DuPont Lane

Key West managed somehow to elect a black Sheriff in 1889 and his name was Charles Fletcher Dupont, the son of freed slaves. He has a lane named for him east of Duval off Petronia Street.

DuPont wasn't the first black Sheriff of Monroe County, that was James A Roberts who was appointed in 1877 and the first lawman killed in the line of duty in the county was also black as it happens, a Sheriff's deputy called Frank Adams was shot to death while trying to effect an arrest in the city in 1902. You'll hear his name come up at the head of the mercifully short roll of officers who have died every time there is a memorial service in their memory.
The entrance to this very short lane is marked by this rather startlingly imposing wrought iron fence. The lane itself is short, but half a block long though unusually for these kinds of streets in Key West it has an ample turn around at the dead end. It is lined with plush mansions:

And at the dead end it makes a sharp turn into this tunnel like walkway.
The fence is so high that I felt like I was in a cave looking out at the sky:
And seeing hurricane shutters still up, blocking out the sparkling winter sun:

These are my favorite Key West colors, white and green and sky blue:

A carpenter was busy improving some already magnificent home, his workshop was outdoors though his concession to the season was a sweat shirt:

"Good fences make good neighbors" is an ironic quotation frequently attributed to the poet Robert Frost (whom the hospitality industry make great play of as a winter visitor to Key West) and on DuPont Lane they do certainly make the little street rather more blank and uninteresting than others of it's type.This example of over sized, protective picket fence was staffed by two extremely yappy little dogs who stuck their obnoxious snouts between the pickets and dared Cheyenne to approach. She ignored them, reminding me once again that the prejudice against silent, easy going big dogs, and in favor of noisy small brats is arbitrary and misplaced.
This picture I took looking east along Petronia toward Simonton, a much more varied neighborhood street than DuPont.
And this night picture of DuPont I used in my post New Year's Eve essay contrasting the peace and quiet of the lane to the trashed nature of Duval street the morning after.
There is a very complete article with photos at this website if you want to see and learn more about Charles DuPont:
http://thenewtimesholler.com/ARCHIVE/chaldupont.html

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

I haven't stopped for the sunrise in a while but the arrival of the sun is once again coinciding with my departure from work, and the shades of sun, sky and water are irresistible.The anchorage between Stock Island to the west and Boca Chica Navy Base to the east was completely still New Year's morning, without a sign of life. I could have helped myself to this conveniently located Conch cruiser but in the interests of not making the crime statistics worse, I left it alone. Besides it is most likely somebody's only set of wheels, despite the fact they treat it so cavalierly:
Cheyenne was busy on her own account. She seemed rather energetic despite her recent exploration of the delights of Duval Street the morning after the biggest party the night before. All those pizza crusts give a girl energy, apparently.The pickings at the Key Haven boat ramp were rather slimmer. It never hurts to check though:
I couldn't help myself at Mile Marker 14 and I had to stop again. I was in an advantageous position going into the long stretch of uninhabited 55mph (90km/h) zone on the Overseas Highway, with no cars behind me and none in front but I wasted the opportunity to be alone on the road and pulled over. I blame that full moon for my distraction.On the south side of the highway the sun was putting on a show of it's own:Ho hum, another boring stop with nothing to eat. Low tide as revealed by the roots of the red mangrove. The water was as still as on a summer day.

Fiddle with the shutter speed for a little more contrast and voilà:

The long white strand in the picture above is a piece of monofilament ready to snag a wild animal, as it hangs from the power lines above into the water below.

Well, that seemed like a worthwhile stop at the time, and there was so little traffic on the highway New Year's morning we still got home in plenty of time for Cheyenne to have her breakfast before she expired from lack of nourishment.

Dog Parking

It is not immediately obvious that one is entering an easy going and pleasant space on first arrival at the off leash dog park. The list of dedications and rules seems excessive:

The list of county commissioners is not the greatest. Only George Neugent is left from that shower that used to run the county (badly) and he was in fact the sole voice of reason on a board gone power mad. Him and Dr Rice who got ousted before he could get properly started. reforming the way the county did business (badly). Anyway all that happily is in the past.

The rules for the park look positively Byzantine taken as a whole:

In fact they only look excessive. Taken as a whole they ask only that dog owners be sensible and considerate, but people being the way they are I suppose you have to spell out the obvious at some great length ("don't bring sick dogs" etc...).

My buddy Robert painted this barrel that washed up on the county's Boca Chica beach. How it ended up here I have no idea, but it is serving a useful purpose.

There was a drive a few years ago to raise something like $16,000 to fence off and equip this corner of the county park for dogs. I was owned by a rather elderly yellow lab at the time who was not particularly sociable and she enjoyed stumping around the entire park minding her own business. Thus it was I rather resented the creation of the fenced area which chopped up the hinterland of Higgs Beach. In the fullness of time I have come to understand my attitude was rather petty and foolish and the park has become a much valued service in the city.

It is laid out rather well with a decent sized chunk devoted to smaller dogs and they get a row of coconut palms for shade. The big dog area is... bigger and encompasses a variety of trees and Tikis to shade humans and dogs. Even though Higgs Beach Park is squarely in the city, on the southern waterfront, it is a county park (and the city refuses to take it over on the grounds of the expense) and like all city and county parks it is open till 11pm. To that end it is also illuminated at night which is a brilliant innovation in a city where many dogs only come out at night (more or less) in the heat and humidity of summer.

I know everybody loves their dogs but...Cheyenne looks particularly suave I would say.

Oh and by the way the rules say no dog bathing at the drinking fountain please. This is the dividing fence between the little and big dog parks:

Sometimes people with small dogs bring them into the big dog park if they need company and their side of the fence is empty but it seems the reverse is not applicable, even though Cheyenne is probably less aggressive and needy than most terriers you will meet. This is part of the big dog park and it is quite large: The protocol for humans appears to be to sit back and let the dogs have their fun. Easy enough:

Sometimes people gather and talk and there seems to be something of a split between "locals" and "visitors" among the humans,. The dogs don't much care. Michael's owner, a sturdy white shaded male yellow Lab said she was going to have a talk with us about Cheyenne's coat which shows signs still of a life not lived on a comfortable bed. her tune changed abruptly when she found out we had just picked her up from the pound. Dogs don't seem to care that much one way or the other.

The dog park is an easy way to tire a dog out. I'm glad it's here now.

A New Year

"Oh man!" the public works employee groaned as I leveled my camera at the man sleeping upright on the steps. "Don't take his picture!" I'm trying to, I replied emphatically, as my dog jerked the leash and the camera wobbled and refused to focus in the pre-dawn half light. His intoxication, his incapacity, is emblematic of the giant party that just closed out the old year in Key West.There is a school of thought that speaks loudly in favor of of a new kind of tourism in Key West. Supporters of tourism of the wealthy say the city would be much nicer if rich people came to visit, making this public display of incontinence another piece of Key West's quirky history. Me? I was working New Year's Eve with Officers Young and Betz playing Bounce the Dispatcher as they stopped traffic all over town constantly all night on their vigorous DUI patrol. The rest of the city was boozing it up under a full moon, the last blue moon for the next 30 months:I staggered out of the Police Station at ten minutes to six in the morning, handing over the controls to Rachel, abandoning the care of the city to day shift. I had a dog to walk. Cheyenne was a little bleary eyed, over walked I think these past few days. She had refused to come out of the car during the night when I went downstairs to visit her on my breaks and I figured she needed a pick-me-up to get her going. The smells of Duval on the morning after were just the ticket. For some reason this trash can was empty, an ironic sight on the city's main drag that was itself resembling nothing quite so much as a landfill:Cheyenne got to work sniffing the detritus and I got to work photographing what was left of the party. To my amazement I literally knocked into the City Manager, bright eyed, bushy tailed and perfectly groomed, marching down the street organizing the public works crews. Jim Scholl came to the city from the Navy and he has a very different style from his predecessor. Navy ship-shape came to mind as he grinned, telling me how Lower Duval was well on it's way back to human habitability. I had m y work cut out to record the part of the party no one else wants to look at. Cheyenne was volunteering to join the public works crews. I was surprised to see the new Matheessen's store just closing at 6am. This used to be the falafel shop on Duval that I rather liked. Now we have yet more Conch fritters on offer."We seceded where others failed" is the motto of the Conch Republic, whose flag can also apparently be used as a rather attractive, if misplaced, door curtain.(Legible image courtesy of Bruce).

A lonely bottle pointing the way: Ho ho ho , God Bless Us Everyone. Very Dickensian don't you think? Except for the palm tree some spoil sport will feel obliged to point out:Even at this hour the bicycle traffic continues unabated through the remains of the war zone:
One more gruesome sports bar didn't stay open for a month. This is apparently some sort of chain restaurant, but the space is open once again if you have an arm and a leg available to pay for the monthly rent.Lonely Street is the place you fend off with beer and vodka when all else fails. Or you can pass out at the Heartbreak Hotel just out of sight of the picture.

At first glance one could make the argument that upscale tourism would be nice, but frankly I wouldn't like it. When places get boring they lose their charm. If you don't believe me check out Royal Palm Beach or Naples (Florida, I mean). And besides the merchants down here don't really want this lot to change. Public Works, those amazing tireless people, will restore everything before the hang overs are done and commerce will continue and no one will remember to thank them. There was an article in the Citizen, a pean of praise for City Commissioner Mark Rossi who spent $450,000 years ago to buy Ricks Bar and now owns the block upon which a warren of bars exists, along with a strip club called, alluringly enough, The Red Garter, where you can pay very little to see a pair of Eastern European breasts if the mood takes you. The article mentioned that the commissioner is still steamed about a noise ordinance proposed by the developer of Truman Annex all those years ago that would have required a different style of entertainment at Ricks's Bar. The ordinance obviously never made it, and Key West's path to a noisy, beery, cheap trinket renaissance was cast. Plastic cups anyone? Who says it never snows in Key West? Looks like a proper snow drift to me:Everyone went home but they left the lights on. Expense is clearly no object and the concept of conservation hasn't yet penetrated a community where only seven percent of the waste stream is recycled:It is not enough for one location to imitate the Big Apple by dropping a ball at midnight of the Old Year. In Key West the owner of schooner wharf, a lissome blonde dresses as a pirate-ess and drops from a sailboat mast. At Sloppy Joe's a Conch ("konk") shell drops and here they put an Asiatic wo-man in the red slipper and drop her. Take your pick- a real woman, a fake gastropod, or a real cross dresser, Key West would never be so wondrous were it to follow in the path of the gruesome, dull rich of the upper class suburbs.
Trust an anal compulsive like me to notice some dork left the lights on the bike.
The Bahamian arch denotes Petronia Street, scene of the Goombay Street Fair in October.How undignified to leave a cup on the seat of a stranger's scooter. Certainly no cup of kindness here:And then a block away Key West's serenity reasserts itself. "Coexist!" the bumper sticker demands of it's readers. Not impossible to do even in so small a place as Key West. we are only talking here about the visitors and their money on Duval, and the residents, living their quiet lives elsewhere. Not a plastic cup to be seen.