I took this picture from Jose Marti Drive in front of the police station at around two in the morning. The tall building is an apartment complex on Eisenhower overlooking Garrison Bight:
Eisenhower Drive is a short street much shorter than the thoroughfare named for that other President from the same era. However Harry Truman was a frequent visitor to key west and Ike wasn't, so perhaps that's how it should be. Eisenhower runs between Truman Avenue to the south and Palm Avenue to the north and is sandwiched between the waters of Garrison Bight and the area known as The Meadows. The corner of Truman and Eisenhower is marked by the Sub Tropic Dive Shop and it's delightful mural:
Eisenhower Drive is a short street much shorter than the thoroughfare named for that other President from the same era. However Harry Truman was a frequent visitor to key west and Ike wasn't, so perhaps that's how it should be. Eisenhower runs between Truman Avenue to the south and Palm Avenue to the north and is sandwiched between the waters of Garrison Bight and the area known as The Meadows. The corner of Truman and Eisenhower is marked by the Sub Tropic Dive Shop and it's delightful mural:
Even the office got into the act with sea creatures appearing to float around inside, adding to the mural's effect:
I snagged another couple of pictures of the apartment building which i think is Pelican landing or some such name: 
And here is a close up of the outside stairway looking more like an apiary than human habitation: 
Eisenhower has few street lights so the darkness gives it a slightly dissolute, mysterious air:
I set this picture up with thoughts of Orson Welles' Third Man coming to mind, though the scrubby bushes lining Eisenhower at this point do a poor job of replicating post World War Two Vienna...and I don't think I look either mysterious or threatening in as much as I am visible at all under the street light. I guess it was actually pretty dark out there!
I caught sight of a few plants used in landscaping that apparently warrants burning electricity all night:
Date palms towering over the street: 
Coconut palms hardly seen in the reflected light: 
This was a curiosity, a horse tethering pole planted as landscaping:
this seems a rather ignominious fate for a love seat or divan or whatever it is, put out with the trash:
And so I retraced my steps back to Truman Avenue, which I crossed unmolested as there was no traffic out at that hour, and so back to well illuminated Jose Marti Drive next to Bayview Park: 
And from there, back to my station under the half moon:
A still and breathless summer's night, how perfect.
The Tropic Cinema is on the four hundred block of Eaton Street, between Whitehead and Duval, more or less equidistant from St Paul's Cathedral and the main Post Office, symbolic perhaps of the Art house theater's role part way between commercial enterprise and spiritual retreat.
The theater is a not-for-profit organization founded at the end of the last century to bring classic movies to Key West. It started out using borrowed space in art galleries and the splendid San Carlos theater whose Cuban managers seemed to be rather bemused sometimes by the films they showed in their baroque building. I loved going to the movies at the San Carlos, they breathed life into the former Cuban consulate on Duval Street, at least for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night shows of the nascent Key West Film Society. 
The society got a 35-year lease on the Eaton street property and started building a modern three screen theater for $1.2 million dollars in 2003. Jean Carper an anti-aging nutrition author has apparently made a fortune peddling her diet advice and put up $200,000 of the cash and got to name the main screening room in honor of her late mother:
Natella Carper had a penchant for the flickers apparently and now she has her name in red neon like a marquee. But the Tropic is growing despite the parlous financial times we live in and there are plans to open a fourth, 48 seat screening room as an addition to the current theater:
The Tropic is a membership organization and members get discount rates ($6 versus $9 to see a movie) and various invitations to special events. My wife and I have been members since early on but we decided a while back to upgrade our membership to $600 a year which gives us both free access to the movies year round. I guess the idea that we might watch a movie a week for an entire year seems a lot and it probably is, but the real idea is to support the society.
We've always viewed the Tropic not only as a source of decent quality films but as a downtown refuge, a place to hangout in, and that got difficult over the past year when the Board hired staff members who viewed the Tropic as purely a business. We dropped out. New management, a more focused Board and we are back and happy to be in the theater again. Lori a dear friend has been promoted to manager and she has restored the theater to a convivial place to gather:
The theater boasts lots of movie memorabilia in the lobby, which these days is a bit truncated by the new screening room construction:
The society offers the usual lines of clothing...
...DVDs
They also show DVDs in the lobby to keep up the ambiance:
And the place is ankle deep in posters and the like:
They have left up one sign from the Commissars of the Ancien Regime, but it's not as draconian as it might first appear. The Regal in Searstown used to have a policy of not allowing bags, to avoid bombs going off in the theater, they said, but the tropic is a different kind of theater:
I like to spend money at the concession stand, for two reasons. One is I am supporting my preferred cultural outlet and the other is that they have an astonishing variety of food, with candies priced at a buck and a medium soda for just three dollars, so it's no great hardship to spend a little money here.
Zabar's Coffee is, I am reliably informed, a well know coffee in New York, and i like it well enough. Some times one needs something a little stronger at the movies:
New Yorkers have their coffee at the Tropic, Mid-Westerners get their beef:
The rest of us get dollar Snickers and Key Lime Pie on a stick for a few dollars more:
Not forgetting popcorn for all:
And now dogs are allowed back into the Tropic. The problem of dog ownership and going to the movies can get onerous in South Florida. It's hard to find a cool spot to park the car, cool enough to leave a dog inside in the summer if you live out of town. Plus it tends to rain without warning and leaving the windows open in summer guarantees a soaked interior. Much better to be able to bring the dog with you to the movies:
From the early days of the film society with Michael Shields, the future has always been one of making enough money to keep going and building on what he started the Tropic seems to be doing well. There are dozens of creative ways to raise money and named plaques are everywhere in the theater. I'd have happily paid $250 to get my name here had I thought of it and had my wife not thought me mad to want to stick my name above a urinal:
there are theater seats still available for plaques I believe. Management is also getting to show more mainstream films, movies that draw in patrons not devoted to movies with subtitles. The new Star Trek movie showed at the Tropic and the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard religious thriller Angels and Demons is also getting an airing at the Tropic.
Unlike the Regal this is an adult theater where using cell phones and talking in the movies really is frowned on. All that and a glass of wine too.
A great place to hang out. I'm glad the Tropic is back and going from strength to strength. Their website is in my Web Links list.