When Bruce and Celia came back to the Keys for a weekend visit they were most keen to sink their fangs into a cheese toast once again at the Five Brothers Deli on Ramrod Key. I was attempting to record the immortal moment on my Nikon and got a pretty poor shot of Celia. Bruce started laughing, pointing out how she looked like someone caught on a security camera; with that thought in mind I present the image here, as unflattering as it may be hoping earnestly Bruce gets into trouble:
Bruce and Celia are easy guests and fell comfortably under the spell my wife's latest incarnation, that of tour guide. So off we went at breakneck speed revisiting Bruce and Celia's old haunts from when they lived on their sailboat in Key West. First the Arts and Crafts Fair on Whitehead Street:
Which was where my wife snagged a couple of earrings and a picture frame and Celia bartered her life for a watch band. As Celia wandered from booth to booth it was Bruce's turn to look gormless.
We tromped across town and tried the new Indian place on Duval, lacking in ambiance perhaps but the food met our standards. We skipped across the street from India Cafe and laid into the almost thirty flavors offered by Flamingo Crossing. Celia looks a good deal less gormless when she's lapping up a chocolate laden cone, than she does when impersonating someone caught on a security camera.
Then with sunset rapidly approaching we took off for the southernmost point-the one at Fort Zachary is as good as any other point:
Our little tour of the Fort inspired me to wander off and take a few pictures for a future diary entry.
The entourage apparently didn't miss me: 
Then we dragged B and C to Seven Fish which dinner went across a treat and from there to the Waterfront Playhouse for a drop of play acting by pros of a Saturday night. Tuesdays with Morrie was the offering and I found myself a tad disturbed to realise I had most of Morrie's life lesson already worked out on my own. It was an affecting performance.
Then we repaired to Stock Island for lunch at Hog fish where we took a drive and admired the state of deshabille of this island nearest Key West. Bruce depressed me as he checked out the impending development: he decided immediately the City of Key West will be annexing Stock Island and I suppose he's right, only I fear annexation as it would make my job harder. It's all about me, face it.
From there we lined up in a howling north wind to partake of a fundraiser for the Monroe Association of Retarded Citizens, known as the Marc House. The event was held at the Pier House in lovely waterfront sunshine chilled by the blisteringly cold wind:
A dozen chefs cooked like crazy for us and we ate and voted and ate some more. Robert, occasionally mentioned in this blog was among those standing around in the cold. "Oh Robert," Celia said as I introduced him. "You really do exist!" And so, here he is stuffing his face on a chocolate burrito from Finnegan's Wake:
I quizzed our guests and we got enough votes to bring the tour to a close with an unplanned trip to the Tropic Cinema:
Where we were met by a warming cup of Zabar's coffee in the lobby (Bruce is the one with the hat, shading him from...the indoor sun?) followed by a showing of Atonement, a film Celia fondly expected to be a nice heart warming chick flick.
Not exactly; this was a British take on love and misery and death, a suitable follow up to the saccharine story of Tuesdays with Morrie. From there home to bed, cowering under the blankets as the persistent north wind howled and temperatures plunged to around 64 degrees.Bruce and I have a lot of laughs together and its a shame he is allergic to mosquitoes, sunshine and humidity, which makes living in South Florida impossible for him. When they were looking for somewhere to retire to, Celia's desire to live in Santa Fe met the bill, a place that has never made it onto my radar screen, though now I'm curious about the town. Not least since Bruce was complaining bitterly about the cold. His theory is that 64 degrees in the Keys is colder than 20 degrees in Santa Fe which sounds like rubbish to me. Celia has a clearer take on the subject: "Bruce is full of crap. Its his job." And he is too. He talks about having to shovel snow when he gets home and chip dog shit that freezes in the yard after they let the dogs out, and Celia tells stories about how she couldn't drive their two-wheel drive car for a month last year after they got snowed in. These two lived most of their lives in California like me and they like me, never had to own a snow shovel. Now they own two and I've never even seen a snow shovel other than this example, a joke under a neighbor's house:
Its weird to me, to want to retire to a place that freezes regularly, that is colder than hell and that exists around 7,000 feet above sea level. "Its dry" Bruce says mouthing off all the time about how humidity is bad for him. It must be true even if he is full of crap, they seem to be thriving on a diet of New Mexico. Which is all very well, but it's Key West that has chickens in the streets, not snow: 
and Celia is so sweet and innocent she actually clucks at the chickens and finds them charming. She should have taken a couple home with her, they'd probably be smarter company than Bruce who forgot his shoes on my porch.
How do you take off for a day of travel across country without your shoes? Only God and Bruce know the answer to that. I'm sure he'll make up some totally unbelievable crap about why they got left behind probably because its not cold enough in Santa Fe to require footwear. He really does believe his own crap where I refuse to no matter how funny it may be.
I took a ride downtown during my lunch break with a detour by the beach. The conditions were very weird for someone who, like me, spent years in the West. The weather reminded me of nothing quite so much as the sort of marine inversion type of low cloud "fog" that builds up along that coast in the warm months. In California the low lying clouds are formed every summer day by hot desert air meeting cold ocean air, unlike here in Key West where a lump of cold air from Up North had temporarily mixed with the warm air of the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Stream to the south. The air was still and the sailboat races that were called off on Monday due to hairy conditions were becalmed on the horizon south of Key West yesterday by the sudden absence of breezes: 
I don't miss the cold and damp of coastal California and today was an unexpected reminder of what I lived through for 20 otherwise happy summers. I've always told my California friends a nice winter day in Key West is like a perfect summer day in Santa Cruz. Yesterday it was mimicking California a little too perfectly for my taste.
Then there is the ride south (or west depending on your perspective) towards Key West:
With a stop at Mile Marker 25 to lament the passing of Fishcutters, my wife's favorite place to buy fish raw for the grill or in a sandwich for an easy dinner:
From there, following the rough path I commute each workday I ended up in 20 minutes or so on Stock Island, Mile Marker 5 which is also undergoing transformation from a place to house workers in trailers to a place to develop and make pretty. There's a long row to hoe on Shrimp Road judging by the trash currently in place:
I used to bring my own sailboat down here for haul outs (what landlubbers call "dry docking") and I wondered where we would do it if everything got built up. There are still a couple of places, insalubrious yet evocative for a former dock rat:
Some people mark their turf with dead cars and rusty appliances. Others make their Stock Island pieces of the American Dream beautiful with paint, plants and paraphernalia and just for contrast dangle banal, pointless No Trespassing signs that spoil the cared for, homey, effect. Anyone plan on trespassing this fence?
North Stock Island, technically incorporated into the City of Key West currently houses the delightful garbage transfer station next to Mount Trashmore, home to a stranded whale:
One day I'm going to spend some time documenting Stock island before it all disappears but yesterday I had a date with myself at the Tropic to revisit the movie Juno so I had to ride on down the road. I paused for refreshment at the Inn on North Roosevelt where Merril's Cafe offers an excellent blackened snapper sandwich for eleven bucks and lots of iced tea from wait staff with a sense of humor. I like the foliage too, and the shade and the peace and quiet of no TVs or canned music.
Enough words, time to ride down to Mile Marker 2 and Garrison Bight where I chatted briefly with a former boat captain colleague who reminisced happily about the fun we had sailing tourists around the harbor. He had to go to catch up to an angry wife, he said, shrugging at some domestic dispute. I kept taking pictures: 
Then I headed downtown with a plan to photograph at least one tourist attraction, something I don't often do, as there are lots of Internet pictures of all the attractions that draw people to Key West. This one's pretty obvious on Olivia Street, and I don't mean the Bonneville:
Then down to Fort Street for a picture of a less well known "attraction." They are actually on the Navy Base and were used to store ammunition. Some say they were missile silos, but whatever they were, nowadays they keep goats on them to crop the abundant grasses that grow all over:
Then its time to park in my favorite spot downtown, on Eaton Street just up from the Tropic Cinema:
After a good laugh at the movies I set off for the south side of the island pausing at Casa Marina to read a few chapters from my book at the new-ish pocket park on the water: 
Then to Higgs beach by the West Martello Tower, Napoleonic home to the garden club:
And finally out of town by way of South Roosevelt Boulevard where I pause east of the airport, past the relatively tight bend called Deadman's Curve for a last picture looking north towards the triangle where Key West ends and Stock Island begins:
And so home, and pretty soon to bed like Peter Rabbit, with my supper, to get properly refreshed for two consecutive days at work. 
The paper reports another no hope candidate running for Sheriff, as the incumbent is retiring after 40 years with the department. Some other wackos of a different stripe have killed and beheaded key deer, and all I can think is that I'm grateful they did the deed outside the jurisdiction of the Key West Police.
Settling back into my snug armchair with the Citizen I see Paul Krugman of the New York Times, is busy debunking the myth of Reaganomics, which is a pleasure as ever. Common sense always trumps political posturing in his columns, and he is the only economic pundit I pay attention to, not least because he is ridiculed far too often. Despite the fact that everyone knows our leaders have no idea how to lead, people who criticize them still get it in the neck from people with agendas that have no basis in reality as we live it. I heard at school yesterday stories of impending economic destruction on several and various islands as balloon payments come due and interest rates reach catastrophic heights, even as the Fed makes panic rate cuts, and evictions are on the horizon of too many peoples' marginal lives. Even though we have a fixed mortgage and "secure" government jobs I wonder where this recession will leave us. And still the state legislature yaks on about Reaganomic tax cuts as though destroying Florida's flimsy social fabric will make things better. We have to "hunker down" not just for meteorological storms around here.
In the meantime, night is retreating pretty rapidly and gray skies are yielding to blue and by golly we have the prospect of a sunny day today. I may have to force myself to go for a ride, an aimless meander made aimed by the need to take some pictures to document my pleasure and remind myself that so far, life in the Keys remains good, wars evictions and global warming aside.
Like the Diving Museum mentioned earlier, Key West's own Haitian Art Company is a gallery founded by a person who was driven all his life by the subject on display. I'm moved to write about the Gallery at Frances and Southard especially because of its likely imminent demise.
The building that houses it has been for sale for some time and one hopes the owner is greedy and asks too much and thus allows his gallery to continue for a while, at least until real estate reasserts itself and we get back on an even keel selling our property wildly to the nearest speculator and developer with deep, soulless pockets. Besides all that, the economy is floundering, tourists are in short supply this year and the owner of this place is old and getting older and one can't assign blame for his wanting to end the business.
I guess I do have to blame Graham Greene for feeding my fascination with Haiti, he wrote about the world of Papa Doc in The Comedians, the mixture of true exoticism, terror and tropical nuttiness of the island. The fascination that was born in me when I read about Toussaint L'Ouverture and his rebellion and Sans Souci, the palace in the mountains and all the rest of the stuff that is Haiti, Baron Samedi and secret ceremonies, which comes to our country in the form of janitors, and street vendors and, as it happens, Art.
The top picture on my wall is Haitian, purchased in Key West and I see the colors and the form and I wish I was there, on the docks.
I was photographing homes on Frances Street last week and I saw this other picture in the window of the gallery and I wanted it, and I showed it to my wife and she nodded and maybe we will and maybe we won't, and if we don't the colors will remain in my mind half muted like in this photo, totally unlike the painting itself, that leaps out at you as you stroll past, and sucks you in:
The gallery is just a heap of Art, stuff I love and stuff I don't and stuff that gives me the creeps and stuff that makes me laugh out loud.
And when you look at it sideways through the plate glass you see Southard Street in all its 21st century glory overlaid on the charms of a bygone era:
I want to go to Haiti, I've wanted to sail there since God knows when. I've figured a way I could take a road trip on my motorcycle there. I've studied the maps and charts, and I've dithered and traveled elsewhere instead.
Boondocks is an excellent location for the band, informal Tiki architecture, intimate seating for lots of people and a decent restaurant serving a solid serviceable menu. The seats for those not eating filled up well before the start of the concert and the T-shirt and CD stands were doing good business.
I like the music (what's not to like? A group that includes an actual trumpet and tin drums is searching for, and finding, it's true Caribbean roots), and the band sings about rum and hurricanes and tropical breezes and even if you didn't know any of them you'd know the lads sang of that which they know. They aren't pirates or millionaires (yet) they are just a bunch of dudes having fun and inviting the listeners in to enjoy their jam session. It's very effective. 
All this abundance of joy followed by an unfortunately short ride home on the ever delightful Bonneville. My wife finally admitted that commuting in a convertible makes her look forward to the daily drive.
We got to talking about the commute while chatting up the wife of one of the band members. We used to live in the marina she runs in Key West and now that her husband is becoming a full time musician she too has a commute from the area of...Mile Marker 24 to the marina. As a convert to the keys commuting lifestyle she told us how much she likes living in the Lower Keys outside the city.
We feel like its a secret not shared by the inmates of Key West who put up with narrow spaces, loud noises of all kinds and crazy neighbors. I enjoyed living on our Gemini catamaran while traveling but it was a tiresome in the Key West marina we called home for a couple of years. Marina living is "affordable" and for too many people its just cheap rent, say $800 a month, not a sailing lifestyle and our living aboard became a burden to us and our Labrador. Not half the burden it is on a marina manager dealing with all the petty bullshit of a bunch of malcontent liveaboards so I am pretty sure our friend will be glad to get away and become a road manager for the touring band.