Key West Chickens

Every time I come across a group of tourists gawping at chickens on the streets of Key West, I replay a conversation I had with my wife some years ago.
"I think people ought to find something better to do than stop in the street and stare at chickens."
"People don't see that sort of thing that often," she replied gently.
"Really?" said I the fatuous one. " Are you sure?"
"Really." She rarely has to raise her voice to make a point as she is a lot more secure than am I.
"I don't know what the fuss is all about." I sniffed.
"Yes," she continued even more delicately. "Not everyone grew up in an Italian village. In this country people don't let chickens run in the streets."

"Nor should they, " said I, in order to maintain my habit of having the last word.That's the thing, I really don't think chickens should be loose on the streets, but luckily for all concerned my opinions haven't yet made headlines in the corridors of power, so for now the chickens are safe in their very unnatural habitats around town. Like the Post Office on Whitehead Street:Where the Postmaster takes a dim view of the presence of all animals except barnyard fowl apparently:If you are one of the adoring chicken fans that come to Key West and gawp you could do a lot worse than cruise by the Post Office on your rented moped. They seem to be there all the time:

Chickens have their devoted supporters, including one woman who calls herself the Chicken lady though her store on Upper Duval fell on hard times and closed. She keeps a store online I'm told where one can buy junque that properly expresses appreciation for the chickens.

It's not that I hate chickens, nor do I believe they lack personality or deserve to be ill treated. Indeed not, but chickens as a species do have some drawbacks. Lest you have never had the pleasure of growing up as an Italian peasant or as a Key West Conch let me outline them. They are noisy. Roosters (cocks as they are so delightfully known in British/English) crow at any time of the day or night that takes their fancy; the notion that they greet the dawning day by making a hideous racket is a fairy tale. Even if it were true there aren't many Key Westers who willingly rise with the sun.

Chickens root around in the dirt to find their food and in Key West they seem to do quite well. They are free range animals and thus live not confined to small spaces eating chemically laced diets. They enjoy digging holes in flower beds and scatter hummus and leaves across sidewalks. They eat insects and are often praised for this talent, for in the minds of some newer arrivals life would be a constant and losing battle with scorpions and roaches and other repellent insects, were it not for the chickens.The chickens attract tourists, which may be an exaggeration. I suppose it's possible some people might cancel their reservations were the chickens to disappear but I don't think that's an issue. It's true though that their outdoor lifestyle, sitting in trees:

mating loudly and violently:

and exhibiting their charming offspring:

...add to Key West's own particular charm, they say. If that is, you don't have to live with the little perishers. The chickens are protected from molestation like any other animal in the city and cockfighting, though very popular still in the Cuban community is technically illegal. You will sometimes see youngster steal chickens and ride off with them on their mopeds. A solid cockerel is a valuable fighter apparently especially when his comb has been brutally singed off...Weirdly enough chickens are not protected if you are capturing one for the pot. How you prove that I'm not sure; look sincere to the officer I guess. And yes we do get calls in dispatch about people, kids mostly, chasing chickens. And yes we do respond by sending out an officer.

The city has organized more than one program to capture and remove the chickens to a dude ranch on the mainland but the official chicken catcher complained people sabotaged his traps. he made more money selling t-shirts describing his job than by doing the job itself.

Cultural diversity is all well and good but I don't support cock fighting, and for my part though I am one of those people that is not automatically attracted to birds, I would rather let the chickens live peacefully on city streets than harm them. I stop for chickens when I am on the road. In all honesty I'd prefer to see these kinds of birds, Florida natives, exalted for the insect catching abilities:

Quiet, dignified , and undemanding, they are everything Key West's chickens are not. But they are still lethal to scorpions,roaches and all manner of other repellent insect life. Like all natives everywhere they don't get the respect they deserve, and tourists prefer the brawling chickens to the delicately stepping peaceful ibis and egrets and herons.

CDS Update

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac derivatives as I understand it paid off, wobbly but okay at over 90 percent so losses were contained. Thursday is Lehman's derivatives and that could be stickier and October 23rd is Washington Mutual the next crisis in the series. From where I sit Thursday could be complicated so I expect more see-sawing in the market. My young colleagues at work watch me pondering the value of money and they have no idea what's going on, nor do they care. I envy them.

"What does Iceland mean to me?" one asked as he looked over my shoulder as I wondered about an entire country going down the plughole. Then I had to explain currency devaluation. Phew! But I'm still not sure who's singing career they are talking about much of the time as they talk among themselves. I am a nerd, not even terribly surprised by Iceland's meltdown as they have been in trouble for a while, them and their sustainable geologic central heating systems.

But I ask myself: Brittany who?

The Odd Couple

"You can't leave out a word!" Dale muttered to me as we prepared to visit Marc's much hyped temple in Key West. I was craving cafe con leche, for I had packed a month's worth of socializing into an afternoon, and I had a night of work ahead of me. And Saturday night was a brutal one for police and victims as it turned out. Dale was ready to suck down something cold at the Green Parrot but Marc was like a lion hunting on the veldt- except what Dale and I actually had to contend with was a macrobiotic vegan looking for live vegetables. This lion's prey was definitely not our poison.

"Ah" he sighed contentedly, "The Sugar Apple!" I rather expected him to fall on his knees on the sidewalk right there on Simonton Street, in the manner adopted by the late pope every time he landed a new country. Marc contained himself long enough to scuttle directly into the temple, an unlikely figure his movements hampered by Kevlar encrusted High Viz BMW fashion ware in a place that caters happily to the bra-less and tie died.

"That was not at all what I expected," Marc looked downcast as we left the store, a short line of mismatched characters in search of refreshment. Key West, as i often point out, has the capacity to disappoint.

.

I had faced my worst fear when I received one of those "...want to meet you," e-mails I so dread (conchscooter@hotmail,com for your chance to be embarrassed on this page and that's the first and I hope last link you'll ever see disfiguring these essays). Years ago I used to read the news on public radio in the Granola capital of California's Central Coast and when I met strangers who said they had heard my voice my first thought was; what did I do to embarrass myself? I just had a bad upbringing I guess. My wife who grew up in a happy family thinks I'm daft.

My first clue that this was to be an unusual encounter was when Marc wanted to meet at the Good Food Conspiracy which is the proper name of the health food place on Big Pine. I had been hoping for an excuse to abandon the proper eating guide and head to No Name Pub for delicious fried fish and silver dollar fries; I got a pesto wrap instead (with rennetless cheese) which is excellent in and of itself but not properly greasy. Well, I thought, at least I'm not going to be sitting by watching total strangers get sloshed out of their minds and fall flat on their faces in front of me, which is the protocol for people let off the leash in Key West. We led them home and we all ate our sprout encrusted stuff and drank our fizzy water and Dale started fidgeting ( I got used to that as the day progressed). We all dressed up properly like high school dorks on a first date and took off under most unpromising skies.

It was a bit of a conundrum for me, riding with two strangers with about four hours to burn on 27 miles of highway- an average of six miles per hour? First stop was blimp road, a long straight stretch where Dale on his 1100RT boxer pulled away and took advantage of the straight stretch ( illustrated above) to taste a little speed. Marc was rather more cautious. Aha! said I to myself. We stopped at the boat ramp at the end of the road where we managed to scare off a middle aged woman and her van. People aren't usually intimidated by me and the Bonneville so it was a rather novel experience to be playing Marlon Brando in The Wild One. I still don't think we looked like desperadoes; you be the judge:Even the chickens were completely unintimidated by Marc the desperate hunter-gatherer and his camera. Marc was making noises about the bat tower so we took off, still dressed to the nines and expecting a downpour at any moment, and we turned south for a quick jaunt down Highway One to Sugarloaf Key at Mile Marker 17, more or less. Marc was back out with his camera:It was built as a way to house mosquito-eating bats by a man who wanted to develop Sugarloaf Key. The bats fled never to return and the tower is all that is left of the project. It sits there unloved and largely unnoticed with no signage or descriptions of it;s history.

This was where I had my own little epiphany. As we pulled in Dale took his fully faired road touring behemoth and plunged into the dirt alongside the road, breasting a puddle and then standing back and admiring the mess on his motorcycle like a small boy in a sand pit. I broached the idea of backtracking a couple of miles and visiting a dirt track I wrote about last winter, reported on November the 9th 2007 in an essay titled " Paved Road Ends" (which the search function at the top of this page will reveal as long as you patiently scroll through all the results.).... It was grotesquely hot and muggy at this point but Dale took off touring bike through the brush and puddles. Marc and I followed on foot like the stragglers of a disintegrating expedition.Dale left us marks in the wet slippery marl to follow:By the time we had worked up a nice sweat the intrepid rider burst around a corner on the track of the road:Dale was hopping up an down like a boy on Christmas morning as he burbled on happily about the technical challenges of the old state road. "Yeah ," he said,"I like to ride off road. I guess this isn't exactly ideal for me," he added looking at his 640 pound BMW. We contemplated the motorcycle and agreed, as a light drizzle descended on us, that a GS should be in Dale's future. He rumbled alongside us as we strode back to our bikes, Marc and I, he to his Custom 1200 BMW, I to my Triumph.

We took another couple of detours, mostly unmemorable to the out-of-towners, paved roads that dead ended as they tend to in the Keys. The submarine pens at Mile Marker 8 were more of a success, as Marc and i stood around waiting for the schoolboy off his leash to finish trundling through the woods on his unsuitable motorcycle:

When he got back Dale gave the pens a cautious thumbs up, but he ruled them slippery when wet. By this time it was hotter than blazes and our jackets ended up on the motorcycles, not us, as we got back on Highway One closing in on the big city, at the end of the rainbow. Dale led the way, irrepressible, Marc following with caution writ large and me somewhere in the middle trying to keep an eye out for cars with light bars.

Cruising South Roosevelt along the water is always rewarding and the views were starting to look good with some sunshine sparkling on the water. Then began the hunt for macrobiotic Key West. "Waterfront market!" Marc chanted, "Cafe con leche!" I replied, "I want something cold," was the chorus from Dale, who had whispered to me that he grills a mean barbecue given half a chance. "Mm," I replied while I handled a bag of delicious looking ground kelp in the Sugar Apple's aisles. We ended up at Waterfront market, a pale shadow of its former self where the juice bar was closed and Marc couldn't find organic spinach. "Take the commercial stuff," Dale and I implored the suddenly hard-of-hearing vegan:

Yeah, Dale was ready for refreshment by this point. Marc clutched his commercially grown spinach until a manager appeared with the organics for their dinner that night. Nori (toasted seaweed lined with spinach and a paste of other macro delights) was on the menu and Dale actually smacked his lips at the prospect. Talk of barbecue was just to poke fun at the unflappable Marc.

I watched the two of them fussing over their luggage as dinner went into the ice chest in Dale's top case. Dale manages a business, Marc retired from a lifetime in the family dive shop where the two buddies met. Apparently they shared passions relating to the sea and motorcycling and they hang out together the ex-military man and the vegan. It was a sight to see like a cat and a dog hanging out and running together. Marc made gentle fun of Dale's conquest of a vegan woman in Big Pine ("We just had dinner!" Dale said indignantly) and Dale made fun of Marc's grub ("I'll eat tofu if I have to!" said the anxious macrobiotic vegan) and I stood there and wondered about what it is that glues disparate people together. It seems a lot to ask of a motorcycle but it sometimes does the trick.

My next-to-last trick was some tourism, admiring the square riggers at the waterfront bight:

And then we cruised the point, but Dale, who used to visit the Keys all the time in the "good old days" to fish (he's a Florida native) took a seat to discuss his hometown of Naples with a new friend:

While Marc did the right thing and i took a picture of him with his camera. Not before one of our delightful local subjects tried to butt in on his action:

We were exhausted by that time and helmetless (yes, even Marc after considerable nagging from Dale) we repaired to my choice of eatery and put our knees under a table at The Cafe on Southard. I was all talked out and not even a veggieburger could bring me all the way back to remember to commemorate the occasion with a picture. We were tired, we were hot and we had ridden as much as one reasonably could on a peninsula with but one road and three scary motorcyclists on it. However this town isn't big enough for the three of us so they fled with their tails between their legs and I tried to stay awake all night at the police station on a night with more activity than we have had for a long time.

I can only assume those two desperadoes didn't actually leave town when they said they would. I hope they come back one day.

Credit Derivative Swaps

So today's the day I send the Maxima into the shop for a one hundred thousand mile overhaul, new fluids, new tires new battery, a thousand dollar expense and no more-we hope! Meanwhile, as Donny and Dave pore over my splendid Nissan, derivatives traders Up North will be trying to figure out who owes what to whom. Exciting stuff as they have an estimated one and a half trillion dollars worth of promissory notes to sort out. Even more exciting as no one quite knows who will be unable to meet their obligations and what happens when they shrug their economic shoulders and confess they can't pay off their failed bets.

I expect the markets will slide a bit and if my very smart buddy Josh is correct and this adjustment is nothing out of the ordinary, we will teeter on a bit longer evading catastrophe. Because these derivatives were created as gambles on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae paper, everything is a little more opaque than it should be, and is equally a bit more in the public eye than past swaps. I shall be poring over the Internet entrails when I get up around lunch time, and will then devote myself to sorting out our emerging vegetable garden before I enquire about the Nissan. Acting locally, worrying globally.

Some people talk of buying motorcycles to economise, but it occurred to me my Nissan's tires aren't completely worn threadbare but they are getting changed after three years and fully 55,000 miles. They cost about a hundred dollars apiece, a similar price to my Bonneville's rear tire that wore out after just over 8,000 miles. If the derivatives swap is too distasteful to ponder, the tire wear comparison could be food for thought on what could be a momentous day which we continue to fervently hope goes off like a damp squid.

Fascinatin' Passengers

Let me start out by saying my wife and I took a cruise last year and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Embarrassing eh? Let's face it cruise ship passengers are the butt of jokes, cruise ships are the world's worst form of travel, polluting the oceans, cushioning and cossetting their occupants, they are the absolute antithesis of "proper" voyaging. Well let me remind you the wife and I also sailed to Key West from California and I have an intimate personal knowledge of the joys of proper voyaging and let me say cruise ships have their good points.The image thing is unavoidable, after all as a cruise ship passenger you are one sweating American in a herd of several hundred, possibly several thousand strangers in a strange land when you step off the floating hotel. I used to work as a boat captain taking passengers out sailing and I heard some very odd questions, naive in the extreme asking what currency we used and who governed Key West. On our week long trip round the Western Caribbean we found the ship to be extremely comfortable, we loved our cabin with a balcony and room service was divine. I've got to be honest, this was my wife's first "lounging vacation" in 13 years of marriage, something she had longed for but that I can't stand to waste a vacation on- give me a rental car and an open road!. The cruise ship was a blast, by contrast. I was amazed, the comfort of one's own room, the civilty iof a swimming pool, air conditioning or open air breeezes at will and attentive service. I felt like a character in a Noel Coward play. Reality is a little less suave and a bit more herd-like:It has been fashionable for some time to curse cruise ships and their hordes of passengers in Key West, however as money runs low in the city fashions change and it has been some time since last I heard someone bitching about the herds roaming lower Duval Street. Protesting voices used to be raised in the newspaper demanding ships curtail the number of their visits to our city. Since the economic downturn turned into a rout cruise ships show up at the city's dock or the Westin's dock and disgorge their humanity into the happily outstretched arms of merchants begging for custom. And cruise ships need attractions to keep their people satisfied.Times are tough, so it is a good thing I suppose to spot people bearing packages:When I see someone with a utilitarian plastic bag from a downtown pharmacy I figure I am observing the passage of a crew member:Opponents of cruise ships argue they pollute and they encourage mindless mass tourism, supporters say they not only bring people who spend money they also expose people to the delights of Key West. Based on our experiences in Cancun, Grand Cayman and Jamaica where on each island we rented a car for a thorough exploration, Key West really does have a lot going for it. Imagine the Art and History Museum recently garnered a statewide award and it's right there at the docks:Not just in the matter of shops but in presentation also, bright lights, cheerful store fronts abundant greenery and a level of cleanliness that sometimes shocks me:Key West is a modern American city in many respects and offers lots of attractions, including sophisticated nude statuary courtesy of the ever industrious Seward Johnson and his out sized efforts:If pirates are more to the tourists taste there is the shipwreck Historeum thing and when I was down that way the place was positively groaning under the weight of paying customers:And were it not for the cruise ship who would be taking a break at Mallory Square to chomp an ice cream in the slowest month of the year?

There is no doubt that cruise ships are good for commerce in the Southernmost City. But there remains that nagging feeling that we want more from our visitors. Mass tourism doesn't come from an innate sense of curiosity. Cruise ship passengers seem to love repetition, revisiting old haunts and the like. I overhead one who must have been a former resident discussing some of Johnson's over sized statuary outside the Customs House and she remarked that it wasn't there when she was here previously. For me travel includes, requires perhaps freshness of perspective and exploration. Cruise ship passengers typically aren't like that, it seems. They come in all shapes sizes and ages, they walk with a distinctly glazed look some of them, some talk animatedly, some stroll hand in hand, just like people anywhere, and everywhere:

This one is an explorer on a mission and he needs to get his legs away from exposure to the burning southern sun:And if you thought all cruise ship passengers were old you'd be wrong:

But they do tend to let their inner selves appear in their outer clothing some of which might come as a shock to their folks back home. "Fred? In a tie dye? Really!"

But not everyone wandering in the area is necessarily a cruise ship passenger. My money would be on this guy being a local:Over the last ten years there were a lot of things that freaked Key Westers out. Development seemed endless and costs of everything spiralled and the number of cruise ships seemed to be swamping the city. Development has stalled, money no longer flows like water and cruise ship numbers seem to be down. Perhaps at some point there will be a chance that things could be a little more balanced, perhaps a little less desire to just make money, a little more attention to quality of life, because polluters or no, these big ships block the view and take up a lot of the harbor, witness the Sunset Key ferry nosing past:The cool thing about cruise ships is that they suck up their passengers into their bowels, roll up the welcome mat and they are all gone:

And then as the local employees unhook the dock lines and release the behemoth from its moorings, a person standing on the dock can hear the cruise director's voice echoing out over the city organizing ship board events and games even before the port call is properly over.It's a mixed blessing I grant you having cruise ships in town, but I am forced to acknowledge that their harbor dues help pay my wages so I keep my grumbling to myself when I see the hordes of people with their little shore excursion passes stuck to their shirts, or when I spot the big white apartment complex tied up alongside the city: I wonder how long these mobile cities will keep coming and going across the world's waterways? Riding a floating hotel is an astonishing luxury, I well remember standing at my private balcony watching the Western Caribbean float by under an almost full moon. I also remembered crossing the same waters in my 34-foot catamaran a decade earlier. I think I know which crossing had the bigger carbon footprint and I'm guessing it's the one that offered room service...