The Golden Van

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Angela Street

One can only go so long without taking a little cruise through The Meadows. This would be my favorite neighborhood in Key West,where I would prefer to live if I were forced by an uncaring Fate to take up residence in the city itself. I quite like this house too, but because it's "quite nice" it was offered for a fortune the last time it was for sale:

The really suave thing about this house, aside from the OSP (off street parking) is that on the other side it faces Gonzalez Lane, a lane so uninteresting and short even I cannot create an essay to describe it. One photograph will suffice:

The nice thing about this section of Angela Street is the assortment of greenery:

And all along the north side of Angela is the black iron fence protecting the Navy housing which used to be open space years ago until the navy reclaimed it. In yesterday's essay I mentioned the movie Criss Cross, and so it is today as the old Peary Court was the back drop to a night time baseball game played in the movie. These days Peary Court is just another housing development, where people apparently ride motorcycles:

And raise children:

Outside Peary Court, back on Angela Street there is the usual mixture of housing,usual for Key West that is:

This next house used to be surrounded by a high wall of greenery, some sort of flourishing vine but it has been stripped away and the air of mystery that used to surround this place has been ripped away with it. Oh well:

Amazingly enough I saw the two jet skies on their trailer with a sapling growing up between them. Inertia on a grand scale.

And talking of stripping away the old Moose Lodge on Eisenhower at Angela has started a renovation campaign, with paint and yard work and new signs proclaiming this to be a family friendly club. Which is weird because all it ever was, was a place to drink in the dark. They used to have a big mural of a moose on the wall but that too is gone:

Leaving a bland facade in it's place. You can spice up almost anything with a Triumph Bonneville:

Another lovely sunny day in Key West, hot but not yet humid.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Searstown

When Searstown came into existence in the 1960's it was a huge innovation for the little fishing village at the end of the highway. The land here was fill created to help the railroad cross from Cow Key Channel to Trumbo Point where the ferries waited to take passengers to Havana. It's hard to imagine but New Town after World War Two was a bucolic open space with fields and dairy cows criss crossed by little white gravel lanes and the occasional home. This photo I found of Flagler's Casa Marina Hotel, the "other" railroad destination in Key West, at keyshistory.org a fascinating site well worth checking out:

Almost since it's inception in the early 19th century, Key West had been a city of twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants clustered around the harbor on the western edge of the island. Then development came, with a vengeance and the shopping mall appeared, heralding the creation of New Town and boosting the population across the whole island to around 25,000.

Ah yes, Publix, where shopping is a pleasure..."You have a Publix here?" was the indignant question from a friend visiting from mainland Florida, as though the intrusion of sophisticated grocery store chains was beyond Key West's ken even in the 21st century. I shrugged. Yup, and we have drive-through ("thru") fast food too, and some people get their food by driving thru:

Visit Key West, wander no further east than Simonton Street from your Duval Street mega hotel, perhaps if you are daring, take a bike ride to White Street but let Sears remain outside your consciousness. The tawdry reality of ordinary people doing ordinary shopping will wreck the pirate stories told and retold at the bars downtown:

Searstown is one of three big (relatively big) shopping centers which also include Key Plaza (KMart, possibly going out of business, Radio Shack Office Max and Blockbuster among national chains) and Overseas Market (Winn Dixie, Ross, Pier One, TGI Friday's) all lined up along the Boulevard (North Roosevelt). I suppose Key West would be more charming without them but really choices are limited enough this far from anywhere it would be a shame to force them out, and locals, Conchs most especially, people who hate driving up the Keys, would I have no doubt rise up in arms. There's a six screen mainstream theater at the Regal, another facility geared to youngsters who have "nothing to do in Key West":

Some people really like deliveries from China Garden West (for those too exhausted to drive three miles from Simonton Street there is another China Garden at Fleming Street and a third on Big Pine Key, 30 miles north). Every Publix in Florida boasts a Chinese restaurant next door in every plaza I've ever seen. Key West is no exception:

I am surprised how much I enjoy the occasional meal at Outback, efficient service, quiet televisions (which I hate in bars and restaurants and waiting rooms) and decent prices. I could pay four times as much at a fancy place downtown but I have a living to earn. Conchs love their sports so it's no surprise there is a chain sports equipment store, another facility for kids who have "nothing to do" in Key West:

I've never been inside Champs but I do visit Conch Scoops, the coffee shop next door to Outback and Quiznos in this end of the shopping center.

My wife and I frequently get a cafe con leche before I go to work and she drives home. Yvonne's family has lived here for generations and she knows how to make a Conch con leche which I can only have when my wife's not around as it involves sweetened condensed milk...Sears has an auto repair facility...

...and a garden center as well

And the City buses as well as the Lower Keys Shuttle buses to Marathon stop in front of Publix:

I look out across the expanse of this development and wonder what the scattered few residents of these fields would think if they could come back and take a look themselves a hundred years later.

It's easy to grumble about development but one has to consider too the fact that we get to live longer and in many ways with greater ease than previously. Perhaps I am getting more sensitive to the issue as I grow older myself, but I see a difference between these shopping plazas and the creation of million dollar condos. Like it or not Searstown provides services for people who live here.

Florida is known world wide as the place where people go to die and even though the Keys used to boast a population much younger than the state average the gap is closing. It has to, it's too expensive to raise a family in the islands and the population of children is dropping. Not to say that seniors in Key West dodder quite as much as elsewhere in God's waiting room:

As the world economy shrinks I wonder what the Key West population will look like in the years to come, perhaps more wealthy visitors and retirees with a smaller population of civil servants to wait on them hand and foot... and I wonder what sort of job prospects there will be for the youngsters, who love their mainland fashions and their electronic devices.

Searstown has the necessaries resembling those of the mainland, the peninsula where home values have plummeted and people are reportedly leaving in droves. We have fast food:

Alternative "banks":

Which businesses are part of a little strip mall inside the Searstown Mall called Peacock Plaza:

But here in the Keys things only appear to resemble elsewhere because some things are done in a particular way. I occasionally read the Internet scooter forums where people new to riding marvel at their vehicles' abilities to carry a load. They post excited photographs showing how they make useful work horses out of their exotic Italian rides. In Key West a scooter is a daily ride, no muss no fuss for riders of all ages:

In another month the snowbirds will retreat and take their money with them to hot sticky cities across the north, and we will be left to fill the spaces left behind. Parking will magically reappear, the complaints column in the paper will stop reporting on issues of crowding and will revert to more interesting political sniping and from the parks many of the seasonal homeless will also depart in the other, less noticed migration:

And for those away and thinking about Key West they can watch Goldie Hawn's Criss Cross and see if they can spot this location:

In the movie Hawn takes off her clothes there, but I'm advised this is in real life just another place to go drinking. Perhaps it's emblematic of the Keys, the islands are what you want them to be, whether real or not.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Roberts Lane

I parked the Bonneville in a motorcycle spot on Frances Street planning to stroll over to Nassau Lane to take some pictures. Imagine my surprise when it occurred to me I had already done that, and in fact using the "search" function at the top of the page I found the essay posted last December 18th 2008. Well bugger, I thought. This blog really has been going on too long. It was with some trepidation I went to Roberts Lane for a back up plan and honestly I couldn't remember for the life of me if I had taken pictures there or only thought about it. So I took some more.

Fortunately the same "search"function revealed no previous entries by this name so here we are, off Frances Street between Southard and Angela, a stone's throw from the cemetery. Indeed Google Maps shows Roberts almost connecting with Catholic Lane, though in fact they don't seem to join without crossing private property...

I could hear sounds of construction coming from the house though I was discouraged from approaching as I overheard a most unusual conversation, as I stood on tip toe, out of sight) I hoped!). One male voice said: " I don't see why they'd come after me.I never killed anyone." Which is quite devastating as the opening gambit in any conversation when followed up by the next statement to his companion in physical labor: "It wasn't like I killed anyone,"he went on: "I was just the book keeper to the mob." Which had me interested. It didn't seem like he was in the witness protection program, though why would he be laboring instead of living off his ill gotten gains? Maybe rebuilding a home on Roberts Lane is deep cover? Like the sailors in HMS Pinafore I with caution feeling, softly stole away...to enjoy some of the architectural gems of this tiny lane:

It is traditional in Key west to paint the eaves over the porches in this or similar shade of blue. supposedly it keeps away insects, and more esoterically, spirits as well.

I am a big fan, as are insurance companies, of metal roofs which provide the strongest hurricane protection and I particularly enjoy the old style metal roof, almost scalloped looking like this:

Roberts Lane is also filled with Art which gave my wander an added fillip:

Roberts Lane has a little intrigue of it's own in J Wills Burke's book Streets of Key West where he discusses a Roberts Lane off Caroline Street. From what I can gather that would be the alley way alongside Los Cubanitos Marine hardware store which never had a name as far as I knew but on Google maps it shows as Roberto Lane which may be what Burke is referring to in some geographic cosmic mix up. Or not.

Burke's Roberts referred to any one of three historical figures, a "colored Sheriff" or a "colored businessman" weirdly enough a friend of Stephen Mallory, Secretary of the Confederate Navy. Ina any event the lane is here and not there nowadays. Very pretty it is too, off Frances Street: