Christmas Dog Walk

We got Cheyenne a cage and she seems to like it. I don't, it creeps me out putting a dog behind bars in the living room, but I cannot argue with Progress and everyone uses these things nowadays. She likes riding the car- a lot- and we took her into town for dinner with friends at El Siboney yesterday evening. We got there early and that gave us time to go for a walk as dusk settled over the city. El Siboney was packed inside:
Christmas decorations make Key West quite magical, and I don't miss snow one bit. I like the bright colored lights:
The white lights that mimic icicles.
And in passing I noticed the pile of cement bricks that will soon become the Silver Palms motel, an eco-hotel for the 21st century. It will replace the El Rancho that was torn down here earlier this year, at Truman and Margaret:Cheyenne thought the piles of hotel laundry freshly minted by the Margaret Truman Laundry were fascinating, and I was glad they were securely wrapped in plastic:
I thought this construction trailer looked kind of sad, illuminated and occupied the night before the night before Christmas.

When you walk a dog you frequently end up inspecting trashy places at close quarters:

And this time of year you pass lots of brightly decorated homes:

Was that Santa's sleigh parked in front of the house? Hell no, it's just a scooter.

This wasn't his sleigh either, but I was glad to see he's modernized and uses a hack to get around:It seemed rather chilly to us, below 70 degrees (21C), but it wasn't at all frosty:
"Merry Christmas!" she shouted cheerfully as she glided past, her bicycle all illuminated for the holidays.Not particularly seasonal but I liked the golden shining square high up on the wall. It was evocative of something.

A sub-tropical Christmas is a lot more fun than you might think, with palm trees, short sleeves and not a drop of mud or ice in sight.

We had great fun, the wife the dog and I, just wandering around Margaret, Truman, Virginia and Catherine streets. My wife is getting ready to go to the Bahamas with some girlfriends for eight days on the beach, as it were. I am girding my loins for eight straight nights of dispatching in her absence, and Cheyenne, though she doesn't know it just yet will be sleeping in the back seat of the car at the Police Station while I work. Strangely enough she really likes the car and seems to feel secure in it. So this pre-dinner walk was a last chance to hang out and do nothing much together. After dinner we took the car to Whitehead Street where Cheyenne took a nap and we four humans went to see 12 Angry Men, a superb production at the Waterfront Playhouse. It was my first night out in two weeks and it was a great way to bid adieu to shingles, I hope. If you have a chance to see the play by all means go as I thought it deserved all the rave reviews it has received since opening night.

Duval Street seemed crowded on a cursory inspection:

I have no idea if they are shopping or just cruising but it was good to see a crowd out enjoying a cool breezy night under the stars. I hope they enjoyed theirs as much as we did ours.

Christmas Shopping

Christmas shopping is down they tell us, as Americans worry about the economy (and Tiger Woods chasing blonde white women), so in these times I am willing to share a secret. Cheap souvenirs are to be found here, not in t-shirt shops of Duval Street. Cheyenne likes the car but she always likes to try it on and go for a stroll. Walgreens is not pet friendly.
This chain store is clearly not located in Old Town. When the Conchs sold their rickety wooden cottages and moved out to the wilderness of what became New Town, after World War Two they built ranch homes and around 1965 Searstown appeared, a proper shopping mall as was. It all looks rather quaint these days but box stores proliferated along North Roosevelt Boulevard. A few years ago Home Depot arrived next to Walgreens, after Scotty's chain left the Keys. And so we modernize. Twenty four hour shopping- what a concept! Albertsons is also open 24 hours a day so if you time it right you can be a perfect hermit. Though who needs to buy fishing tackle at 2 am I don't know. Easier? Really?
Snowmen, Jesus, Yule logs, sparklers, what the hell, it's all grist for the commercial mill.

This is what we are after: Be still my beating heart, every useless stereotypical image in one souvenir:

I am the world's worst shopper. Do you really need this? If you do now you know where to find it.

They were annoyingly short of bumper stickers but Key chains they had by the dozen:

This happily is the only snow you will ever see in Key West. And yes the actual beaches are about that big and no bigger:
There is absolutely no limit to how far Mammon will stick his camel's nose under the edge of the tent, is there?

I took these pictures before the advent of the recent cold front but I have no doubt this woman will wear this style of winter clothing through most of the next few months:
Lines are endemic to Walgreens. Note to self: next time shop at 2am.
Doesn't this look modern and bright and anywhere USA? Tourists will stay away in droves so if you want to meet locals you know where to come:
This essay is a reminder that you have not many hours left to shop for Christmas so get your snow covered asses over to your own local friendly Walgreens and be patient in line. I hope your souvenir aisle is as interesting as ours.

Grinnell Pocket Park

They call them pocket parks, little corners of the city that are transformed into public spaces. I wrote an essay last year about a few of them including this one...

http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/05/unconsidered-trifles.html

...and I decided to come back to see what was what.
Clearly they have or have had their issues. Noise is always an issue in a small town compressed as tight as this one and not everyone thinks of that when they decide to take up "island time" for themselves, full time. In the time this park has been here they have done the usual tarting up thing with labels, now dilapidated:
This piece of public art is dedicated to a member of a family that made a brief name for themselves as art gallery owners in town during the boom years. Art for the people they offered until they could no longer, and retreated to Miami and it's wealthier market. And now there is a monument to anyone that remembers the Charest-Weinberg name in modest little Key West: Cheyenne liked the concept of pocket parks:
She was oblivious to the cemetery across Angela Street:

I sniffed a good deal less than my dog, but I did observe all the tidy little beds they have lined with bricks. I see them as an attempt to bring order where none need prevail:The monument failed to intrigue Cheyenne though she gave it a quick look. It was gray day, promising rain and a cold front that was soon to fill the Keys with cold air. It felt like decay was all around.I liked the park a lot better in it's early stages when there were some bushes ands scrappy grass and a bunch of plastic chairs put out by people who actually used the new urban space. This pocket park used to be an electrical sub station that buzzed and hummed with electricity all day and all night. I thought it was a great improvement to see it emptied of electrical transformers. But now I wonder who uses this open space with no accommodations? No one shows up even, to harvest the fruit!
We were intruders in an unused space, it felt like. Perhaps this place pullulates with people when I am tucked up at work or at home, miles away.
Perhaps they come out and water, and rake, and hoe and......fill the bird bath:Perhaps not. perhaps it just stays empty for the occasional visitor and his dog. They come, they stroll, they look unsuccessfully for somewhere to sit, and finding none they move on.

Fogarty At First

First Street with George Allen public housing across the street. Key West has quite a bit of public housing in this rather bland 1960s style scattered around town. It rather horrifies me in summer when I see open windows and no air conditioning. And across First Street lies Fogarty, heading east.
This street got badly flooded by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and the high waters were a reminder why people originally kept Key West in what is now Old Town, the drier portion of the city closer to the original waterfront. This house looks like it has been closed for a while:

One saw in New Orleans the outer suburbs going underwater that same year as the levees broke, but their version of Old Town, the French Quarter and most of Faubourg Marigny stayed high and dry. There was often more sense in the habits of previous generations that we like to give them credit for. Which is an ungrammatical way of saying our ancestors were smart from bitter experience. For whatever reason people on this block of Fogarty seem to overflowing with stuff:
Though some people like to keep doors of some sort on their stuff in the car port: While others find the room to park a trailer off the street (on-street trailer parking is illegal in Key West) effectively creating a useful storage space:Hurricane shutters this time of year usually indicate snow birds though I thought several homes with them up appeared to be lived in. It seems rather dark and depressing to me, especially as metal shutters tend to bang and rattle in the slightest breeze, giving one the feeling one lives in an empty coffee can. i take mine down as soon as the danger has passed.
Cheyenne, oblivious to my ruminations, found Fogarty Street quite worth her while, seen here nearing Second Street.
Adirondack chairs set our ready for the cool of winter which has been slow coming this December: Wildlife I spotted from across the street stayed put quite a long time while eying the Labrador's oblivious antics. I'm guessing this is a mourning dove, which is a long shot thanks to my innate inability to identify flora or fauna with any hope of accuracy.A trim little home which I would be tempted to label as "sky blue" in color except obviously it is nothing like the blue sky in question:

A made up mailbox. I was tempted to put the flag up to get it out of the way but I'd probably forget to put it down and then the letter carrier would assume there was mail to be picked up and so...My favorite Keys colors, green greenery, white clouds, blue sky: Not a snow flake in sight though this palm was making quite a show of itself on Second Street. Houses surrounded by vegetation always appeal to me, which may be one reason I am so fond of my little tree house on Ramrod Key. This one does a nice job of camouflaging itself: The Bahama shutters leaning out from the house in the back ground are classic Keys style, as is the eminently practical bicycle in the foreground. A proper daily rider with basket for luggage.
I don't care much for the hoopla of Christmas with the shopping craziness and concomitant stress but I do enjoy the outdoor decorations integrated into the landscaping: This rooster and a few chickens were fenced into a yard like pets. I prefer Labradors myself.

I hoe this was intended humorously, because that was how I took it:

And here endeth the brief tour of Fogarty between 1st and 2nd Streets. Classic Key West New Town.