Industrial Key West

Stock Island has always played second fiddle to Key West. It's very name derives from the fact that the early settlers kept cows here and raised them for meat. When it came time to kill them they took them to Rest Beach and slaughtered them there for consumption in the city. These days things are marginally less agricultural and more industrial here.

Stock Island is where things get done that make Key West work, but there is change in the air.

Even the green triangle in the heart of "downtown" has a for sale sign on it. The Tom Thumb convenience store is the closest thing to a grocery store here, even though there are two Publix stores, one Winn Dixie and two Fausto's markets in neighboring Key West across the Cow Key Bridge.

Housing here is a mixture of small bungalows, a few houses on stilts and lots of trailers. For Sale again:

These modest homes are where Spanish and Creole is spoken. Nattily dressed tourists and snowbirds pass through on their way to slum it in local color at Hogfish, a tourist trap near the fishing docks, or at Roostica a rather good New Jersey-style Italian-American restaurant on the main drag.

Stock Island has bus service to Key West, locals ride bikes or scooters, this is a hold out for true working class restaurant workers and commercial fishermen. But it can't last.

Plans have been in the works for years to transform this rustic working man's retreat into a place to increase wealth for the usual crowd. The crash of 2008 slowed things down but real estate is heating up in the Keys once again and those plans are starting to look appetizing.

It's funny to me to see how the American Dream manifests itself among other immigrants. So often it's a car, proudly bearing traces of home. To me a well worn expensive SUV is less of a draw than a useful small car but I've never been drawn to four wheeled vehicles. Haiti, soccer, BMW - a winning combo!

Jiri's motorcycle shop is still in business here but his neighbors are gone. Rents are going up and I know this place may slip away too. Jiri makes no bones about the irritation of having to relocate his motorcycle repair shop. I'm not happy.

The concept of one human family, the motto of the city of Key West, approved years ago by the city commission to express solidarity with gay Key West, gains new and ironic meaning as money strangles these islands. Here the free stickers are used to cover a failing window in another Stock Island jalopy:

The new CVS pharmacy is one more nudge in the direction of gentrification. To me it looks like the US embassy in Bagdad, a towering pile of cleanliness, crisp black asphalt, street lights, a beacon of progress on an island that's messy, disorganized and eminently human.

Across the street Coral Hammocks gated community is out if place in the same way. Trees surround homes protected by fencing, homes in the Key West style, crammed for maximum return on the location where the trailer park of the same name used to exist alongside US Highway One. I used to see a bar there as I rode to and from work. "Free beer tomorrow!" was the cheerful sign above the door. Then finally they crossed out "tomorrow" and hand painted "today" on the last day of operation.

On the other side of the island gentrification has transformed old dirty marinas into country clubs. These facilities face an interesting future by comparison:

And this low income housing? Maybe these will survive. They will need the labor won't they? Even though the new hotels are said to be planning to create on-site worker housing for staff.

May we live in interesting times. In places where tourists never go.

 

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Vespa Tea Break

I am developing the habit of taking a meandering ride in the afternoon, the scooter equivalent of a tea break from doing too much other stuff, a break from dumb bells, dogs, desktop computing, all of it. And deep on the south shore of Sugarloaf Key my Verizon signal fails pretty rapidly leaving me out of touch.

My phone may not work as a communication tool or as a hot spot but the camera keeps clicking away allowing me to play with the Vespa in heat that would stifle my dog, back home sleeping in the air conditioning. Sometimes I feel like the proverbial housewife with a need for some alone time, away from 911, podcast interviews, business letters, schedules and laundry baskets. The Vespa forces me to slow down, to baby the new piston, as this old style engine requires a gentle prolonged break in period.

I am forced to slow down and look at the cracks in the pavement, to think about how hot the sun is on a March afternoon, not yet Spring. It feels like summer in a sensible part of the world, but here because there is no humidity and a cool undercurrent of air it must be Winter. Setting the Vespa on its stand and standing on the foot boards I am a child again, seeking a new perspective, looking down from a great height.

Compared to the serious, frowning skater I feel like I am breaking the sound barrier as I putt-putt past at 40 kilometers an hour (24 mph). The speedometer on my Canadian model P200 is in Canadian miles per hour, rebuilt in California and by my GPS extremely accurate if you can translate kilometers to miles. I can as I grew up in both currencies and metric holds no secrets.

The skater slipped into my rear view mirrors and my misspent youth came back to me, the smell of the rubber floor mat the distinctive puttering of the two stroke motor and the clunk of the gear shifts; I was doing this in the summer of 1970 on the little orange Vespa 50 my mother bought me. She loved motorcycles and wanted me to grow into a rider. She let me ride all over the back roads near our home even though I was two years too young to be legal on the roads. I look back at that mad period in light of the modern obsession with being afraid and I am grateful that shortly before she died she showed me the way. And while I was being grateful I checked out the charming disregard for No Parking signs shown by the winter visitors. Were they to get a ticket I would expect a very indignant call at work from some annoyed tourist busy telling me they spend too much money in the Keys to be bothered following the rules. One thing I have learned is if you flout the conventions take your punishment like an adult.

Riding in shirt sleeves is a pleasure reserved for the foolish in our modern circumscribed safety world. Sometime you have to allow yourself to feel the sun on your skin, the wind ruffling your life just a little, immerse yourself in the moment. An old slow Vespa is a way to do that. 35 years of puttering hidden under that sheet metal frame. I wonder sometimes what is in its past, the way I look at Cheyenne and wonder what was in her past before the abandonment at the SPCA pound on Stock Island. The watery flats of Sugarloaf Key:

On the Overseas Highway I have no particular place to be other than at home to meet the wife back from work so I can stop and admire the view from time to time, get out of the traffic flow that finds my 50 miles per hour (80 kilometers) too slow in a 45 mph (70 kilometer) zone because I have surrendered my man card and elected to take to the road on a motorized shopping cart. So I pull over to admire the water and take a picture:

Time to get home and break out the teapot.

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Feeling Feisty

I am annoyed, I will cop to that. Friends have been to the new place on Grinnell called Backspace and they were utterly unimpressed. The service they said was lousy, the food uninspired and the writer's schtick not at all inspiring. It's annoying that a bar makes more of the city's literary heritage than the city itself, but this is a bar with no draft beer and it has replaced my favorite watering hole, Finnegan's Wake. That just rubs salt into my over sized wound. 

Then there's the mysterious case of what the hell happened at Paseo one fine day? This place opened to rave reviews in Key West with a  genuinely interesting menu without the cute naming process and now its name has changed and its calling itself Bien. Which means "good" in French or something else in some other tongue - who knows? Whats even more weird is the menu boards are still Paseo's which is good as the food is excellent and the parking is still signposted for the old place...trust me to spot that anomaly.

There was a story in the paper a while back that a dispute in Seattle where the two other Paseo's used to exist shut them down. This lot said no problem we are here to stay. Jolly good, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and now they are called Bien. They are part of a whole group of small food truck sized eateries around town that offer quality food at relatively low prices, Badboy Burrito, Cayo, White Street Station, Paseo or Bien, Garbo's behind the Grunts Bar on Caroline and the old time Cuban sandwich shops among which we now add Cuban Coffee Queen. One day I will do a sandwich crawl and it will be led by my dog.

Keys Energy is getting a reconstructed headquarters on James Street and I took this picture below of the non-sidewalk Cheyenne insisted on leading me down. She's like the honey badger, she doesn't give  a  shit the sidewalk is closed she just walks down it anyway. And there in the background is the spruced up building hosing the bar called Backspace. There's a place in hell for those responsible for closing Finnegan's.  

I abhor this trend of sticking mileage charts on the back window of cars. Apparently I am not alone in thinking that marathon runners should shut up and run (I told I was feeling feisty). The sooner all these fitness freaks go back up north and take their public displays of butchness with them, the better off we will all be. Actually I don't mind people torturing themselves, I just don't want it to become compulsory for me I. Don't. Run. Good way to say it.

You see a couple talking like this over a fence and phrases like young love....time immemorial ...making a   date flitter through your mind. Most likely she had a blocked pipe and was trying to get a  plumber to show up.

Talking of plumbers my Trainee at work grew up in a family of Key West plumbers. I have noticed that some Conch (pro: "konk") kids seem to veer away from the family business and prefer to become wage slaves in the public utilities or in direct government jobs. My Trainee spent three years helping out in the family business doing plumbing work off and on, as he put it. But he learned to loathe house calls he said. I never really thought about it much but you are at your client's mercy. He told me the story of his cousin who had to go under a house after alerting the occupant not to flush because he was going to break the outflow pipe. Sure enough the home owner flushed at the critical moment and my Trainee was put off plumbing for life as his cousin wiggled out from under the house covered in fresh excrement and wet toilet paper, collected his tools never to return to finish the job. Better to be a  nice clean dispatcher I suppose. I have stopped envying plumbers their trade since I heard that story. Iam content to be in an office chair all night in an air conditioned office. 

In closing I saw this kid getting a  ride to school one recent morning. I have to force myself to remember that not every school child gets a ride to school on his or her Dad's utility bike in this SUV littered land. Small moments in  the day that remind us why Key West operates in its own reality. Toilets though work pretty much the same as everywhere else.

Seahorse Trailer Park

I find it rather sad to see a telephone number promoting inquiries about the availability of lot spaces at Seahorse Trailer Park in Big Pine Key.

On the first day of this year the Key West Citizen reported  that last Christmas the residents of this park were given two month eviction notices.

And here it is, more affordable housing, as cruddy as it is, cleared out to make way for more costly developments. The estimated  50 people who used to live here were made homeless so the living units could be used to build hotel units on Stock Island at the harbor yacht club. 

Under the Rate of Growth ordinance, enacted to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Florida Keys development is supposed to be kept in check by a system of permits, which system ends up being used to maneuver end runs that replace living space with vacation space. 

So one family trailer here equals in the developers' minds one hotel room elsewhere in the county, in a place that will be more lucrative, close to the water or close to attractions. Out here working people lived and retired and spent their money, enjoying the same weather the rest of us enjoy..

And now it's done. Ironically county officials sanctimoniously told the newspaper these were lots zoned for recreational vehicle use, not as permanent residences. The reality in a county this expensive is that people live where they can, in boats, RVs, sheds, lofts and sometimes the mangroves.

Families lived here, Spanish speaking ones too and they never bothered me or my dog. We walked through, said hello, and they left me and Cheyenne and my pink Crocs alone.  When we lived on Ramrod Key, closer than Cudjoe Key where we live now, I used to come here quite often and walk the early hours. 

Cheyenne liked it because there were lots of smells here, food particles, trash, outdoor living, quiet streets that suited her gentle pace.

I don't suppose there was anything anyone could do, it's a trend in the Keys where outsiders will pay huge sums to buy houses they rarely even occupy. Trailer parks are getting torn up everywhere. The Spottswoods evicted 85  families a few years ago from  a  Key Largo trailer park. The Catholic diocese shut  down the Simonton Court Trailer Park in Key West last year.

Some people wonder who will do the carrying and lifting and cleaning for the idle classes in Key West and I suppose dormitory housing and imported labor will meet requirements. As it is the Middle and Upper Keys (all the islands north of the Seven Mile Bridge) get some of their labor from Homestead and Florida City where the laborers board buses at ungodly hours of the morning and ride hours to work. 

 You can see it in Key West too, the outflow of workers, when at eight o'clock in the morning Stock Island gets crammed with lines of cars struggling to get to work in Key West.  These days its a privilege to live in the city if you earn your living there.

Affordable housing has been on everyone's verbal agenda for years, decades perhaps, but in a world where government intervention is abhorred there's not much you can do when the one percent evince no interest in the topic at all.

Modular homes on stilts are going up across the street, nice clean and sterile, heavy white gravel killing any chance at individuality. You'd be lucky to buy 1200 square feet on stilts for $350,000 even this far from the water. Affordable housing in Key West for qualified workers starts at $250,000 in an effort to offer housing hope to public workers.

 Meanwhile across the street the mailboxes are emptying out and the residents are going elsewhere.

Up North is the retreat of last resort.

Tennessee Williams In Key West

My biggest disappointment about the new display about the playwright's life in Key West was that I didn't allow nearly enough time to explore it properly. My phone pinged announcing my lunch appointment was on the way and I had to beat a retreat. This exhibition is free (they take donations of course) and it's at the Key West Business Guild at 513 Truman, so unless you are riding a Vespa, ahem, parking is non existent.

The displays are well presented, full of information with pictures and include a video that I wanted to sit down and watch. Gore Vidal is interviewed, I saw him and wanted to listen but I was on my way out the door. Grr!

The location may come as a surprise considering the numbers of arenas that hold these kinds of events around Key West but it's not the first time they have shown something worth seeing. I've heard the Guild described as Key West's "Gay Chamber of Commerce" which as far as I know fits the bill, but they are also a resource center for visitors looking for gay Key West. I'm not gay and I don't run a business here so my encounters with the Guild are limited to this sort of visit.

Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Mississippi March 26th 1911, which explains why this month was chosen for this exhibition. He was gay which explains the location and he loved Key West which over the course of time has become a mutual attraction. Tennessee Williams' life in Key West epitomizes what we all tend to seek here at the end of the road, freedom from judgement, time to be yourself, and purpose expressed through art. He had a little house, he had a swimming pool and he had love and friendship. Pretty cool, huh?

The thing is, Tennessee Williams just wasn't as cool as Ernest Hemingway and I wonder about that. Hemingway was an alcoholic essentially, a womanizer, he killed large animals for fun and he wrote in a style I find difficult to digest. I've heard it suggested that Key West loves Hemingway because he was a manly man. Tennessee Williams not to put too fine a point on it was a poof.

His plays, which only received acclaim after a decade of obscurity and struggle, deal with profound issues, deeply adult stories about the sort of family he grew up in, messed up and unbearable. Considering Mississippi today, one has to wonder what a young gay man would have suffered there 80 years ago. Key West was paradise indeed.

This man suffered for his art and put his suffering down on stage for all to see. I find his story compelling for he wrote as an outsider, without bluster. He also fell deeply in love, a man he lost to cancer, a loss that seemed to derail him.

Through all those years the honors piled up and they are listed and displayed here. There is a ton of stuff to read, to absorb. Key West was of course too small a cockpit for his over sized drama to play out on, so as it happens of course his connection to Key West waxed and waned.

But its clear from these pictures he was happy here, he smiles a lot. A while back I went to Oxford Mississippi to see Rowan Oak and I made the mistake of contrasting and comparing William Faulkner to Ernest Hemingway, the two big names of the two small towns. I should have compared the two men from Mississippi, it would have been more interesting. Faulkner ended a nascent friendship with Hemingway by suggesting he did not put much of himself into his writings and therefore he lacked bravery. Which could never be said of Williams who wrote repeatedly about all the worst aspects of his family. Williams was brave all right.

Faulkner, seen from the outside was a dour man, and there is only one picture of him half smiling, check the link above, while here Tennessee Williams was always smiling. Maybe just for the camera maybe just because he wanted to. Reading the clippings he got into small town life, making contributions with money and time, posing for pictures and so forth. Faulkner hid in his forest with his horses. I'd be more like that, but I'd like to have the nerve to be more like the Tennessee Williams of his Key West years.

Williams painted, and I'm no art critic but I am kind of glad he kept his day job, far be it from me to criticize anything about the man. Others did that for me, especially in his later years. He dealt with depression with amphetamines and took sleeping draughts to sleep, and things gradually got worse. His death is shrouded in mystery generally attributed to choking but some say it was some kind of accidental drug overdose. Either way it wasn't a death most of us would seek out, alone in a New York apartment.

Unfortunately for Tennessee Williams the love of his life Frank Merlo, a strapping Italian American ( his last name means "blackbird") died of cancer in 1963 and apparently the playwright lost the man who had been his anchor for the best years if his life. I didn't get to see what they might have about the end of his life and I plan to go back and fill in the missing parts that I did not have time to read. I have read about those last years elsewhere and they weren't good, his talent in decline, recognition evaporating and his health held hostage to his medications..

He died in New York in 1983 and personally I think he'd have done a lot better to live out his years on Duncan Street in Key West. That he was happy here says a lot. This exhibit does that justice.

Folks: one week ago I mentioned the podcasts I have been recording for a producer in New York. The launch was awkward, with Apple delaying their appearance on iTunes for a few days. They have been available for the past week and we have five interviews up now at www.travelandsafety.com/iTunes which page should get you here:

Click the "reviews" box in the middle of the page which will get you here:

And then give it a fine star rating and earn my great thanks. Much appreciated and sorry for the confusion. The engineer has been flogged and deprived of sleep.

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