White Street Station

When we travel we get to see television in motel rooms and my wife the cook loves to watch the Food Channel, which is how it has dawned on me that this food truck thing is popular around the country and now it seems to be showing up everywhere including Key West! I've previously tried Garbo's Grill and it was fine. Now it was time to try out the second of three food trucks that have sprouted in the Southernmost City.

Key West has plenty of food stands after a fashion. Typical casual eateries look more like Sandy's which have a huge tourist following, as well as among locals, looking for cheap filling Cuban food.

The food truck phenomenon tries to take the hungry customer into a slightly different direction, that of relatively inexpensive food but finger food that combines ingredients that used to be considered exotic, or common foods combined in exotic style.

An egg sandwich on challah with smoked salmon, a Reuben with chicken bok choy and gruyère, a macaroni and cheese sandwich? I suppose these might be normal wherever you live but not here and prior to White Street Station I had no way of tasting a Vietnamese sandwich. I loved them when I lived near San Jose, California where there is a huge post-1975 Vietnamese emigre community. I ordered one from White Street Station where it is offered with pork and pâté and called Báhn Mì which in Vietnamese actually means "bread."

You can see the attraction of the food truck concept for the operators, with its low overhead and absence of table service. This place has moved into the spot formerly occupied by a seafood retail operation next to the chevron station on Truman and White Streets.

There's room to park and if you choose to you can use their cute tables under the umbrellas:

Walking Cheyenne I had passed by earlier and snagged a menu so I called ahead and ordered a Mac and Cheese and a Vietnamese sandwich to share with my wife on her lunch break from teaching. I am a pretty straightforward menu reader. I order what's on the menu as it's written. I deeply dislike "build your own" food and going to Subway makes me anxious as I hate having to decide what goes with what. Ironically I frequently end up in line behind fussy people who think their life's work is to test the patience of food service workers. Case in point:

Imagine my surprise when the owner of this place appeared behind me as my food was in the final stages of preparation. Michael pointed out he's been on Margaret Street for 17 years and I guess he watches the Food Channel too (!) because he figured a food truck would be the way to do something different and offer a less expensive way to eat. Nothing more than ten dollars on the menu, he pointed out and I like that because you can have a food adventure without spending a lot. And let's face it our economy is going backwards for ninety percent of us so I expect cheaper eats will be good for a lot of my neighbors.

My wife was helping out at the school classroom at the Community College on Stock Island so I took the food across town and we sat in the courtyard under the colorful awnings.

The Báhn Mì with quinoa salad:

The Mac and Cheese with spare rib meat:

For twenty bucks it was a good deal. Hot sauce would have made the Macaroni sandwich better, because by its nature the creamy cheese pasta is a mild flavor, but as you might imagine it was quite filling! The Vietnamese sandwich was much more flavorful, though the baguette had suffered a bit during the journey across town. Like Garbo's this is a food truck with a menu well worth exploring and the newer still Yebo food truck on Angela at Duval also intrigues me. A South African menu? Yebo Island Grill - Key West, FL | Yelp

It was an excellent lunch, and hanging out at the college was very pleasant with a cool north breeze blowing off the Gulf of Mexico.

By the way there is a perfectly serviceable cafeteria at the college. Want to have a different picnic where locals eat? Might be time to be adventurous yourself on your next visit to Key West.

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Quiet Spring Break

For some reason the powers that be have decided we will be inundated with youth this Spring Break and so preparations have been made and we are working lots of overtime which is tiring and rewarding all at once. I went downtown Saturday night to see what was what.

Drinking and Spring break are concentrated on the two hundred block of Duval with some spillage onto the three hundred and then some determined stragglers will make their way to the 800 block where the two big gay bars are located. However outside the immediate vicinity of the bars there's not much. I was standing in front of the Bull at Caroline Street and this guy walked up to me and asked if it is always this quiet on Duval Street. Um, I said he swirled away looking for excitement.

I remember when some Cuban Border guards decided on the spur of the moment to come to the US, so at one in the morning they took their patrol boat out of Havana Harbor and tied up at the Hyatt docks three hours later. They wandered into downtown Key West where they found a cop who woke a Spanish speaking bum who translated for them and their first question was, surveying Duval Street at four in the morning, is it always this quiet? I guess so. Captain Tony's was closed at 2:30 in the morning.

I found the thin crowds shouting through music spilling out of the open bars to be rather uninteresting so I wandered off following my camera and I came across two bundles of joy trying to sleep in the cool night air. I didn't envy them.

Odd isn't it how this goes on a couple of blocks from Spring break central where future leaders of America are learning to drink and have fun far from home.

All I could think was how little my generation seems to have done to make things better. We were a pretty rowdy lot us Baby Boomers when we used to blame our parents for screwing up the planet, and all we seem to have done is continue the tradition. I'd like to think we've made some things better but certainly not all of them.

I walked back down Fitzpatrick Street a block off Duval a d devoid of any activity whatsoever except for one cat stalking off among the shadows. I met a cop here on her rounds and we chatted for a while about her house buying misadventures and then she headed off whence I had come, no doubt to check on and move along the "sleepers" I had come across shortly before.

I would make a terrible cop as my instinct would be to leave them alone and let them sleep. Drinking and being loud is okay down here, but silently sleeping on the streets most decidedly is not.

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Keys Illustrated

Another Sunday, another selection of a few pictures from my Picasa files.

It's hard to know which pictures to select.

Sometimes, to my shame, I forget that the Keys are a vacation destination, so today I shall try to compensate.

Spring Break 2014 has begun and soon I shall be tired from long hours at work.

The simple joy of the Sunset Celebration...

...at Mallory Square.

It's a winter Paradise, for the wandering homeless too.

Famous faces enjoy Key West. Movie stars and politicians and Merchant Chiefs stay at Sunset Key; good luck to them, avoiding the mess of real life. Frank Deford famous to me through NPR commentaries gave a great speech a few years ago.

Locals liked the Submarine Pens at Boca Chica. Closed by the Navy after someone screwed up and pissed off the protectors of our Freedom. The Navy closed the place to the public, but I have my pictures.

I know of Dean as the choirmaster most recently of the Keys Chorale. I loved their outdoor Winter concerts. He has another job speaking as the voice of Boulevard construction.

Nancy Forester's secret garden closed after an appeal for $160,000 fell flat. Key West's one percent looked away. The parrots are displayed on Elizabeth Street nowadays.

The old waterfront market. Soon to be a brew pub they say. At least it will still be a local business.

Pausing in the street to chat is easy in a warm climate. It happens a lot.

Me at Checkpoint Charlie, West Berlin, October 1981. Amazing what you come across perusing old picture files.

I got my degree at Florida Keys Community College in Marine Engineering. I am a terrible welder, it turns out, a much better sailor.

A concert at St Paul's on Duval. Winter is the season of culture in the Southernmost City.

But boating is always important.

Truly an Overseas Highway.

No riding gear required in Florida, not even a helmet for adults.

A minimum of attention on Highway One suffices for the careful. But the views distract.

That's all for now.

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The Hot Dog Guy

The oddest people leave their mark on Key West. I figure it must have been a couple of years by now, time passes so quickly as you age, that a hot dog vendor died suddenly and everyone knew him and cared about him and his death sent a wave of energy through this most peculiar community. I actually met Raymond years ago when I was on a ride along for work with a cop and we stopped by and he was genial like I wish I were and every time I stopped by he was always smiling and engaging passersby from behind a battery of mustards and sauces. A tough act to follow.

I took a lunch break earlier this week and I stopped by the new, relatively speaking, cart next to the Bull and Whistle on Caroline Street at Duval. I wanted a coke as I was thirsty and three thirty in the morning seemed like a good moment for fizzy caramel water with aspertame and I started talking to atom who said he's been on the job, not coincidentally perhaps, for the last two years.

The smell of cooking sausage on the grill overwhelmed me and bearing in mind Oscar Wilde's dictum that the only way to deal with temptation is to give in, I promptly yielded and ordered an Italian sausage with peppers and onions, as though I had been drinking and needed to overcome the effects of alcohol. In point of fact I am well nourished by my caring wife and it was pure greed, opportunism and desire. It smelled excellent. I watched the bouncer not bouncing inside the Bull for a while as my sausage sizzled.

Tim, as is the way with most people in Key west, holds down a second job working for a boat charter operation. I can't imagine it's an easy life but like a lot of people it depends on what you expect. Growing up in Minnesota may be good training for life in expensive Key West as you may be in a position to appreciate the advantages more. Yes you may need two jobs but at least you are in shirt sleeves at four in the morning in February... If that makes up for the sheer hard labor of being on your feet, feeding the drunken masses all night long, a couple of nights a week

Tim came to Key a West by way of Honduras and Guatemala. He was surprised I had been to Lake Atitlan, the most beautiful place in the world according to Aldous Huxley, the writer. "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." Rather than admiring the view Tim had to handle ferrying passengers across the lake which is formed by an expired volcano. The afternoon winds he said were vicious creating short sharp,waves that battered his boat . My wife and I called such impediments when were out sailing "refrigerators" as it felt as though our sailboat were battering household appliances to make forward progress. Tim captained a ferry for eight months and learned to speak Spanish in the time. Then he came to Key West and here he is, his past his present and for the time being his future:

Keeping the masses fed one sandwich at a time.

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