Highway One rushes into Summerland Key heading southbound off the 40-foot Niles Channel Bridge, and on the right (the north side) there is a restaurant undergoing refurbishment. It used to be called Fishcutters and offered some astonishingly delicious fish sandwiches, which my wife still rhapsodizes about. In it's new, long awaited guise as The Wharf perhaps it will one day soon do the same. So far there has been construction work but no further signs of action:
The fish should be fresh on Summerland, as there are still commercial fishermen based here along the canal on the north side of the Highway. They park their boats here, mend their nets, and store their lobster pots: 
The first time I rode to the Keys on a Vespa in 1981 I worried about the likely lack of gas along the way. I didn't recall it was a problem then and it certainly isn't now. There are dozens of gas stations with a few open overnight all down the island chain. Summerland has two, the Mobil Station has a Dion's Chicken outlet and the Chevron has a mechanic's shop. This lady was trouble shooting at the Mobil with what looks like the Dion's cook interestingly enough:
If you are planning a day out on the water there is a 24 hour self service ice dispenser between the island's two gas stations. Visitors tend to forget that despite all pretensions to the contrary these islands are part of the US and people would rapidly organize a revolution were they to be deprived of twenty four hour availability of ice. 
Summerland Key's sit down gastronomic center has changed hands recently a couple of times and the changes weren't for the better. I haven't eaten there in it's latest incarnation but initial reports are encouraging. There are a few places worth visiting in the Lower Keys, but I would like an unpretentious café serving breakfast and lunch. I have to pluck up my nerve and give this place another try. I wish my neighbors demanded more of their eateries, but then if they did, they'd be in Key West! 
In addition to enjoying a tax haven status as there is no personal state income tax, Florida enjoys wrecking it's natural beauty as best it can by repudiating all zoning efforts. There are zoning laws and restrictions on all sorts of things but the net result in the keys is that public landscaping is a mess. This is not my idea of curb appeal:
The Highway itself isn't particularly interesting, and riding it on a bicycle seems a bit harsh, even if you have a café con leche in one hand to ease the tedium of avoiding gravel, parked cars and all that sun baked traffic.
To be the major commercial center between Key West and Big Pine Key one would suppose you might need a video rental store to compete with Blockbuster in Key West and the Big Pine video store in the Winn Dixie shopping center. The Summerland store has some excellent candies as well as the owner took over the Key West Nut House after the Big Coppitt business got flooded in Hurricane Wilma.
While driving through Summerland on the Highway it's worth taking one's eyes off the road to glance at the hardware store that offers northbound drivers a thought for the day: 
The store itself is a modest unassuming building but they have pretty much anything a homeowner might need and a great deal of what keeps a boat afloat. It's pretty amazing to me and they are unfailingly helpful too. 
Before I went to Italy my fuel line was giving me problems on my boat. I came to the ACE store which had the clip on the shelf. 50 renminbi later and fifteen minutes of buggering about in the boat and all was fixed. All this helpfulness is just two miles (3 kms) from my home..
The Summerland Post Office serves the islands between Sugarloaf and Little Torch, including my island of Ramrod Key.It's an undistinguished building, in the federal utility style:
I cannot help myself but I get irritated by automated address computers that extrapolate one's address from the ZIP when one is ordering something for delivery. My Zone Improvement Code is obviously in Summerland so if I give out my address as Ramrod it confuses the mail order computers occasionally, so I am tempted to give my address as Summerland. My wife gets annoyed when we get mail delivered to us on Summerland Key. It's just another case of machines gone mad, but fortunately the Postal Service doesn't get fazed and my mail arrives in either case. .
There has been some building in recent years along the highway including this fortress-like structure, hurricane proof I hope, looking rather extra territorial with it's massive walls and gates, fit for a consulate of an unfriendly nation:
The food store on Summerland is easily identified by a large sign whose orange bands remind us this is hurricane season and neon signs are vulnerable to high winds. 
The canal that runs behind the supermarket separates the businesses along Highway One from the rest of the island, which includes the runway at the Summerland airfield (see my essay Conch Republic Air 25th February 2008), whose take off and landing area runs right over the market:
Incidentally the Chevron gas station has a dock on this canal for boats needing fuel and supplies. While around the back of the market I spotted an intriguing sign...One is tempted to imagine that customers might well be okay in bare feet, but this is just the side door for those pesky old tradesmen and apparently absent minded employees (how often do you have to remind your colleagues to please show up wearing shoes?) 
There is much more to Summerland Key of course, not forgetting the best pizza in the Lower Keys, bar none including No Name Pub, which is Slice of Paradise. Aside from the flavor, the next best thing about them is that they deliver right up until the moment a hurricane is actually knocking at your door. A pizza pie and a glass of wine after you've finished securing your property really is a slice of paradise. Who says we can't be civilized in the outer reaches of mainland USA?
The food store on Summerland is easily identified by a large sign whose orange bands remind us this is hurricane season and neon signs are vulnerable to high winds. The canal that runs behind the supermarket separates the businesses along Highway One from the rest of the island, which includes the runway at the Summerland airfield (see my essay Conch Republic Air 25th February 2008), whose take off and landing area runs right over the market:
Incidentally the Chevron gas station has a dock on this canal for boats needing fuel and supplies. While around the back of the market I spotted an intriguing sign...One is tempted to imagine that customers might well be okay in bare feet, but this is just the side door for those pesky old tradesmen and apparently absent minded employees (how often do you have to remind your colleagues to please show up wearing shoes?) There is much more to Summerland Key of course, not forgetting the best pizza in the Lower Keys, bar none including No Name Pub, which is Slice of Paradise. Aside from the flavor, the next best thing about them is that they deliver right up until the moment a hurricane is actually knocking at your door. A pizza pie and a glass of wine after you've finished securing your property really is a slice of paradise. Who says we can't be civilized in the outer reaches of mainland USA? 
The art deco theme works quite well for what used to be Key West's premier industrial plant. It was an electricity generating station built in the style of architecture that it seems to me was favored by Soviet state artists, all massive and geometric. At night it looks like the set off a Batman movie:
The front part of the building may look pretty much done, as far as construction goes, never mind the sales of the actual apartments...The back part though, the part overlooking the Coastguard Station and the waters of the Toxic Triangle doesn't look at all finished:
In a palazzo offering individual elevators to each apartment from each parking stall, so owners can ascend in stately solitude, this appears to be the trades men's entrance. A sort of communal entrance where ordinary people hustle on up, currently not ready for prime time judging by the wrapping tape on the hand rails:
The Steam Plant created the name Toxic Triangle for the waters that abut Trumbo Road, an awkwardly shaped body of water heavily polluted by the chemical effluents for the power plant. Nowadays the generator is become almost a garden:
Each line of approach, each door, has a sign reminding passersby that the good life is available for a modest, if necessary payment. The begging is carried out in grand style on the main billboard:
The side of the building that faces downtown Key West, and more immediately Caroline Street and the ferry terminal also looks out over the landscaped garden surrounded by its black spiky fence:
There is something thoroughly dorky about all these fences and security and the main gate, complete with gate code, is wide open and totally unlocked:
And there it sits all imposing and massive, rather like an iceberg, dominating Trumbo Road:
If you happen to have around three million dollars (21 million yuan) going spare, a piece of this could be yours. Who're ya gonna call? 
I asked him his name. "Wyatt," he deadpanned. I could have called him on it but I was thinking maybe he would plug me full of lead. Duval Street is like that; you take your life in your hands every time you head down there, pardner.
Surely not?
I've heard many positive things about this relatively new place on Caroline Street. However I include this picture just to point out there are lots of ways to waste energy.
My wife and I tried the first Braza Lena which appeared in the Upper Keys a couple of years ago. The bill was large enough ($75 each approximately) that we never went back.
This Yamaha looked pretty good, equipped with luggage attachments which gave it the air of a daily rider. However a closer look at the fuel tank offered up a blemish that reminded me why I spent 2100 reminbi to have my tank and front fender painted and why I think it was such a good deal after my wreck: 
The Bonneville looks just as it did before the June 1st slide, including a replacement set of fabric Triumph panniers (saddlebags to colonials). 
It was hot downtown but taking a break on the sidewalk on the 400 block of Caroline leaves one open to the charge of being a bum. However Key West's professional hobos like the bus stop as the place to wile away their endless empty days. This guy seemed to waiting for something:
"Yes, but does the Jack Russell terrier need you?" I wondered. I am not a kid person. I never much enjoyed my turn as a child and have never wanted to inflict the pain on a new generation. I like dogs though and I feel sorry for them when small children torture them or neglect them, as they inevitably seem to.
What prompted the quick shot was the Snap-On tool vendor cruising Key West's main shopping center. I wondered if he was just taking a little detour down the main drag for a break from the urgent business of selling, or did he have a client down here? The maintenance crew at the hotel La Concha? I will never know. But The Snap-On tool van was definitely on Duval and I have the picture to prove it. 
And yes, I was there on the Bonneville: 
Despite the summer heat there is no shortage of cyclists on Key West streets. Perhaps it helps that this is a shady street. 
I thought this brick house for sale, with no price attached, looked as though it should be under the pines of Alabama or Georgia, not the palms of Key West: 
The typical tropical growth looks good:
I don't have any lawns at my house, and though I'm no great fan of pea rock it doesn't require this sort of labor to keep it looking nice:
The wall in fact surrounded a lush lawn surmounted by the usual array of palms and in point of fact water restrictions make no distinction between aqueduct water and well water when rationing is in effect. I suppose because wasting water is wasting all the same. If I run my rainwater cistern dry I guess I would then be forced to use the aqueduct water which puts added strain ultimately on an over taxed aquifer. 
The wall stretched for the better part of a block:
I checked the other side of the magnificent wall and found the home, shaded by palms with a garage alongside opulent enough to qualify as a spacious Key West home in it's own right: 
