Elgin Lane

In 1801 the Seventh Earl of Elgin took pieces of marble from the Turk controlled Acropolis in Athens and had them shipped home to England. He did this while he was the British Ambassador to Constantinople because Greece was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Since 1980 Greece has claimed the Elgin Marbles as part of their heritage, but the British Museum is still hanging onto the Parthenon Sculptures, bulldog-like. And that is what I think of when I think of Elgin Lane in Key West, neither of which has anything to do with the other....

The easy way to find Elgin Lane is to cruise north on White Street until you find the brightly colored inconvenience store known as Blossoms:

                            

From Blossoms its a one way ride straight down Elgin Lane to a point that pops out next to Paradise Cafe a couple of blocks away. And in that stretch of narrow one way asphalt lies all the romance and intimacy of a narrow key West lane. Personally I find Elgin Lane to be unusually attractive- I'm not sure why.

I hit it on a bright sunny day, hot but not too hot, sunny but not too sunny I suppose. Shadows were starting to lengthen and I should have been thinking about heading home. I had just been to the Tropic to check out Werner Herzog's latest documentary about life at the South Pole Encounters at the End of the Earth, a snappy title for a movie infused with Herzog's own special brand of lugubrious Teutonic hopelessness at the human condition. Which film I thoroughly enjoyed and whose somber tone was the perfect antidote to the cheerfulness inspired in me by this modest little alley.

It sort of looked like rhubarb to me, but that's impossible...I'm pretty sure.         

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Elgin Lane distinguishes itself from other Key West streets by the impossible good manners of it's sign writers:

 

Well, most of them:

             

The houses on Elgin Lane are the usual mixture and included an upper crust guest house with barely glimpsed swimming hole:    

And the inevitable Conch Cottage with its own form of OSP, off street parking:

And even though I frequently see porches set up for outdoor entertainment its rare someone is out there rocking gently or playing backgammon. Perhaps it's the time of day I pass by:

Some houses are kept full of junk, the gruesome pack rat syndrome. I could never be a pack rat, being as how I was always traveling and leaving all my stuff, perforce, behind. Not like this character who likes to live behind battlements of stuff:

Others fight the good fight, as do I, and struggle to keep the crap factor to a minimum:

You don't even have to do much maintenance if your home is made of Dade pine:

Some people are dab hands with a paint brush and pastels are the shades of choice. There is a tradition in Key West to paint outdoor ceilings a light blue color. The superstitious among us believe light blue for some unaccountable reason keeps spirits away and also has the beneficial effect they say of keeping insects away. Powerful stuff for a simple shade of blue:

I caught one less traditional detail on a house that was all shuttered up- with a zip tie!

Elsewhere ingenuity was evident, the sort of lateral thinking I used to employ when I was far from land on my sailboat, not, as in this case, on a construction site:

I saw another piece of whimsy in a road sign on a stretch of this narrow street:

"No Parking At Any Time" says the faded sign, which seems obvious enough in this kind of area, so it didn't take but two minutes for me to spot someone doing just that!

That's what they mean by "island time." Don't lose your mind when people just stop in the middle of the street- it's the response to the general lack of space. Besides if you're in a hurry there is Eaton Street, a main thoroughfare just a block away:

As if parked cars weren't enough, Elgin Lane is apparently plagued by junior league moon walkers:

And cyclists, ready to run you down. Mind you those are always available in Key West, accidental ecologists on our streets:

Oh and don't let's forget my pet peeve:

We were at a movie the other day, my wife and I, watching a Spanish movie titled Fred and Elsa, a sweet concoction about late blooming love at the Tropic Cinema and one of the characters announced, annoyed, how irritating people are who don't keep their cell phones on. I got a big jab in the ribs, but I am unrepentant. Cell phones take messages with the greatest of ease. I met another character enjoying public telephony:

Actually no, look closely and you'll see he was sucking hard on a brown bottle. He was a pretty cheerful character as he watched me point and shoot and volunteered that his was a long time Key West family that came here from Nassau. I've been to the capital of the Bahamas a few times and it never seems to get more attractive, a run down crowded borough with all the charm of a dilapidated shopping maul tacked onto a rabbit warren of narrow streets. This character turned a tad maudlin remembering Nassau in the 1960's making it out to be paradise lost, as usual; a nice guy gifted with a defective memory. Hell the Duke of Windsor was banished there in World War Two (he had unfortunate Nazi sympathies and they had to ship him somewhere he would do no harm) and he was in despair. I don't think Nassau was much improved by the time our beer toting new found friend saw the light of day. But I digress, once again. Another piece of Key West whimsy, a light pole growing out of a palm tree:

As cold starts to tighten its vise Up North I continue to enjoy Key West's primary colors, green blue and white with occasional splotches of yellow thrown in. I would rather eat worms than have to live in a place with seasons. I think that's my greatest fear if the economic melt down were to displace me, as after a life spent wandering I have finally settled in one place, a place of endless, glorious summer time. And Elgin Lane ain't half bad either:

Not that I think too highly of speed bumps, but I did enjoy cruising the lane. And no, I didn't lose my marbles.

Gadarene Swine Fallacy

Gasoline prices at the Chevron station at the end of my street and on Summerland Key have dropped to $3:20 per gallon. Chevron must have made a delivery because Mobil on Summerland is still selling gas for $3:56. People are lining up to buy the "cheap gasoline." They are the people who haven't quite grasped what a down cycle we are in economically speaking.

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The good news as always masks a problem, which is known to economists as demand destruction. In a tourist destination like Key West things could get really slow if people can't find the nerve to waste the money to buy the energy to get here even if gasoline appears to be a lot cheaper than previously. Low gas prices aren't low because production worldwide has gone up; prices are slowly dropping because reserves have increased and are projected to increase well into the future. There's only one way that reserves go up if production remains steady. The thing is everybody, including industry, is using less energy. We can no longer burn the energy that is produced because we are not as active economically as we were. Great stuff, huh. Gas gets cheaper but we still can't afford to buy it.

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It seems odd at first glance but I think I am seeing a few snowbirds in the Keys already. I've overheard chatty people in line at Winn Dixie talking about how they are part time residents, I've seen northern tags on cars, Quebec even, and most telling of all, power walkers and dog walkers have re-appeared on the bike paths along highway one. There aren't many but traditionally they don't start to show until the first major snowfall Up North and then they all disappear to plague their families around the Yule log. There aren't many but I wonder if perhaps for some it makes more sense to spend the winter heating fuel bill to drive to Key West and get an early start on ignoring the cold? Maybe I'm just seeing what's not actually there. Silly me.

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Some of my friends still think the stock market fiasco is a temporary derangement of the natural order and I continue to hope so. However if the recession is prolonged and unemployment creeps up one has to wonder how house prices are ever going to attain what economists now say is desirable, which is that prices be proportionate to wages. If that were the case the housing market will never become proportionate until the unemployed are able to buy houses for nothing. Which craziness is not even out of the realm of possibility in this brave new world of ours.

John McCain is proposing the government buy up defaulted mortgages, reset the value of the home to a "realistic level" and offer them back to the defaulters with a low fixed rate mortgage. Luckily I don't see how he can win the election but if he does I guess my wife and I will have to stop paying our mortgage to get refinanced on such favorable terms. McCain really knows nothing about the economy as he once said in an unusually candid moment. Meanwhile Barack Obama the man I voted for in a moment of desperate hope in the primary (my Florida vote never was counted) is chuntering on about programs that never will get funded. We had a choice of blowing up Iraq or funding health care. Now that war has cost us $1.5 trillion, we have a bail out heading easily to $1 trillion and neither of those bills has closed out yet, we owe China $1.2 trillion and by some estimates there are $50 trillion of crazy derivative debts floating around waiting like asteroids to puncture the thin skin of our economic bubble. Our annual GDP is less than $15 trillion. Better start figuring on some serious inflation for the US dollar. I remember 1980 and 13% returns on my Eurodollars in a high inflationary period, so I wonder where we will get all those trillions without hyperinflating the economy like the Weimar Republic managed so spectacularly. I guess that will be how my mortgage evaporates without help from McCain!

I'm thinking of changing my name to Gadarene Pig. From the Philosophical Society definition:

The Gadarene Swine Fallacy is the fallacy of supposing that because a group is in the right formation, it is necessarily on the right course; and conversely, of supposing that because an individual has strayed from the group and isn't in formation, that he is off course. The individual may seem lost to the group but not off course to an ideal observer.

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I got my new eight year driver's license this morning with an eye test, thirty two dollars and presentation of my passport, my social security card and my old license. The clerk cheerfully told me we are scheduled to get a Federal ID card in 2010 and my documents are being stored in Tallahassee against that day. Nobody quizzed me if I wanted a national ID card, I was fine with my Florida driver's license. The clerk assured me it would suppress people who wanted to do "bad things," as if a photo ID will change human nature. I tell you, those fringe wackos are getting more right than wrong and that scares me more than anything.

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.

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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.