It was a man called John Simonton who bought Thompson's Island from a Spaniard called Juan Pablo Salas, a Cuban merchant with interests in St Augustine. Salas sold his island twice but Simonton had influence in Washington and his claim stuck over John Geddes's who swapped Salas a boat for Cayo Hueso.
The island's first American name, for a secretary of the Navy didn't stick, but Simonton sold quarters of his strategic possession to John Whitehead, and two others who sold their quarter to Pardon Greene. The fourth quarter went to an Englishman settled in Mobile Alabama next door to Simonton's business interests. He was called John Fleeming, whose name in the passage of time was reduced to Fleming. Anyone with any knowledge of Key West knows that those four names represent major streets in Old Town. Yesterday I cruised Fleming Street with my camera.Fleming Street begins behind the county courthouse at Thomas Street, which is currently under construction as the county is building itself a new center next to the long standing buildings.
The old courthouse and administrative buildings are in brick, in the Southern style, and the new ones we hope will not jar our sensibilities. So far so good. The old building from the front still manages to look dignified:
And if you chose to work your way past the courthouse security those arches up high offer an private and unparalleled view across old town, with tables for a secluded picnic.For some reason, which I cannot find out why precisely, Mile Marker Zero was placed at Fleming and Whitehead Streets. One would think that the Southernmost Point at Whitehead and South Streets would have worked better, or possibly (given the city's inclination to move monuments from time to time) somewhere near Mallory Square . Instead the zero is plonked down at this inauspicious corner. The request has gone out that the state move the marker to the lamp post to make photography easier. These two were coping:
This next photograph shows Fleming Street heading northeast towards Duval from Whitehead, with on the left the bulk of La Concha Hotel looming over Duval Street. 
La Concha close up spreads out on the 400 block of Duval with shops, a bar, a Starbucks (one of two in the Keys, the other is at Mile Marker 99.5 in the Upper Keys). Fleming Street is one way out of town and is thus a useful street to escape Duval direct to White Street:
Across from La Concha lies the redoubtable Kress building long since given over to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Cafe and Tony Falcone's store:
Tony Falcone, one of the founders of Fantasy Fest (an antidote to the low season blues he says), owns Fast Buck Freddies, an eclectic department store.
I worked there a few months years ago in the shipping and receiving office as if to prove my lack of suitability for the world of retail. Fast Bucks deserves an essay of its own.Between Duval Street (named for Florida's first American Governor) and Simonton Street, named for the island's first American owner, there are a few shops lining Fleming Street. I've always wanted to like Island Books as I prefer independent bookstores but unless you are on their insider list you will be treated abominably by their staff of grumps.
Call me an arriviste but I patronize Voltaire Books a few blocks away on Simonton Street, newer, friendlier and less cramped. Fleming Street is just packed with notable local businesses including the delightful Fausto's Food Palace, and the current owner is the founder's son in law. Jimmy Weekly served as mayor for years and was always to be found, like today, working in the store, wearing an apron and frequently wielding a knife in the deli.
My wife loves Fausto's deli where she loads up with picnic items with a decidedly non traditional flair- dolmas, seaweed and octopus ceviche to name but a few. Faustos is also advertised as a crossroads for one and all in town:
But as we know Key West is home to all types of people, shirtless, in uniform or all buttoned up... I don't know which is tougher, hauling letters in the heat of summer...
... wearing a suit on a blazing street corner...
...or dragging your offspring behind you on your bicycle (actually these last two looked pretty cheerful)...
Tourists cruise Fleming Street in the gruesomely slow Conch Train:
Or the slightly more sprightly Old Town Trolley, which is also owned by Historic Tours of America:
I have to say the tours (around $22, I think, for 90 minutes) are quite worth while though the identically repeated narratives drive home owners quite mad, and the 5mph speed of these contraptions make drivers crazy. Ride the train and pretend to ignore the scowling locals (me included I'm sorry to say).
Call me an arriviste but I patronize Voltaire Books a few blocks away on Simonton Street, newer, friendlier and less cramped. Fleming Street is just packed with notable local businesses including the delightful Fausto's Food Palace, and the current owner is the founder's son in law. Jimmy Weekly served as mayor for years and was always to be found, like today, working in the store, wearing an apron and frequently wielding a knife in the deli.My wife loves Fausto's deli where she loads up with picnic items with a decidedly non traditional flair- dolmas, seaweed and octopus ceviche to name but a few. Faustos is also advertised as a crossroads for one and all in town:But as we know Key West is home to all types of people, shirtless, in uniform or all buttoned up... I don't know which is tougher, hauling letters in the heat of summer...... wearing a suit on a blazing street corner......or dragging your offspring behind you on your bicycle (actually these last two looked pretty cheerful)...Tourists cruise Fleming Street in the gruesomely slow Conch Train:Or the slightly more sprightly Old Town Trolley, which is also owned by Historic Tours of America:I have to say the tours (around $22, I think, for 90 minutes) are quite worth while though the identically repeated narratives drive home owners quite mad, and the 5mph speed of these contraptions make drivers crazy. Ride the train and pretend to ignore the scowling locals (me included I'm sorry to say). The other big landowners in this tiny town have a hefty presence in this area:
This family name spells mad development with a capital D, though rumor has it Beachside isn't doing so well and the proposed massive Convention Center at the entrance to town across from Beachside has hit a few snags in the current uncertain financial climate.Which spells tough times for construction workers as well of course. No issue seems clear cut when one reaches the wisdom of middle age. Hate that development, love them jobs!
The Spottswoods have a death grip on the tourist economy and they take their bows in the simpering Conch Color magazine every now and again- noblesse oblige. They own this building too and keep offices in it to promote their various multi million dollar enterprises, employing God knows how many locals:
I know I was never born to be a businessman because I don't really understand the drive to build. Entropy seems so all encompassing to me, the idea that a new building will make a better city seems a little off kilter. I prefer making the old new, maintaining the look or the feel of the past with the modern conveniences of the new (Think Triumph Bonneville year 2007 model!). The tear it all down approach leaves me cold. I wonder when they will have enough of moulding Key West to their rather sterile vision though I doubt I shall be alive to see them say stop, enough. So one turns away and keeps looking northeast on Fleming to find examples of old preserved:
Take this church for instance, a few blocks up Fleming at William Street:
Old refurbished to look new. And all those wires; its amazing power flows as reliably as it does in this windy city. Conch houses of course abound, with all their Conch details, like this breezy figurehead:
And these lovely old/new homes, just two on a street filled with such examples:
And then there is the public library, Florida's oldest at Elizabeth and Fleming, with of course a passed out residentially challenged citizen sprawled uncomfortably on the planter:
And in the shade a young person sucking up knowledge:
The Library comes with a delightful garden alongside, a place I used frequently to escape Fast Bucks on my downtown lunch breaks (the other favorite was the cemetery, though some considered me eccentric for preferring to share my midday meals with the dead):
And this being Key West, there is a convenience store before you journey too far, and one should note the dog friendly white water bowl outside the doorway: 
Then we find Bubba's an outdoor restaurant that replaced an eclectic Asian place known as Monsoon Cafe, which was a place where I liked to buy curries and sit out watching the stars. Bubbas I don't yet know (that dog had been refreshing itself at the previous dog bowl a few minutes earlier, so even though it looks stressed it is just a maldajusted moment captured by the camera):
Then there is the Eden House a hotel that took a starring role in a movie shot there, Criss Cross, from 1990. Nowadays Eden House, named for its owner Mike Eden, not the mythical garden, slumbers in the summer heat with its guest bicycles clogging the bike stand in a way that is spectacular to my mind, even by Key West urban cycling standards:
There is also the Island House for Men in this area, and if you're gay you already know about it and if you're not you need know no more. I used to work with a colleague who enjoyed his lunch breaks there, though I draw a veil over what he said he ate for lunch on those occasions. He moved Up North, though I cannot imagine his life in Central Florida is nearly as stimulating.
Old refurbished to look new. And all those wires; its amazing power flows as reliably as it does in this windy city. Conch houses of course abound, with all their Conch details, like this breezy figurehead:And these lovely old/new homes, just two on a street filled with such examples:And then there is the public library, Florida's oldest at Elizabeth and Fleming, with of course a passed out residentially challenged citizen sprawled uncomfortably on the planter:And in the shade a young person sucking up knowledge:The Library comes with a delightful garden alongside, a place I used frequently to escape Fast Bucks on my downtown lunch breaks (the other favorite was the cemetery, though some considered me eccentric for preferring to share my midday meals with the dead):And this being Key West, there is a convenience store before you journey too far, and one should note the dog friendly white water bowl outside the doorway: Then we find Bubba's an outdoor restaurant that replaced an eclectic Asian place known as Monsoon Cafe, which was a place where I liked to buy curries and sit out watching the stars. Bubbas I don't yet know (that dog had been refreshing itself at the previous dog bowl a few minutes earlier, so even though it looks stressed it is just a maldajusted moment captured by the camera):Then there is the Eden House a hotel that took a starring role in a movie shot there, Criss Cross, from 1990. Nowadays Eden House, named for its owner Mike Eden, not the mythical garden, slumbers in the summer heat with its guest bicycles clogging the bike stand in a way that is spectacular to my mind, even by Key West urban cycling standards:There is also the Island House for Men in this area, and if you're gay you already know about it and if you're not you need know no more. I used to work with a colleague who enjoyed his lunch breaks there, though I draw a veil over what he said he ate for lunch on those occasions. He moved Up North, though I cannot imagine his life in Central Florida is nearly as stimulating. The rest of Fleming Street to White is common or garden Key West, trees, houses and a dead end.
A metaphor for life perhaps? No, that's way too heavy a burden for this delightful urban artery.
A metaphor for life perhaps? No, that's way too heavy a burden for this delightful urban artery.
Open and airy, yet filled with knick knacks all reeking of the past which is the only era Denise relates to, her home is a shrine to the way Florida used to be, and perhaps should become again. She was born up the coast and has a passionate attachment to old Florida, a place of quiet and modest respectability, not the loud and brash and sprawling Florida as represented by the modern mauls and multi-lane highways we call streets. Tongue and groove ceilings and terrazzo floors inside, palms and lignumvitae trees outside, with the ocean nearby. Denise could be a counter culture figure from a Carl Hiassen novel:
Across the street from her long sought after beach house, is another remnant of a bygone era, a remnant that Denise, an inveterate flea market browser, could not actually buy, though someone else did put a bid in recently:
As seen from Denise's porch, behind my wife's convertible, are the neat rows of white boxes that make up the city of Briny Breezes. A developer put a $510 million offer on the entire 43-acre community. The idea was to pay all the occupants of the nearly 500 trailers in the city for their shares and then build luxury condos and hotels in their place. Most of the residents went for the deal after a lot of vocal opposition (led by Denise), but the bursting real estate bubble killed the whole project dead. 
The current bust in the real estate market has kept this strip of undeveloped land open and green for the time being:
It's a block of land in the county, across the street from Briny Breezes, that is slated to see a few 35 foot high condos rear up to overlook the ocean which will give Denise some adjustments to get used to, but for now...things stay as they are, a pause for breath in South Florida's eternal need to rebuild itself.
But Briny Breezes isn't normal. It has a Community Center because it is a community: 
And Denise is just tickled pink by the fact that her home town has the BBC. "But," I protested,"every cable company offers the BBC." Not Briny Breezes Cable Channel 8, she chortled.
And they have a convenience store the like of which I haven't seen anyplace else. It sits on A1A, the coastal highway and looks like any dive selling overpriced milk and beer, but inside I found a haven of yuppie foods, a mixture of traditional jazz and show tunes to shop by and locally produced instant meals, hand crafted soups, Swedish meatball lunches and pasta dishes made just up the street and for sale in a store that defied convention. It looked normal enough, but this was a small store that followed it's own path:
It's not Key West, but Briny Breezes sure is a community in the real sense of the word, a small town for ordinary folk wedged between the manicured mansions and condos of the wealthy snowbirds to the north and the south of its own slice of slightly scruffy beachfront. My visit to Denise's corner of Americana made even me nostalgic for something I never knew, beach town Florida, circa 1950. Those trailers peeking out on A1A:
The developer is threatening to return to Briny Breezes to have another go at buying the entire town, but that doesn't seem likely at this point. For me, it was time to convert the convertible ad get back to the Keys before I start pining for my own home alongside the mouse that roared, on Florida's Atlantic shore. 
The city of LaBelle lies on the south side of the river and as soon as your Bonneville crests the bridge there is LaBelle's most famous product:
This isn't a heavily populated county town, Hendry County isn't overly residential, and there's lots of room to store stuff. perhaps you have a few hundred bee hives waiting to be placed? Why, just toss 'em out back:
The town is as pretty as the surrounding woods and the buildings are picturesque and dilapidated to some degree, rather similar to Arcadia in that way.
But highways, like time and tide wait for no motorcycle so it was onwards, ever onwards, south on 29, more straight lines carved across the belly of the state:
My target on this leg of the trip was Immokalee, a farming town in the middle, approximately, of nowhere. The funny thing about this part of Florida is that all the glamor and wealth is on the edges, and the hole in the middle of the doughnut is very impoverished. Hilarious isn't it? Palm Beach, home of every winter resident with millions to burn is part of the same county where cane workers burn and cut cane by hand. Immokalee is part of Collier County, that would be the city of Naples, another enclave of wealth nestled on the gulf coast. Immokalee is a very different kettle of fish:
Immokalee is at the center of a dispute these days over tomatoes. pickers get paid a piece rate for their work and they want a raise for the first time in decades. The owners of KFC/Taco bell and MacDonalds have agreed to pay a penny a pound more but Burger King refuses. It seems weird to me, forgetting the Henry Ford principle of paying workers well enough to afford the products. There again its the way the world works these days and we don't seem to be able to escape the Walmartization of wages and benefits. Immokalee could do with a leg up:
But this is a town of immigrants:
And our migrant neighbors aren't that well liked this election year, so I guess our Mexican vegetable pickers have to cheer themselves up any way they can:
I'm not a pinata type of guy, anyway it's time I got my lily white bottom out of town:
Not so lily white in this heat, and that's my face by the way. The camera got away from me while I was concentrating on riding that long straight road and I shot myself. I wanted to photograph this instead:
I have seen converted school buses all over the world giving their all transporting people and their possessions. But this is the first time I saw a school bus in service as a melon carrier. Ride far enough I suppose, and eventually you'll see it all.
When this place was first bruited people took to wondering what the world is coming to (not much I dare say). Ave Maria is as daft a notion as its name, founded in this instance by the orphan boy who made a fortune creating Domino's Pizza. He could think of nothing better to do with his spare cash than to buy up a few hundred acres of nothing much and proposed the creation of a community based on strict Catholic principles. That flew like a lead balloon, as the American Way apparently doesn't allow anyone to ban condoms, porn on television, or binge drinking off campus. It strikes me as funny that this place stirred up so much hot air and manufactured controversy. Who cares who wants to ban condoms? Whose business is it anyway? I grew up in a Catholic school attached to an Abbey and as far as I'm concerned I don't need to repeat the experience as an adult, thanks. For those that missed out on a Catholic English boarding school experience, there's Ave Maria.
That didn't work so well, as this little back road was like Grand Central Station in rush hour with a constant clamoring of passing vehicles. In a grumpy mood I saddled up and moved on. And came to the big slash in the earth that just a few shorty weeks ago i had been traveling with the wife's Vespa:
Alligator Alley in all it's glory, as seen from the Highway 29 overpass. 
I rode down to the strand where I found the alligators whose portraits I posted a few days ago and bugged back out. I got some pretty impressive white dust on my machine, and myself, in those few miles. From there it was back on the Tamiami blacktop and a quick wave in passing to the Miccosukee villages and their privacy fences:
By the time I was back in the Keys I had been on the road for 12 hours and that was as much as I needed, so the last two hours home were torture in a manner of speaking. Still it was good to see blue water again in this small corner of Florida so unlike anywhere else in the state:
I hope the Florida Keys reputation for tolerance survives the difficult times ahead. I like living in a place where being left alone to get on with it is the countywide credo. Oh, and the swimming is pretty nice too.