Sugarloaf Food Company

They call it the Sugarloaf Food Company because that's where it used to be, the owner told me, though now it is on the north side of the Overseas Highway on Summerland Key. It's easy enough to spot:I am compulsive enough that I would change the name and use the original incorporation papers modified with a "doing business as Summerland..." but that is more a mark of my personality defects than of any problem with their food. Besides, I think people enjoy the quirky absence of corporate conformity and having to ask why Sugarloaf on Summerland gets people talking. Most people (not me) like tot alk when they go out to buy food.Many food outlets in the Lower Keys like to take Monday off so the fact these people are open six days a week is worth noting.
I would have to return without my wife to be able to advise what these things taste like but they were just one item in a whole display case.The staff are uniformly cheerful and efficient, and while they may be friendly they don't seem to forget that sandwiches are food for people on the go. "Organized chaos" one employee laughed. Organized organization I think, masquerading as cheerful chaos.It's not a startling menu but they use quality ingredients and though I have yet to work my way through the menu board I am pretty sure I won't regret going out on a limb.A modern business cannot it seems get by without dust catchers for sale...Perhaps it is a remnant of the boom economy when we could blow twenty bucks on a whim; probably snowbirds still can. We took our sandwiches and coffee outside and sat on the deck in back under an aquamarine umbrella that lent the day a peculiar submarine shade.

A wrap and a quiche and some very good coffee, none of that battery acid extra burnt stuff here. I am a lone yuppie in a world that doesn't seem to appreciate mild sweet coffee anymore. I rate a cup well made if I don't have to tone it down with milk. I took mine black at the irritatingly named Sugarloaf Food Company at Mile Marker 25, on Summerland Key. Everyone wants a water view in the Keys. we got a water glimpse out back:

I wondered how they were going to make it when they opened a few years ago which goes to show how little I know. They do a land sale business every time I drive by and with good reason because the stuff tastes good. If I were driving to Key West I might well stop here for a break before the Big City swept me up.

Spain Boulevard

I have been out here a few times but Cheyenne and I walked here together for the first time last week. A clump of houses set among the mangroves and backwaters of north Cudjoe (pro: Kud-joe) Key. The cyclists were rushing north on Blimp Road without a solitary glance down the dirt road that is Spain Boulevard to their right.That's okay, Cheyenne and I enjoy our companionable solitude. She shows little interest in other dogs, a quick sniff and she moves on. She showed little interest in the horse paddocks found in the middle of the housing subdivision out here.I like the rural look of the area, the fields and fences put one in mind of places where agriculture actually exists.A place unlike the Keys where farm tractors are only used to trim roadside mangroves or sweep up dead seaweed at the beach.This sort of countryside is not ideal for planting crops or harvesting anything much except possibly fish. I would not like to live on a gravel street; I have suffered these kinds of roads in the past and all they end up doing, aside from looking picturesque, is throwing clouds of dust or mud depending on the season which requires incessant vehicle washing.Horse turds on the other hand don't bother me much at all, though I am glad Cheyenne's output, though smellier, is a lot smaller than these fragrant heaps: There were no horses there that day but she seemed to be looking and wondering. A warning I think (" I feel entitled to drive badly as I am towing horses"), and probably not a command. Which is lucky as I had none to show. By local standards the lots are large and vegetation is rampant to secure privacy. One doesn't feel much like invading these yards with a camera and a dog and shouting: "Smile!"
I am very fond of mushrooms but these looked rather too appealing to be edible. Bright colors in Nature tend to indicate poison. And then we found them. Nothing more than very large dogs really. Cheyenne was not impressed.They were much more interested in us than we in them and we marched on by, with not even a bark from my companion, on past more houses tucked away almost out of sight.

This sign was explicit but looked odd somehow. It was stolen from someplace Up North, Chicago as I recall and transplanted down here. The message was clear enough but using a stolen sign somehow seemed to put it on a rather lower moral pedestal...We respected the spirit of the theft and walked on by.

These is room for newcomers in this neighborhood.

And this area includes examples of my favorite pine trees, shown here with a rather nice palm.Some red flowers, which as they lacked any convenient label I couldn't hazard a guess as to what they are called.

And at last we tramped back to Blimp Road and took our ease:

A pocket park complete with, of all things, a bicycle rack. I wonder why bicycle thieves might be feared around here?

You just can't beat the companionship of a good dog.

New Old Mexico

Bloomberg is reporting some surprising good news, though unfortunately for those of us that live north of the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande it affects us only indirectly. Mexico is doing rather well economically. People and institutions are backing Mexico and buying their bonds, and the Ministry of Finance says Mexico has no Sovereign Debt Stress. Well, there's a turn up for the books. Of course Mexico's bonds have improved their rating at the hands of the ratings agencies (incompetents, crooks or slaves of their corporate masters, you choose the derogatory term) and now Mexico's government debt is rated BBB rather than "unsuitable." If US Treasuries were rated BBB world finance would spin into a black hole but this is Mexico.It is safe to assume not everyone is benefitting from the new rating, but still...Mexico was always feared as a source of problems for southern US States, an exporter of desperate workers seeking money (and mythical welfare if you listen to the anti-immigrant zealots) and lately the Peak Oil crowd has expected Mexico's finances to do a toilet-whooshing disappearance with the shrinking of the Cantarell Oil Field, one of the largest in the world. Then the speculation was that illegal drug money was propping up the Mexican economy as the border states became battlegrounds for control of the access routes to the lucrative US market. Ours is the land of despair so people need their drugs to stay less unhappy... and conversely, Mexico is happy to fill our chemical needs. You can hardly blame them, the capitalist swine,for choosing to fulfill a market niche.

Yesterday Bloomberg, in analyzing comments by the teutonically named Alejandro Werner, Bloomberg found that tax increases, spending cuts and fiscal restraint have left Mexico's Government's finances in quite decent shape. One has to assume that there is some measure of truth in the deputy Finance Minister's comments, not least because PIMCO, the US mega fund manager has given Mexican bonds the green light.

These days it is difficult to take government statements at face value in light of the bullshit Goldman Sachs has pulled in Greece and Italy, and who knows where else, helping governments cover up the extent of their indebtedness, but if the Mexican story is real, and over time we shall see, then it could be a lesson learned for us in El Norte. Of course there are tons of lessons our leaders should have carried out but our dear corporations put a lock on them all. Whether or not impoverished Mexicans feel buoyed by the news will be hard to tell, from this far away. However standards of living did go up under President Fox, the oily Coca Cola salesman, during the boom years, and one can hope that a calm governmental budget scene will allow them to hold on to their gains.Plus there is the new drive to form a trading group in South America and the Caribbean excluding the US and Canada and forming their own currency, the SUCRE ( not the old Ecuadorian sucre) and trading by barter. With the decline of our empire other forms of trade and one hopes humanity, will fill the void.So much for the speculators of doom suggesting Mexicans will pour across the border to take over our economy as theirs fails, a cross-border replay of the 1910 revolution. We've already seen a net export of undocumented Mexicans going home as our economy implodes. Perhaps it won't be too long before we see Gringos pedaling pedi-cabs in the resort towns of Mexico...

More Sculptures

This is a dragonfly, and it's made of reused bric-a-brac. It sits on display at the Botanical Gardens on Stock Island as part of the annual Sculpture Key West show.It was a clever piece of work and though I have lamented previously on this blog, let me take a moment to point out how annoying it is that the Sculpture Key West show has been split through three locations. I preferred it when it was all centrally located at Fort Zachary Taylor. There it is and I shall complain no more, unless I make it to the third location, the West Martello Tower at Higgs Beach to check out the last group of pieces on display. The dragonfly was accompanied by a large display explaining in more depth than I ever imagined how these insects live and move:This phrase below caught my eye and gets the prize for least information in a clause: "...but was introduced to Hawaii around 1973." Who, why, what, etc... all spring to mind, but because mine is the mind of an old school journalist these hanging thoughts will have to remain dangling.
Big men with powerful cameras find the gardens attractive for real photography: I wandered, caught between my own impediments of pocket camera, wife and dog. Then we came across a vast spider's web which is supposedly: Ludwicka Ogorzelec's dream like fantasy out of sheer translucency or something like that.All I can say is it looked like a spider's web to me.This stray plastic bag bore a striking resemblance to the spider's web:

At first I thought it was a dog, but the sign post put me right:Made, rather cleverly out of a diver's air tank, aluminum baseball bats, bronze pots and I don't remember what else.This next one was, shall I say, enigmatic?

Because I am not an artists I would have called it "Ball On Chair" and gone home for tea.

This next one looked daft but was actually very cool.

It was a mirror lying on the ground:

And, because it was just that, a mirror, you could make it "see" whatever you want:

At the entrance to the gardens there was this sand sculpture which I found captivating. They call it Africa and apparently it is located underneath the alluringly named African Sausage Tree. What can I say, I am very fond of sausages?They have an open air workshop conveniently located across from Sandy's Café where they will teach you to do stuff like this.
It is so amazingly intricate I have no idea how they can learn this stuff never mind teach it. But the evidence is there before our eyes:The details are astonishing. I loved this croc appearing mysteriously from the sand itself:

I thought the whole thing gained weight and allure by the very fragility and temporary nature of sculpting outdoors in sand:Here today, gone tomorrow. And adult sand castle! Not a sculpture, my car with a couple of strangers standing by:I thought that Nissan looked familiar.