He was 92 and they say he died peacefully in his sleep this afternoon after being treated for heart and lung problems. Captain Tony Tarracino was a past mayor of Key West, elected in 1989 and he served a two year term. He was known as the owner of Captain Tony's Bar on Greene Street, however he did sell the bar some time ago. He hitched to Key West in 1947 on the run he said, from gambling debts he owed to the New Jersey mob. He claimed he had worked as a gun runner for the Cuban revolution and he was famous for saying "All you need in life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don't mean shit."
Captain Tony, from the defunct Key West Magazine
A new book about his life and exploits has just been published titled "Life Lessons of a Legend" though owing to his final illness Captain Tony was unable to appear at the book signing sessions at the oldest bar in Florida- sessions that spilled out into the street. He was a wildly popular figure in Key West.
It happened one day a few years ago that I was working in the shipping department at Fast Buck Freddie's and I'd just come in from the alley in the back of the store when one of my co-workers came up all in a lather and said; "Did you see Jimmy back there?" "Jimmy who?" said I, "Jimmy Buffett,of course, someone said he's out back." "No," said I, "but there was some bald dude back there." Which it turned out was the person I had exchanged pleasantries with while I was taking a break from humping stuff into the store. That's as much as I know about the mythical Jimmy Buffett, a singer who inspires a following, some people describe as 
Jimmy Buffett's public story is all American and it's tied tightly into Key West, where he washed up years ago with a guitar and a desire to sing and those modest beginnings turned into a worldwide following and fortune and all the trappings. Everyone wants a piece of him and now that the 
I am really vague about all this, but I believe it's called the meeting of the minds or some such and the acronym 
Buffett no longer lives in Key West but he has a music studio on the waterfront and he owns part of the building where Fast Buck's is located, so my meeting him in the back wasn't exactly an outrageous coincidence. That's the building wherein his restaurant is located:
Margaritaville is where Buffett fans show up year round. Frankly if all cults were like the 
The "nuns" who descended on 
"We're drinking to save your soul !" they cackled at him as they shoved bystanders aside to get their pictures taken. I could well believe it, the bit about his soul; it was barely one o'clock and they were tanked. These cultists are all about being cheerful and they exuded happiness as they stood around in the 500 block of 
Early in the day there were the unmistakable signs of a Buffet gathering on the streets of Key West:
And then 
And they wheeled out the food stands and the barbecue and the beer and the party began. 
And a final thought as winter closes in, from the bus of the band that played to the crowd:
Which would be, of course, Key West.
I spent a couple of decades living in Northern California and the words South Beach conjured up a mental picture of the Italian quarter of San Francisco, hills, Italian stores Caffe Trieste and all the rest. I liked it too, but that doesn't mean I dislike the rather more modest South Beach in Key West. Unlike the San Francisco version South Beach in the Southernmost City is actually a beach, with a restaurant and everything:
South Beach is actually the southern end of Duval Street, more or less the last block intersected by, not unnaturally, South Street:
This is one of the spots in the city where southernmost everything is located, house, guest house, hotel, etc... etc...because this is after all pretty close to the southernmost tip of the continental United States. The Southernmost House has been owned since 1939 by a prominent family of Conchs and they are currently having a tiff with the city over the status of their building. They want more commerce, their neighbors want less and where previously locals were welcome on the premises now they (we) aren't for casual poolside drinks. Bummer because it is quite the structure:
It's quite the pile and people do like their picture taken here:
Though I quite like the details, like their brick driveway:
Across the street is the more modestly proportioned southernmost hotel, one of the southernmost's anyway:
The thing about this location though isn't the architecture though there's lots of it. It's the ocean, more precisely Hawk Channel which sets visitors to thinking. They look out from their perch on the South Beach pier and think about the clarity of the water:
And the fact the Forbidden Island lies just over the horizon, 90 miles away, making Havana closer to Key West than Miami, were there a road over there:
South Beach is one those pocket parks that a little town like Key West does so well, using and taking advantage of every speck of recreational space:
You come, you see, you contemplate a moment, then you leave headed back to the fleshpots of Duval Street:
It didn't strike me as much a dog park but a dog might well appreciate the modest pleasures of the little pier at the southernmost end of the island:
I find the southernmost thing gets a bit tedious, it's as though one has to make a virtue of an accident of geography that of itself imparts no virtue. I guess Duval Street had to end somewhere and it might as well be here. 
Upper Duval is the bastard stepchild of Key West's most famous street, it's the part of the main drag that gets least exposure and sees less tourist traffic and is, at the same time the most attractive part of Duval. It is eminently walkable and even though it is less treed than the middle portion it has it's own attractions.
Art galleries by the dozen, 
and they tend to come and go in these difficult times. They were offering all sorts of sales as I walked by at closing time:
Call it a sign of the times but this realty office was closed and a hand written sign in the door offered body painting services instead. For Fantasy fest only, I assume, though probably body painting pays better than real estate these days:
Some shops seem recession-proof, including my favorite ice cream store, Flamingo Crossing:
Personally I prefer ice cream to publicly traded sex acts but of you feel the need, the Scrub Club, renamed with the more delicate title of Adult Entertainment, seems recession proof:
I think it costs a hundred and fifty dollars to get in the door, and another six hundred to hang out with a naked Eastern European woman. The terms are a little vague, owing to the illegality of blatant prostitution, thus from time to time people call up to complain about getting shorted by the club, and other times frustrated gentlemen callers get angry and police are needed at the club to keep everyone calm. I can think of better ways to spend six hundred bucks, incinerating them on the stock market comes to mind, but some people really do think paid sex is glamorous and not sordid. Weird. Even weirder are the laws that make it illegal to pay for sex. I don't know why anyone cares. Fortunately it's not up to me to make sense of all this convoluted nonsense, and ice cream is still legal though always sinful. And if you don't have naked ladies to peddle, or excellent ice cream, you could very well go out of business like this storefront:
And all that's left of the venerable Valladares is the sign:
And businesses that are continuing to operate can find their buildings sold out from under them:
That last one, the Coffee and Tea House used to be across the street here:
And this move was all part of an elaborate game of musical chairs because the building currently occupied by the coffee and tea place used to be where the Banana Cafe used to be. The Banana Cafe moved to the building where Camile's Italian restaurant used to be, until they got turfed out abruptly by a rent hike. The building languished empty for a while and now has a new paint job and the French restaurant has established itself there:
For some reason I can't fathom that end of Duval that is furthest south is known as Upper Duval, perhaps because the street numbers are highest here, culminating in 1499 at the beach. In any event Upper Duval tenants have complained in the past that their end of the street got less attention and less tourist traffic, especially from cruise ships which dock closer to Lower Duval. It seems lively enough to me but I just tend to pass through this area. There are tourists enraptured by chickens, of course...
or each other...
or the need to rest their aching feet...
...from walking so far down Key West's main drag:
Businesses come and go like I say, but bits of Upper Duval have been around for a while:
And of course there are new entertainments to check out, this one in place of the old Alice's Restaurant:
Alice herself I'm told, may be going to cook at La Te Da:
Which I doubt will be inducement enough for me. I am not really flamboyant enough for La Terraza de Marti, and there's another art form I've never figured out, that of cross dressing. Plus I've never really understood why people throw beads at Carnival or Fantasy Fest, beads which end up everywhere, even on the "ignored" end of Duval:
Oh and while we're at it, lets not forget that other feeble excuse for a holiday extravaganza, All Hallows Eve.
Did I ever mention how annoying it is to have been born on the one day in the year when everyone feels it incumbent upon themselves to dress up in a stupid costume? The older I get the more crotchety I become.