Sunrise

I know this stuff isn't what the Keys are known for, back country views, when everyone is busy photographing the sun rising out of the ocean and scenic palms but this is what I get to see morning after morning, thanks to Rusty's need to meet each day as a journey of exploration.  

 We chase shadows down trails through the mangroves, stubby little trees with gnarled branches and unremarkable green and yellow leaves.

This is the flatland, no mountains, no valleys and winding rivers and majestic oak trees growing out of the salty rubble that passes for soil.

The photos don't do justice to the stillness and quiet of the tidal ponds at that hour beofre the breeze picks up. 

 We are alone my beady eyed buddy and I. 

I posted this picture on my Instagram account where I mentioned it put me in mind of southeast Asia, land of rice paddies and water, misty mornings and palms. Instead it's the hedgerow alongside the Overseas Highway.

 The light was so dim I could barely fudge a photo of Fat Albert hovering above us.

 It's the solitude that repairs my mind and prepares me for sleep after a night of answering 911 calls. 

 It has become such a habit that if I try to go direct to bed (Rusty permitting and he does some days when he is tried from the day before), I find I don't sleep well.

I'm not exactly John James Audubon but at least I don't kill them when I shoot them with my telephoto camera.

Sloppy Joe's

I have never had a drink at Sloppy Joe's on Duval Street. I look inside and the noise and the appalling crowds freak me out. My idea of a place to drink is somewhere quiet and shady where there is room to talk, not this bedlam.

But I am in a tiny minority for this bar prides itself on being what Hemingway wanted when he lived in Key West, his buddy Sloppy Joe Russell made this place his own after he moved out of Captain Tony's location following an argument with the landlord. They tell the story at the Hemingway House tour of Hemingway helping to carry the toilet fixtures up Greene Street to the new location of his favorite Key West Bar. I don't think this ishat the writer had in mind when he went drinking:

I found this online discussing the Nobel Laureate's drinking habits (ice cold martini mostly gin was what he preferred they say):

From his experiences in World War I and Lost Generation Paris to safaris in Africa and fishing the Gulf Stream, from covering the Spanish Civil War and World War II to chasing German U-boats off the Cuban coast, Hemingway’s life was one full of adventure, Greene reminds us. “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares,” Papa once said. “If you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars.”

One feature you could like about Sloppy Joe's is the indoor/outdoor nature of the seating arrangements. So you sit there perched and get your picture taken. You were here drinking where everyone drinks because HE drank here they say. The weird nature of tourism. I wonder if any of them have read anything HE wrote.

The crowds are outside as well pressing in on the sidewalks making it even less fun to be on Duval.

My kind of spot:

One day I will have to break my self imposed taboo. I shall drink at Sloppy Joe's and try to listen for Hemingway rolling in his grave. I doubt he'd care where I drink though...

...I don't think this kind of look-alike caper in his name would do much for his equanimity:

Hemingway built a wall around his house for privacy and he claimed his home in Cuba (LINK) as his favorite home. 

But it's all for the dollar not the authenticity. I rather prefer to see chickens as a source of innocent amusement and photography than attempts to lay claim to Hemingway's haunts.

Well there we are. That's Sloppy Joe's. Weird and wonderful and 79 years old they say so they must be doing something right. Keep reading to see the other side of the Lower Keys...as seen by me.

A Wasp Around Town

I have been  working out for the past  16  months on a regimen of three or four hours  a week at an exercise studio that really works well for me. Broga (LINK) is some faddish mixture of yoga and strength training for men and women are welcome and Sean the trainer has kept me at it for months much to my own surprise. Then on alternating days we pull our weight up and down using straps on the walls (TRX LINK). Yes so I have something in common with Navy Seals. Call me shocked. This picture with the tunnel of light exemplifies my physical exhaustion at the end of each hour. I am surprised I am alive and not quite sure if that's a fact.

It is hard, incredibly hard and I come out of one solid hour of no stopping, no pausing constant effort drenched in sweat as though I had been swimming in my clothes. Yet I go back to the studio on Truman Avenue right across from Bare Assets because this stuff works. I am stronger and the intensity keeps building so I am constantly making even greater efforts to keep the repetitions going. Sean is an astonishing trainer, I've never met anyone quite like him.

He lives a spartan regime as you might imagine, of smoothies and copious quantities of running and assorted exercises. Me - hell no!  I came out of calls and I needed fizzy carbonated caramel water. Caffeine for the love of God! So I went to Dions at White Street and staggered (no exaggeration) into the shop. I have no idea what they expect customers to shop up wearing but a t-shirt and shorts sopping wet you'd think would raise eyebrows. Not a bit of it. I got in line behind in the lottery hopefuls and upon presenting my coolish bottle was asked to cough up $1.93. Two bucks for caramel caffeine with fizz! Bloody hell, can this be right? I sat in the shade where the bums usually hang out and drank my life saving fizzy.

 It was  a moment to take a breath and watch the world go by. I am reminded this is where I don't stick out like a sore thumb even drenched in sweat. Ride a scooter? No problem. It is a different world down here and that's a shame because everyone should get to live judgement-free. No ?

I followed this guy for several blocks across Old Town. His ice chest indicates he is most likely a delivery employee for a restaurant  and he wore a t-shirt from a place downtown so that made sense. I could not believe his riding style with feet dragging. I tried it and my gentleman's vegetables made a pained protest so I pout my own feet back on the floorboards. He wobbled round corners hitting the curb with his trailing foot and when he had to dodge a car that crossed his path he nearly fell off  the scooter as he tried to lean to one side with his feet splayed like a cartoon character. I admired his guts riding like that:

It's like riding a horse without stirrups.

Riding out of town I took a second to get a picture of this average human doing her chores by scooter, in a  dress with heels and attracting not a second glance. As it should be. 

 The other day I cracked myself up on Flagler riding into town (more broga) on the ET4 Vespa (which is Italian for wasp), and there we were, three strangers on scooters. I laughed into my helmet, three old white men on mopeds in a line at a traffic light. Most natural thing in the world in Key West. I love it. 

 A funny thing happened on my way into work a couple of nights ago. I was on Stock Island and an SUV came alongside and wound down the windows. "That a Vespa 250?" the young Latino driver and his passenger yelled at me. No I said it's a Vespa 150. "60 miles an hour," he said incredulous...But the light had changed and I had places to be people to see. It takes  seeing to believe that these little buzz bombs have the capability to get you places. It's great fun surprising other road users with a "moped" that cruises happily at 60 miles an hour. And then blends in with the around town 50cc scooters outside Publix.

Back home Rusty  the walking dog was ready to take a quick ride in the car to his wilderness walk but it was a hot. Summer is here and you can tell the temperatures have moved out of the winter range into the higher humidity of summer. The sun is higher in the sky and the light is no longer white and flat as it is in winter.  The cool breezes are still blowing through the islands but summer is here and here to stay for the next eight months. I'm ready. 

Trumbo Road

I noticed construction on Trumbo Road so I rode out and so lots of work more or less in progress, or would have been in progress had there been any humans present. 

This is an essay that requires me to dig in the Conchscooter archives so here's one from 2010 when I walked Cheyenne along there in our first year together:

So it appears a "proper" seawall will replace the rubble and bushes and stuff along the water. It has been a useful if informal parking area but I suppose that may have to change. Perhaps there will still be parking along the water...Meanwhile the city's second dog park seems to be going from strength to strength if social media is to be believed:

The school district has property here on the waterfront, seen in this picture from 2013 which also illustrates the rather informal nature of the land where it met the water. Anyway the district has a  bus yard here and administrative offices on a big chunk of waterfront land which they have made noises about selling for a while. 

In this town it wouldn't seem hard to make an absolute fortune from such a nicely situated piece of open space though the district has made or failed to secure some rather peculiar land deals in the past so don't be surprised if they manage to give up this gift from the gods for pennies on the dollar. 

And here I was seven years ago (!) with Cheyenne in the same spot as workers worked on maintenance for the landing craft that deliver supplies to Sunset Key. If you order furniture say the delivery truck will come over on these things, which is how I got to wander round Sunset Key many many years ago when I had a job on Duval Street.

They are still there and there is some pavement in front of them now:

Change is in the air. Good change probably on this forgotten street.

Cheap Housing

A funny thing happened last week in the Lower Keys. The county planning commission, the people who advise the county commission the lawmakers that is, voted down a proposal to build affordable housing. You'd think it was a bad thing. Actually no, it  was in aggregate a good vote much to my surprise.

The plan was to put 160 units of housing on Summerland Key on apiece of land they call the Shrimp Farm just off Highway One. It's not a terrible spot you'd think,vacant and cleared of the old business, but for some reason the owner who also owns hotels in Key West decided he wanted to go all out and build 160 units of "affordable" living.

Of course no one really knows what "affordable" means to a multi millionaire developer...and wages aren't that great in the hospitality trade in Key West as a general rule, so the idea of creating houses for sale at prices workers could pay seems unlikely at best, maybe naive or maybe a confidence trick at worst. The planning commission wasn't buying. 

The neighbors were none too excited though that's to be expected as the general rule of thumb now is Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (BANANA) an acronym that supersedes NIMBY (Not In MY Back Yard). In this case I think they had a point as  an extra 160 families ona small handkerchief of land on a small island is going to create traffic and congestion issues worse than they already are. On top of that there is no clarity as to price and true affordability. So all the neighbors can see is more transient housing, more second homes mixed in with rentals and no affordability.

I was surprised by the negative vote but these developers don't give up and I'm sure there will be a less dense proposal soon with a clearer mixture of amrket rate (second homes) with a sop to affordability and eventually it will be approved in some form. Developers start out asking for the stars and the moon and whne you say no they then ask for the moon, you figure it's a huge victory you can exploit at the next election and tons more houses go up.

Unfortunately in these small islands we are running out of room and I don't mean that metaphorically. Now that Spring Break is over and the winter residents are gone we can all notice we have breathing room at the supermarket, lines on the highway are down. But the lines to get into Key West on the highway were extraordinary, and evertyone noticed and everyone grumbled.   It's true there is a lot more commuting going up and down between Big PIne and Key West as fewer workers can afford to live in Key West. But the additonal traffic from visitors and winter residents doesn't help. And the fact that lines have eased up now they are gone proves the point.

The hotels have been mumbling informally that visitor numbers are down. Online booking services say Trump's America is unappealing to Europeans at the moment. Perhaps Key West will get a respite from the hordes this year, perhaps not. Perhaps if the city does there could some rethinking about the lack of a plan or a vision for the future of this remarkable city set amongst these remarkable islands.

Boca Chica Playtime

Start your week with a look at this:

Sunrise at Boca Chica, low tide though tides aren't moving much water this time of the month.

The time between full moon and no (new) moon is called neaps by sailors and that's when the tides are shallow, not much up and not much down. 

So when I met this bloke and his dogs we were restricted to a narrow strip of dry land. Not a problem for my newly socialized  dog.

They ran until they could run no more. The other guy seemed quite grateful for the canine exhaustion.

Rusty has made astonishing progress from a year ago when he ran from any dog that reminded him of his life on the streets where he survived by knowing when to run hard and far. 

Then we met an angler who rescued an older dog that spent most of his life along in a crate on a deck. They are inseparable now. The dog spent a year at the SPCA before he found her. No one wants an old dog. Except him.

I have no idea who spends their life piling rocks but someone does. Hope they rescue dogs too with all that energy to burn.

She is totally devoted to the man who got her out of her cages. She came up to say hi to me and wandered off checking the bushes, going for a swim and watching her man catch his fish.

You know the owner wasn't on board but it was the hired help pounding into the wind:

I liked the light so I took a picture:

The water was too deep for crossing comfortably especially as it was rising. 

We found a dry beach behind the mangroves and Rusty went nuts.

When I watch him run uninhibitedly I am glad he lives with me. He wouldn't do well under constant leash supervision.

Wild thing.

One last look back and home to sleep it off.

We trudged through a  crowd of people at the parking lot, necks craned to stare at the fighter jets rushing around overhead.