My wife asked me to go with her to the foot doctor on North Roosevelt Boulevard, owing to a lump on her foot that was causing her pain and she was worried what the doctor might find. I was worried about figuring out where it was but, in typical Key West fashion she gave me a landmark rather than an address. "It's behind the yellow Lions Club building," she said. And so it was, whose street address is formally known as 2405 North Roosevelt Boulevard.
Naturally I arrived early and with time on my hands pulled out the camera. The Bonneville was looking good in the sun:
Hum-de-dum-de-dum,I thought, a bit like Pooh Bear as i stumped around wondering if there might not be honey lurking behind that weird looking porch. And by gum, there it was, a huge undiscovered hunny pot:
Across the walkway I found a business center I had not previously known existed. It was almost a houseboat stuck out on the water on pilings:
Across the lagoon I recognized a couple of landmarks. Behind the palm tree I could just barely see the Checkers fast food sign on the Boulevard:
And a little further away I could see the dilapidated gate that used to lead to the dolphin aquarium exhibit thing that used to face onto the Boulevard but has been long gone lo these many years:
This was all I could find to identify the building:
So the street address suddenly popped out at me, but I'd never heard of The Heron before. So I tried to ignore the rather unfriendly No Trespassing sign and snapped a few pictures of a maritime flavor:
And me being me I had to wonder who designed a fire sprinkler to be located over open water:
All in all, mysteries left intact it was a most instructive seven minutes. My wife soon called and I had to trot off to amuse myself watching my wife's nodule get sonogrammed and pierced with a large syringe. While we waited for the doctor I found this brazen hussy in the waiting room:
All naked and everything she was, which put me in mind of a story that has done the rounds recently in the newspaper. It seems someone had called out the emergency services following the discovery of a corpse in a wreck off Archer key, to the west of Key West. closer investigation showed it was a skeleton wired to the seat of a sunken power boat tat closely resembled the display model I found at the doctor's office. It was speculated to have been an early April Fool joke.
Naturally I arrived early and with time on my hands pulled out the camera. The Bonneville was looking good in the sun:Hum-de-dum-de-dum,I thought, a bit like Pooh Bear as i stumped around wondering if there might not be honey lurking behind that weird looking porch. And by gum, there it was, a huge undiscovered hunny pot:Across the walkway I found a business center I had not previously known existed. It was almost a houseboat stuck out on the water on pilings: Across the lagoon I recognized a couple of landmarks. Behind the palm tree I could just barely see the Checkers fast food sign on the Boulevard:And a little further away I could see the dilapidated gate that used to lead to the dolphin aquarium exhibit thing that used to face onto the Boulevard but has been long gone lo these many years:This was all I could find to identify the building:So the street address suddenly popped out at me, but I'd never heard of The Heron before. So I tried to ignore the rather unfriendly No Trespassing sign and snapped a few pictures of a maritime flavor:And me being me I had to wonder who designed a fire sprinkler to be located over open water:All in all, mysteries left intact it was a most instructive seven minutes. My wife soon called and I had to trot off to amuse myself watching my wife's nodule get sonogrammed and pierced with a large syringe. While we waited for the doctor I found this brazen hussy in the waiting room:All naked and everything she was, which put me in mind of a story that has done the rounds recently in the newspaper. It seems someone had called out the emergency services following the discovery of a corpse in a wreck off Archer key, to the west of Key West. closer investigation showed it was a skeleton wired to the seat of a sunken power boat tat closely resembled the display model I found at the doctor's office. It was speculated to have been an early April Fool joke.
We had had a busy night Saturday in Dispatch with lots of calls for service as one would expect on a weekend during Spring Break. Sunday night started out quietly enough until we hit ten o'clock and we got word of smoke and flames seen on the 500 block of Duval. The best known landmark there is Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Cafe and a few doors down is the magnificent San Carlos Theater.
It appears the fire was centered between them at the crepe shop and two art galleries between them and has caused a lot of damage to those businesses but spared Margaritaville and the San Carlos. I went down to check it out after my shift was over.
Police closed several blocks of Duval and evacuated neighboring restaurants and let the firefighters do their thing. It wasn't just city fire, there were military firefighters and officers from the airport to help out as well and apparently it was quite spectacular with smoke all over downtown. 
I wonder if we will get our Breton Crepes back? Especially in an economic environment like this one. One firefighter got checked by rescue on scene but no one else was hurt, and by one a.m. things seemed to be levelling off at the scene.
It is an unfortunate fact of life in a town with narrow streets and well seasoned wood buildings one needs a well organized fire department. The last big fire on Duval was when the old Copa Club burned down in August 1995. Tonight was a really strong reminder of how much we depend on our firefighters in this town. 
Budget cuts be damned.
Mallory Square in the 19th and early 20th centuries was a working waterfront with proper docks and warehouses and all the accouterments of maritime trade. Nowadays its a brick plaza set up to accommodate tourist hordes who usually show up just before the sun goes down. The rest of the time it tends to be quieter but the arrival of a cruise ship at the nearby Westin Pier B will increase the flow of traffic across the plaza. It's a big enough space that it can handle larger crowds than this:
Back on Earth, one punter was trying to sort out a phone call in the bright sunlight, with Sunset Key over his shoulder:
Across the way another visitor was wrapping up lunch on one of the planters:
On my way out of the square I saw one early bird trying to make a living before the sunset celebrations began later in the day:
And as usual in Key West if you look around you'll see interesting roof lines,in this case the one in the back is the red Customs House Museum, a Federal design built steep to shrug off snow:
Soon enough they will all have to go home and we shall be left to poverty and peace and quiet. But first we have Spring Break to get through. 
I photographed this alley sometime probably a year ago at night, and back then it reminded me strangely enough of a visit I made to the Bay Islands of Honduras, stubs of land in the Western Caribbean. On the smallest of them, Utila a diving mecca, there are hardly any roads and the homes, set on a hill overlooking the harbor where my sailboat lay, were connected by cement walkways such as this. Of course, this actually being Key West, art abounds:
But like Utila and the other Bay Islands, practicality abounds in equal measure:
The house this washing line was attached to, looked barely strong enough to support the weight of a pair of wet bloomers:
The house was guarded by a dog slobbering loudly into a food bowl. I thought a picture of his/her hindquarters would look less interesting than a face, but my interference with dinner garnered me a fuzzy picture and a lot of noisy barking:
The splendid dilapidated mansion was across the alley from a modern trim neat and comparatively uninteresting cottage:
The ally debouches (ha!) like a stream into the river of Galveston Lane, which if you are the street sign maker for the city you spell Galvaston and which in any spelling leads to Bill Butler Park, about which I have already written:
Which, because it is winter is rather unsightly thanks to the pressing need to use it as a parking lot. The unnamed alley offers scenic vistas elsewhere and comfortable spots from which to view it:
The great porch life of key West. And there is the alley stretching back towards Elisabeth Street:
It's Utila, I tell you, it is.