cerements. Impossible in fact, and this state of affairs hasn't changed since the last time the snowbirds were cluttering up the streets and restaurants. The Citizens' Voice Column in the paper is filling up again with quality of life complaints which are rather dull compared to the throat clutching verbal wrestling that locals indulge in while the more strait jacketed winter residents are away.
These unrelated photographs illustrate the beauty of Winter in the Keys, sunlight takes on a crisp white light, and the brisk cold fronts sweep away the dusty summer particles rendering colors that much sharper. My Bonneville is running equally crisply and is a joy to point down the highway. I've passed the 25-hundred mile mark since October 10th and I'm starting to find my way with more instinct and habit than previously. The Vespa is soon to go back on the "for sale" circuit now that we have those lovely wealthy snowbirds in town, and curiously, I find myself missing the Vespa less and less. The Bonneville is proving to be an easy fun ride in the flatlands of the Keys. In some ways it takes less skill to ride the Bonneville, as the twin cylinder takes anything in its stride, head winds, moonstruck tourists, lumbering heffalumps (SUVs) and juvenile testosterone cases. And snowbirds.
Staring at the Straits of Florida south of Sugarloaf Key has its compensations, on a golden winter evening, but there are occasions when a visit to the movies makes sense too. Last Monday it was the turn of Into The Wild an adventure film about a young man taking things to extremes until they get completely out of hand. Only then does he figure out the meaning of life; when its too late. This young man, according to the movie, made a solo kayak trip down the Colorado river, through the Grand Canyon all the way to the Sea of Cortez. He hitch hiked, made friends, disappeared, regrouped, worked and lazed away sunny desert days. But he did just have to go to Alaska, the borne from which some travelers fail to return.It was a fine movie, absorbing, demanding attention and posing difficult questions about age, impetuosity and the meaning of being alive. I couldn't get over the notion that the true test of one's mettle has to be found in the snowdrifts of the frozen north. One sun's oneself in a pansy hammock under coconut palms in the tropics while heroes forge themselves in blizzards and drizzle and cold slippery roads Up North.

By those restricted standards I am glad to be a pansy. I lived for a great deal too many years in the cold confines of Northern California to enjoy the notion of rain and cold. I just don't like it, and no amount of hairpins or mountains or spectacular views across death defying valleys compensates me for the cold in my fingers, the slush on my boots, and the depressing need to take the car on exceptionally horrendous winter days. Sitting by the fire sucks when compared to stretching out on the deck under the illusory cold embrace of a winter full moon. So, no, the winter landscapes never dull or fade or crumble into rust. The moon last night was round and red as it sank into the Gulf of Mexico on my early ride in to work. Today it was cold and steely and threw out shards of ice across the ruffled lagoons in the Saddlebunch Keys. Tomorrow I hope for more crisp and clear and sun, but if not it makes no matter because sooner rather than later sub tropical nature will reassert itself and the sun will shine.

That's what all those visitors and snowbirds come here for after all, not to mention the twittering year round residents, who came for the weather and stay for it too, no matter how unwilling they may be to admit they revere it. The Weather.

Going To Paradise

I was out on the west facing deck Thanksgiving morning reading the Citizen (new employee housing at Sugarloaf School-controversy! read all about it!!) while my wife prepped breakfast (scrambled eggs, polenta and fruit salad) when I realised it was Fall once again in the Keys. Not because the tree leaves are gradually changing color, at least some of them.

Prudence is back. Prudence is an elderly single female who occupies a house across the canal, kitti-corner to my tree house. Prudence grew up in New York and carries a loud grating accent to prove it. She has lived in the Keys for decades and is a "character." Unhappily she is a character by virtue of longevity, not because she is at all quirky. Nowadays she spends much of the year away as she is elderly and lives alone when she is in her canal-side house. She stays away during summer, and spends less and less time each year in the Fall and Winter. With her return the peace of our neighborhood is shattered.

So I know its fall in Paradise not when the West Indian almond tree drops its leaves and thoughtfully trickles them across my decks. Its not when my bare feet land thoughtlessly on the West Indian almonds themselves, nuts that my avoir-du-poids cannot begin to crush, not even when smothered entirely by my tender naked foot. No, Fall hits paradise when Prudence's dulcet tones ring across the canal.

Yesterday, mercifully, there were no boats cruising the canal, and this was a mercy because local boaters spend all winter proving they are "old hands" in the neighborhood by yelling greetings to the hard of hearing Prudence, who barks back incomprehension in the stentorian tones of the Bronx. When I used to work nights (by choice, curiously enough) I was frequently dragged back from the arms of the sweet patron of the peaceful hour, as the poet has it,by Prudence carrying on a whispered conversation.

Thanksgiving morning I learned, by virtue of megaphone eavesdropping of plans put in motion for family fun far from snowdrifts. "I'm going to Paradise!" was the call across the canal from one neighbor to Prudence. One could only wish for such luck, on a less charitably inclined day, but all it actually means is that the family will be going to eat at Parrotdise, a local restaurant who's offerings are washed down by Big Pecker Parrot wines, which gives an idea of how they grill blacken and fry their fish. Non vintage, I 'm sure.

Prudence brings a smile to my lips when she bawls out a greeting or a comment on the vegetative growth in a friend's garden. She is a symbol of the village-like nature of life in the Lower Keys, of a time when people really did care about their neighbors, not just out of benevolence perhaps, but out of boredom when the news was constant and neighborliness was part of the local tree of gossip. I will miss her bawled banalties when they are silenced by the passage of time. Life in the keys makes one grateful for the weirdest things.

Read All About It!

When I travel I like to pick up the local paper to hold in my hands the daily goings on. At home where all the print is available online, I still cherish the pleasure of messing my fingers with newsprint, connecting to a 250 year tradition of formalizing gossip and word-of-mouth on a properly printed page. My face isn't online- its in the broadsheet!

As small towns go Key West has lots of papers to choose among for information. I've assembled a modest selection which I like to read each week, and though there are others, the only publication dedicated to gay goings on has gone out of business (in a flurry of predictable accusations of non payment etc among the principals. Small town scandal on the front pages).

The Key West Citizen has focused on local news and does a decent job of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, as the saying goes. Page Two features the Citizen's Voice, a column of anonymous call-ins from usually upset neighbors. Page Three includes my all time small town favorite feature the "Citizen of the Day," fully dressed of course. The Citizen is the only daily published locally, which is delivered in the early hours to my driveway for $102 per year. It is the paper of record and Cooke Communications, an independent publishing family, has assembled a modest empire in the Keys. They also have an interest in 104.1 US One radio in Big Pine which has a modest local news operation including interviews with local bigwigs (Very Important People Only!) at 8am with the local voice Bill Becker, an interviewer who wouldn't know a hard question if it forced itself down his throat.

The Citizen isn't a bad paper with its steady diet of local news from around the Keys. From time to time it'll avoid offending VIPs on particularly touchy issues, so sometimes its more a matter of observing what they've left out rather than included, to get an idea whats going on. The Citizen's Voice is the source of irritation among Important People, and the anonymous comments are the first place we all go after we open the paper. Each Thursday the Citizen also puts out a harmless Arts supplement called Paradise! which I find rather bland and generally goes the way I send the daily sports section- into the recycling bin. But that's just my taste.

The other outlets from Cooke Communications include a Marathon- based free weekly, the Free-Press, which comes to Lower Keys subscribers each Wednesday. Its a way to fight back against the inroads of the Miami Herald which sells and delivers all around the Keys. The Citizen does a much better job of covering local news, not least with the Friday free offering of Solares Hill.

This paper started out as an alternative weekly aimed at irritating the powers that be and sounding an irreverent voice against the all powerful Citizen. It was a paper that barely made economic sense in a town where people fished or drank as expressions of intellectual activity. When Cooke bought Solares Hill its imminent demise was widely predicted, but that never came to pass. Now under Nancy Klingener's leadership Solares Hill has flourished as a source of in depth prickly commentary and real arts news. It is the highlight of my newspaper perusal, arriving every Friday, carefully wrapped inside my Citizen delivery.

What to say about the Blue Paper? More properly known as Key West The Newspaper, the free weekly that describes itself as the home of "Journalism as a Contact Sport"? This is the critic that anybody who is somebody in Key West wants silenced, even more than the Citizens' Voice column in the daily paper.

Dennis Reeves Cooper is seen around town wearing a ragged beard, as every rebel should, accompanied by a black Labrador who rides alongside him in his silver convertible. Cooper is an old school style of yellow journalist, always criticized, though never do critics succeed in proving that he gets his facts wrong though his idle speculation often falls wide of the mark. For instance when he wrote that a past police chief had had a previous sexual liaison with a juvenile boy he was never shown to be wrong. When he publicizes the embarrassing sources of funding in election campaigns everyone involved screams blue murder but they can't show he's wrong. He exposed to all and sundry a tawdry sexual affair the mayor got invovled in, and no one could contradict him because it was true, apparently. He's not someone I'd have round to dinner, he's rather too abrasive, but his paper is a must read in Key West, and one prays never to find oneself the object of his scorn. These days the current Key West Police Chief is his target, and Cooper's attentions make life for the rest of us inside the police station a fair resemblance to hell on earth.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the good news paper, a sickly publication called Conch Color, published by one of Key West's more bizarre public characters. Tom Oosterhoudt, a plump, fussy momma's boy, who never appears in public without a thick layer of foundation on his cheeks, once managed to get elected to the City Commission in a moment of collective public amnesia. Now after electoral defeat, he wants to spread good news which generally means kow-towing to the rich and powerful and filling the broadsheet pages with lots of color pictures in the style of a social diary. Its pretty saccharine stuff, harmless were it not responsible for yet more mulched trees, and easily ignored.

I'd rather read Key West, another all color publication that comes out monthly, features excellent photographs and a decent attempt at literary journalism even though it describes itself as a lifestyle publication. Its the sort of magazine I thumb through in doctor's offices and the like, as it has lots of pictures of hip people being hip, in hip island homes. From time to time it features people I can claim a passing aquaintance with, which I find shocking.

The Miami Herald has a bureau or two in the Keys and attempts a few column inches of local news. those efforts are supplemented by the twice weekly Keynoter a paper that bulges with classifieds but is of limited interest to a Citizen subscriber, who gets updates daily, The Keynoter comes out afternoons and can sometimes publish events the same day they happen, thus scooping the Citizen. I like the Keynoter on our streets mostly because it shows that the two paper concept is struggling to stay alive in the Keys where most American cities can't claim that anymore. Its not an even struggle and as long as the Citizen stays hard on the heels of local news it remains an indispensable read to keep a finger on the pulse of local affairs- literally and figuratively.

And they are all presented on the Internet, because the modern Keys live and die online. And for some strange reason people everywhere want to know whats going on in the island chain.

I love my news when it comes in print, so many words to fuss over.

Comida Criolla

This is not a Puerto Rican barbecue pit, its a car dumped and incinerated and cluttering the amazing verdant beauty because the government, along with its lack of interest in sorting out the stray dog problem, has no interest in dealing with the heaps of cars four million islanders drive literally into the ground every year.

Cuisine, including barbecue, was on my mind after our recent hop south for the weekend where we encountered a US variant on Caribbean food, so I was moved to contrast and compare Cuban food as cooked in Key West with creole food. Creoles in the colonial era were upper class people, possibly of mixed race who were descended from white settlers. The term is in use today in New Orleans, and in Puerto Rico where restaurants advertise comida criolla as an attraction for tourists.Like so many popular foods in daily use comida criolla started out as poor people's food. Nowadays mofongo is offered as haute cuisine in haute restaurants, though we found the national dish roadside, under a tarp on the outskirts of San Juan, the island's teeming capital.Mofongo is mashed fried plantains rendered into a starchy pudding, served with meat or fish. I think it works best with some sort of ajo sauce, citrus and garlic, to render the mound less dry. We ate some with chunks of fried beef which was also dry, and an ajo chicken dish which was excellent. Mofongo streetside is not a delicate dish and if you manage to down a plate piled high with those mashed plantains you will be good to work in the fields all day.

Puerto Rico is littered with modest cafes, all of which merit a stop. We found people everywhere who could mumble some small amount of English, indeed they were happy to ignore our reasonably fluent Spanish and help us find our ingredients in stumbling English. In an industrial village south of Fajardo we found a cafe offering creole food simmering in hot plates. We pulled down the Caribbean staples of rice and Puerto Rican red beans with barbequed chops American style and Caribbean pork.

Expecting macaroni and cheese such as might be offered in English speaking Caribbean islands, my wife opted for "macaroni" and got American style pasta salad. It was good, perhaps because we are flexible travelers! Our plates also included hard fried plantains known universally as tostones. All this for $5.25, about two thirds the price in the Lower Keys.

Gas stations across the island offer snack food, much of it a replica of processed foods found in the US but shelves were also loaded with items that rated exotic, Italian chocolates imported to the Caribbean, sweet crackers and sodas based on tropical fruits like tamarind, a sweet/sour drink that is pretty harsh to a palate raised on the delights of colas. My young colleague did her shopping at four am:

Crackers and OJ to fight off breakfastless nausea from speeding, twisting roads. The further we were from fast food offerings the better off we were as usual, but some forms of processed foods one cannot avoid. I, for instance, can rarely resist Latin pastries, a delight to the eye but rather less to American taste buds. Coffee generally was fairly insipid too, lacking the Starbucks verve we mainlanders have come to expect from a cup of java.

Our journey across the back of Puerto Rico on the narrow, steep Ruta Panoramica, through the mountains brought us to the high altar of island cuisine. Where we came face to face with the national culinary obsession: lechon.Lechon is roast suckling pig, pork on a spit. The center of this cult is located in a village called Cayey. But that, as they say is another story, a story unto itself and a memory I want to savor in more leisurely style.

Going hungry in Puerto Rico's hinterlands isn't easy because the golden arches litter the landscape as much as creole cuisine does, so for those that can't stand being far from home, home on America's true caribbean island (not Key West!) is always close to hand, and they even enjoy servicarro service for tourists who miss drive thru windows. Personally I miss the lechon.

El Yunque

Its a mountain peak on the northeast corner of the island of Puerto Rico that dominates the surrounding countryside. It's peak pops in and out of the cloud cover that streams overhead dropping frequent rains that give it the title of the only tropical rain forest in the US Forest Service system. Its not a National Park, so there's no fee to enter and there's no guard hut at the entrance,there's just a sign though there is also a visitor center near the entrance on the only road in. That would be Highway 191 which is barely marked at the turn off on the major Highway 3 which runs from Fajardo to San Juan through the snowbird condos of Luquillo. The southern entrance to the Forest has apparently been closed for years by landslides so you can only get in from the north, and I am guessing that in winter the place is a raging zoo. In November, even on Veterans weekend it wasn't crowded at all. This is a place of abundant flora, eg: bamboo, extra large of course, on the road in. We discovered a place that was fantastic beyond our wildest dreams. It had a magical quality that wasn't the least bit expected. The roadway is a series of undulating curves winding around the hillside, with ample pullouts to allow riders to stop and check out the waterfalls, still wet even as dry season takes over: And overgrown fantasy creeks, with my youthful colleague leaping from rock to rock for the perfect picture: and views across the mountain to the ocean

with Cayo Icacos nestled just offshore from Fajardo:

The vegetation is astonishing, fairy-tale like. Such is the abundance and size of the trees, palms and ferns, one feels transported to another planet. This is the Caribbean as it must have been 600 years ago before European development of agriculture and plantations, or the arrival of crisp white rental Toyotas, I daresay. It was, as my wife, a native Californian reluctantly put it, "more awe inspiring than the redwoods." How true.

There are some oddities about El Yunque (pronounced: Ell Jew-nk-ay, by locals), that include stray dogs abandoned roadside by people I would like to strangle were I to meet them. I'd rather not dwell on that aspect as the dogs wouldn't be lured to the car for transport to Save-A-Sato, Puerto Rico's humane society in San Juan...Another issue is locals who run knick knack shops in the forrest who oppose the organization of the Forest into a more eco-friendly and less car oriented attraction:

"Say NO to the trolleys of El Yunque" Conch trains are a bone of contention in Key West so I have some sympathy with the locals on this one. I'd have more if the store owners in the forest treated the dogs better... (gotta let it go!). And then there is the Puerto Rican penchant for just stopping wherever the urge takes you. If you see a fern you want to photograph, stop the car immediately, let the family pour out and start clicking. I got into the spirit of this craziness and we learned to do as the locals do and stop the Corolla anywhere the fancy took us. Our white rental car wasn't the fanciest vehicle in the park by a long chalk.

Naturally we barely had time to drive up and back, feed the stray (gotta let it go!), and get out of the park before dark. Next time I'd like to spend real time in El Yunque and explore the myriad trails that disappear into the jungle. Now that I know what an enchanted forest this is, complete with its own fairy tale castle drifting in and out of the clouds at the top of the hill

I would put The Caribbean National Forest of my list of places to see before I die, had I not see it already. And I will advise visitors to bring along some dog food and water for the Satos crouching, waiting hopelessly for their owners to return to collect them...Strays. I just can't let them go.

Streets of Key West

A 65 degree winter afternoon on the corner of Olivia and Windsor, with a Bonneville taking a break from fighting traffic. Its that time of year again when we have to try to figure out how the hell we're going to get in and out of old town Key West. It seems early but the snowbirds are back already. Lots of out of state tags, Ohio is well represented already, as is Pennsylvania and some of the smaller New England states. Also, at work we're starting to get more parking violation calls, sleepers on sidewalks, and all those "quality of life" complaints that out-of-towners like to complain about Key West.

What this means for someone like me is that scooter parking spaces are tending to fill up. Streets are clogged with SUV's which barely fit in the narrow streets and even a man on a Bonneville needs to plan his approaches to his favorite haunt. The Tropic cinema is on the wrong side of Duval Street, a block west on Eaton Street and that is a location that requires a well thought out approach. My trouble is that I like hanging out at home till the last possible minute and I end up leaving late and having to make up the time on the way.

Soooo, avoid North Roosevelt ("the Boulevard"), Palm Avenue and Truman. Flagler can be a drag and South Roosevelt, though four lanes, connects to Atlantic Avenue which feeds into the Higgs Beach area which is a clogging point. Problematic eh? as there are only three roads into town once you get past the Triangle at the Cow Key Bridge from Stock Island.

Hmmm. By the time Burger King on Stock Island heaves into view the fun part of the ride is pretty much over on the open road. This is where I slow down and slip into the traffic flow. Once over the Cow Key Bridge I get in the middle lane and turn left onto South Roosevelt. So far so good, the dozy car drivers haven't had a chance to get too clogged, so we turn right at the second street available, just before the lights at Flagler where cars get backed up. The second street is Eagle Avenue, wide smooth and tree lined, the best of New Town.

It's plagued with a few too many stop signs, so one has to accept that alternative routes may not be as fast as the main streets- that's why the drones line up on the Boulevard and wait in line for their turn. We, instead keep moving and enjoying the scenery.

For a quick and scenic ride into old town I like Catherine Street which runs from George Street (an easy escape from the Boulevard at Miami Subs if you get muddled and stuck in traffic at Garrison Bight). These cars are coming from Miami Subs heading towards the trolley depot on Flagler. If they need to get out of town they'll drive straight across Flagler to Atlantic and turn left following the south coast back to the Triangle.

George is one way from the Boulevard to Flagler and on to Atlantic so you can't get to Catherine from Flagler. But once you line up on Catherine you get a straight shot to Thomas, and very scenic it is too, in my opinion.This is a two way street which leaves one pondering why people insist on driving huge vehicles on this small island. Never mind, some of us get to have fun on two wheels.

Simonton and Duval tend to be a mess, with Whitehead Street not far behind. Thus we follow Catherine all the way to the Community pool where it dead ends and we sweep smoothly to the right and find ourselves on Thomas Street, in the heart of Bahama Village.

This is where Key West comes alive on the streets, where the city's black citizens try to hold on to island life. Kids play on the streets, older folks sit out on porches and sidewalks and some tourists find it picturesque, others wonder if its "safe." There's no neighborhood that isn't safe in Key West, but who am I to break down prejudice when it leaves me a cross town street less traffic'ed?

After the movie the problem is how to get out of town. I generally take Duval or Simonton south and then take a left on Olivia, a one way street that flies directly out to Eisenhower, crossing Frances and White on the way.Olivia is a narrow one way and gets clogged if too many scooters or bicycles get in the way, their riders peering at the cemetery alongside. Olivia is one of my favorite streets, typifying Old Town, narrow, picturesque with a variety of tumbledown, heavily vegetated and restored conch homes. Anyway, follow Olivia to Eisenhower, take a right at the dead end and get on Truman briefly, past the Police Station ( wave to me as you go) and take a right at Miami Subs on George all the way to South Roosevelt.

And that's the tour that I'll be taking all winter long to avoid jams and crowds and the limitations make the four mile long island even smaller than it is in the fall when crowds shrivel away and we get a few quiet weeks before Fantasy Fest starts the year all over again. There must be something about Key West, why else would everyone keeping drifting down for a visit?