Irredentist Stock Island

There have been noises in Key West about possibly annexing Stock Island to the city. It may be wishful thinking but I rather hope this idea will be the Nude Beach Issue of 2014, the flag that someone flew last year and that ultimately no one saluted. Stock Island got its name from the cows stored here for the use of residents in the nearby city who preferred to keep their manure out of town. The signage used here is a bit stronger in flavor than the mild, dreary no trespassing signs that uglify Old Town Key West. Shooting potential customers seems an odd way to do business to me. Making aggressive threats seems odd too but this is Stock Island. Grr...we be tough.

I wondered for a moment if these old beauties were waiting for the next boat to Havana where they recycle old cars like crazy. Because they have to.

What Stock Island lacks in physical attractions it makes up for in utility. This is the housing market that at some level, though overpriced as always, is a lot more affordable than Key West. Hotels would have no cleaning staff, restaurants would have no dish washers and and fast food chains would close.

Chickens as always continue to run free, just like Key West.

The thing is that the city annexed the north half of Stock Island years ago to make possible a city development of homes at the golf course. But adding the southern half of the island benefits no big developer as there is nothing there to sweep away and develop. Or is there?

There have been plans in the works ever since the boom years to redevelop Stock Island when the newspaper published a map of the island with a development overlay of all the parcels purchased and destined to be gentrified. No luck so far, perhaps someone has figured if they gentrify Stock Island Key West's underpaid tourist economy collapses.

For now there seems to be an uneasy coexistence on the water between the commercial fishing fleet displaced from Key West's Bight and the encroaching high end marinas and yacht clubs that are being redeveloped.

There isn't much here to attract tourists excepting a couple of nice restaurants, Hogfish and Roostica along with the Dolphin Deli and my favorite El Mocho are reason enough to visit. The boatyards, autobody shops and construction yards may be outside the zone of interest of people visiting town to drink and party but they are what keep things going.

My main reason for not wanting to annex Stock Island revolves purely around my work as doubling the size of the city would increase the emergency dispatch work load. Doubling because the the Irredentism movement also has its eyes on annexing neighboring Key Haven where the upper crust reside, imagine that property tax base.

Aside from my personal lack of enthusiasm about the idea, annexation it seems to me might be a bad idea from a sociological point of view. The city has quite a few persnickety rules that might not go down real well in communities where they are in the habit of abandoning vehicles and trailers on the streets.

The funny part is that people who live on any of the islands between Stock Island and Sugarloaf Key are in the habit of assuming they live in Key West. That's because they are served by the post office in Key West, so mail sent to Bay Point, Geiger Key, Shark Key or Big Coppitt among others is all labeled with a Key West address. But they are all residents of unincorporated Monroe County.

I love these "increased penalty" signs. They make lawmakers feel good because they are "tough on crime" and can thus bullshit the voters, a tactic that seems to work sadly, but I doubt addicts and their pushers are calculating the length of prison terms if they do their deals in Bernstein Park instead of around the corner. In my opinion the only thing that might tamp the activity down is more cops on the streets. You'll notice speeders ignore the "fines doubled if workers present" signs on the highways, but the brake lights come on as soon as they spot a marked car. But more cops cost money so it's considered more effective (ie: cheaper) to stick up a sign. At least the sign lets the rest of us be aware we are now in a high probability drug dealing zone...

Cheyenne on these walks is always blissfully unaware of my ruminations. Indeed she is unaware of the sleeping cat her presence frightened into a semblance of wakefulness.

Stock Island street scenes, some mud...

...always a boat...

...and the hope of a better life to come. Better that I suppose than wresting improvements here and now from an uncaring world.

The heart of Stock Island, the Tom Thumb.

If they did annex Stock Island, Key West would join the rest of the island chain in getting its own Tom Thumb inconvenience store. That's reason enough to call for a vote I guess.

Posted with Blogsy

Truman To Catherine

One day I am going to learn to appreciate the craze for symbols of winter proudly displayed in the Southernmost City. I have a colleague at work who is heartsick all winter, waiting for cold weather to blow through town, heartsick because we haven't had a really cold blast for what? at least the past two winters...

Strolling past Don's Place, a dive of a bar filled with drinkers who mumble at each other about the weather in their former homes as they sup alcohol at seven in the morning, I wondered about the dangling plastic snowflakes. Cheyenne had her nose on something closer to the ground.

I love how Key West lives indoors and outdoors, like those of us that live in the suburbs, but where our lives thrust outdoors are mostly out of sight on our suburban streets, in the city if you throw your home open - there it is in all it's messy detail.

I haven't been down Wong Song Alley in a while, but a quick peek off Truman Avenue showed not only that the peculiar name plate is up and looking good (tourists steal them) but the alley itself which pops out on Virginia Street was cleaner than I have seen it before and looking terribly respectable. No longer is it the jungly, mysterious darkness it once was.

I see places like this all across town. In a city as expensive as this you'd think every structure would be up and running and exploited. Not so. "No Dumping" the sign says. But the place is a dump, I say!

Our walk led us from Truman Avenue to Catherine Street, home of the Cuban Restaurant icon El Siboney. Not quite open for business yet, a slower starter than Don's Place.

Like I said there are a lot of homes in need of tender loving care, and cash. So if they get bought out of the family and refurbished they are gentrified which is disruptive to the social fabric, but if they are left to crumble what are they? Is there a middle path? Beats me.

Cheyenne doesn't pose difficult questions to herself. She enjoys the freedom of retirement and chasing smells. She even ignores the...

...warning signs. This one appeared to be a bluff as nothing appeared in response to our pause in front of the protected property.

I was struck by the line of big green trash cans stretching to the horizon. Cheyenne was struck by something else. I photographed, she sniffed.

And all was well with our world.

Posted with Blogsy

Algae and Armageddon

I read recently a hopeful article about turning algae into gasoline. More accurately the article spoke of farming algae with high fat content to turn them into the equivalent of crude oil which could then be refined into all the familiar and unfamiliar products we see coming out of oil refineries. As presented the article suggested that algae farming harvesting and refining on a mass scale is just around the corner and the suggestion was that Peak Oil is on the verge of being banished from the minds of the few people who are conscious of it. That notion set me to wondering.

I mean, if we are supposed to be worried about climate change which scientists assure us is real and most likely caused by human actions, namely burning hydro carbons, then prolonging the era of Happy Motoring as KUNSTLER rather provocatively describes our modern suburban lifestyle seems like madness. Yet environmentalists say the algae plan is brilliant.

Then I hear from the climate change scoffers whose idea of a sensible debate about this little understood but much derided phenomenon is to mock Al Gore, of all the threats to Republican hegemony he is the smallest I think, and yet...har har hearty har har the coldest winter storm in 200 years is proof positive climate change isn't happening. Actually it is happening precisely as predicted. Violent weather increased frequency and devastated crops are all part of the plan. Yet the joke is on Al Gore. People are weird.

Mind you that silver food truck in the picture above is the number one rated best restaurant in Key west! according to Trip Advisor. If you can find it when it's open that is. So the w e ask, should be believe everything we read on the internet? Hardly.

Besides let's be honest, if climate change is real and our burgeoning population is stripping the planet of resources it means the next few generations are going to be in some pretty deep trouble one way and another and who wants to think about that? I certainly don't, but I don't have children so if the Keys flood in thirty or fifty years I'll be dead, cremated and forgotten anyway. Yet I have this nagging feeling I should care, I should do something, but I don,t know what. And if people who do have children think the best response to climate change is to mock Al. Gore, well what can I do?

As for algae for fuel count me in. I wish it were possible but I have my doubts, perhaps if the oil companies see the possibility as real they will buy up the algae rights and all will be well for a few decades more motoring for those as can afford it. Right now any way we're burning corn for fuel while people starve and even Americans go hungry in their millions...so I reserve the right to think that our priorities are skewed.

I remember when I first came to this country there was a program initiated by Democrats and supported by Republicans which gave away food products that were surplus to the farmer's requirements, purchased by the government and given to the poor. Naturally such munificence today is impossible to imagine, that when the Federal Reserve is printing a trillion dollars a year to buy government debt and support the banks and at the same time congress cuts food stamps by 80 billion dollars a year to deprive the poor of food. Whatever works, right? I wonder what happened to the world while us baby boomers were growing old.

I love internal combustion, it defines my generation and even though I don't much like driving cars nearly as much as I like riding motorcycles I don't look forward to the end of affordable fuel. So I like the idea of fuel from algae as an alternative to a return to horses and carts. But at what price.

It is a funny world when my dog lives better than half the people on the planet but I am unable to unravel the dilemma of what to do about it. I live in Key West partly I suppose because I want to seek refuge "south of reality" but Key West isn't really far enough for that.

There's a new hotel popping up on Caroline Street and that will be 96 more rooms to fill. I doubt they are worrying about fuel from algae as they build, and apparently tourism is here to stay so that is a good thing in a city that lives and dies by the money generated.

There are moments when I wish that I could come back in a hundred years and finally get to see the flying cars they promised us decades ago, powered by algae in a world where climate change was proved to be a myth on a planet happily hosting twelve billion people in peace and harmony. As it is every generation has expected to be the last, the inevitable human attribute of pride, determined that the world cannot continue without us, a world without baby boomers would be no world at all we believe in the secret place in our hearts. That to me sounds sillier by far than climate change denial. Bring it on, someone will stick around to keep the planet spinning for those next on the stage. Let them burn algae when the time comes.

Key West on Dwellable

Posted with Blogsy

Insomnia In Key West

Love unrequited robs me of me rest;

Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers;

Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on me chest,

And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers...

I usually sleep the sleep of the just, anywhere anytime, when I feel like sleeping, standing lying or sitting, I close my eyes, turn off my brain and start to snore and drool almost at will. To hear people tell of insomnia is to hear a foreign language for me. And yet the other night it happened...to...me! I was tossing and turning, just as William Schenk Gilbert wrote in his Nightmare song from the operetta "Iolanthe." The Lord Chancellor isn't doing well and he breaks out into song describing his failed attempts to sleep and the incoherent dream that followed when he did finally get some shut eye:

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache

And repose is taboo'd by anxiety,

I conceive you may use any language you choose

To indulge in, without impropriety;

For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire

Of usual slumber to plunder you:

First your counter-pane goes, and uncovers your toes,

And your sheet slips demurely from under you;

Then the blanketing tickles, you feel like mixed pickles,

So terribly sharp is the pricking,

And you're hot and you're cross, and you tumble and toss,

'Til there's nothing twixt you and the ticking.

 

I woke up a perfectly happy sleeping hound, and it was cold enough she had chosen to curl up on her bed not her usual spot on the cooler wooden floor, and together we took a ride into Key West at about 4:30 in the morning, a cool windy day but not boasting temperatures in the fifties that were scheduled the next day.

When you get some repose in the form of a doze,

With hot eyeballs and head ever aching,

Your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams

That you'd very much better be waking;

For you dream you are crossing the channel, and tossing

About in a steamer from Harwich,

Which is something between a large bathing machine

And a very small second class carriage,

And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat)

To a party of friends and relations,

They're a ravenous horde, and they all come aboard

At Sloane Square and South Kensington stations.

The highway was gloriously empty of course and we made good time to the city where I decided to park near the former waterfront market and let Cheyenne choose the way. We were utterly alone with the night and the wind and the few lights burning here and there. Bars must close by four each morning so the drunken hordes had left already.

And bound on that journey, you find your attorney

(who started this morning from Devon);

He's a bit undersized and you don't feel surprised

When he tells you he's only eleven.

Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad

(By the by, the ship's now a four-wheeler),

And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names

When you tell him that ties pay the dealer;

But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand,

And you find you're as cold as an icicle,

In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks)

Crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle.

I take great pleasure in fiddling with my Android camera and with no one around I let Cheyenne wander at will and while she sniffed I took pictures. It was most relaxing, playing with the settings and wasting film by deleting pictures that didn't please me. I love digital pixels, easy come easy go! They are not the best tool to seek immortality but there again eternity seems a bit long drawn out to me, only having ever experienced it in doctors' waiting rooms.

And he and the crew are on bicycles too,

Which they've somehow or other invested in,

And he's telling the tars all the particulars

Of a company he's interested in;

It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices

All goods from cough mixtures to cables

(Which tickled the sailors) by treating retailers

As though they were all vegetables:

The city looks quite different at night, a difference enhanced by the use of black and white pictures or using the monochrome setting in the camera, or sepia tints. So many choices! The parking garage that in daylight looks like a cement lump here looks different.

 

 

The Half Shell was still displaying blue and white colored lights to celebrate the recently completed (hint hint) season.

You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman

(first take off his boots with a boot tree),

And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot,

And they'll blossom and bud like a fruit tree;

From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green peas,

Cauliflower, pineapple and cranberries,

While the pastry-cook plant cherry brandy will grant,

Apple puffs, and three corners, and banburys;

The shares are a penny and ever so many

Are taken by Rothschild and Baring's,

And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake

With a shudder, despairing...

Conveyances in Key west can be as simple as a bicycle with a bathtub trailer. Quite brilliant I think every time I see it.

And this is pioneer lo the fishing retail trade we are told is a man named Booty Singleton and fondly remembered by friends and families and commercial fishermen. The cold brought to mind the well known phrase involving brass monkeys (Wikipedia to the rescue) when looking at his bronze statue.

I liked the juxtaposition of the modern and terribly useful plastic bucket on the deck of the revered "tall ship" which is a common name for these boats but is not really a maritime name at all. A Barque or a square rigger or some other thing never much considered by the sellers of advertising...

The docks at five in the morning are quite evocative I think, a place for dark deeds and derringer do. Or just me and my dog ambling.

It was windy. Really.

You're a regular wreck

With a crick in your neck,

And no wonder you snore

for your head's on the floor

And you've needles and pins

From your soles to your shins,

And your flesh is acreep

For your left leg's asleep,

And you've cramp in your toes

And a fly on your nose,

And some fluff in your lung

And a feverish tongue,

And a thirst that's intense

And a general sense...

...that you haven't been sleeping in clover;

But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last!

The night has been long, ditto, ditto my song,

And thank goodness they're both of them over!

Above we see the slow pace of construction of the interior of the old Waterfront Market that is to become a brew pub some day, perhaps soon. And below someone curled up like a dog trying to keep out the cold.

Windy enough that night that trees fell over, which won't impress people Up North covered by the worst freeze in 200 years. That's why I have not mentioned our tribulations in the land where 60 degrees seems frigid. Where snow falls and water freezes explaining that sixty degrees in the damp windy Keys feels so much colder cuts no ice as it were.

Cheyenne had a thoroughly good time and covered my face in kisses for she is an expressive dog. Then she breakfasted and passed out while I got ready for work.

It was a cold ride back to my job but I don't think she spared me a thought as this Labrador never suffers from insomnia.

 

Seattle G&S The Nightmare Song 1997 - YouTube

Key West on Dwellable

 

Posted with Blogsy