Around Town

There are several homes you'll find around Old Town with "Private Residence" pasted on the front  doors. In towns filled with tourists you can see why, I mean no one wants random visitors in their homes treating themselves to an authorized  tour. This one though looked heavily set up to repel intruders, with flower pots and all...

The famous figurehead hasn't featured on this page in a  while so here she is, illuminated buy the early morning sun:

Downstairs this useful reminder:

I love the old skylights in the tin roofs though I'm glad I don't have to live with them as heavy rain seeks out leaks in this climate.

I have been reading about late winter storms at the tail end of last month and I have tried to imagine a prolonged winter Up North. It just feels unfortunate hee.w here the seasons happily change very very little: 

Welcome and bugger off, from the mixed message department:

Bicycle as toilet roll holder at a bike shop:

Conch cottage:

Escape construction?

And no, I have no idea why he crossed the road:

This time of year it isn't so critical  when people stop in the road to chat. I was able to bide my time. 

Mind you slow drivers are endemic this spring on the highway. I commute at ten miles an hour under the speed limit which is not so very cool. Oh well. 

Sugarloaf Walk

Weird dog. I was in the mood he wasn't so fifty yards in he stopped. Another dog showed up all shaggy and youthful and happy to see him so he had to be happy back.

Rusty reminds me of me, much happier alone minding his own beeswax.

Signs of Irma recovery, clearing trails and moving downed trees from hurricane damage two years ago,

We turned back and walked the road for a while in accordance with his wishes.

A bright warm afternoon contrasting nicely with reports of snow and storms Up North.

One tends to forget it isn't always summer in other places.

Spiders:

Bees:

Spring may be said to have sprung I suppose.

Contentment:

A Friday Night

In  a  life  filled with much time allocated to physical exercise and a fair bit set aside for work each week the rest of my day is dedicated to sleep as my bones and muscles continue the tedious and lengthy process of healing. That  leaves some time set aside to do something other than paying attention to Rusty. If music be the food of love, play on, Michael Robinson. 

Learning to live in a new body filled with metal plates and held together with steel pins requires patience with oneself as stamina is much reduced. An evening nursing a glass of wine combined with a glass of beer with dinner, leaves a trauma survivor like myself ready to pass out by 9 pm...So a gentle evening at the Gardens Hotel listening to Michael thump the ivories is just the ticket. 

And the Gardens Hotel has the self service wine dispenser of many years standing and it still works very well. I had a glass of dry Greek white, evocatively labeled from the vineyards of Santorini. I had no idea that place had room enough for lands  dedicated to the vine.

Michael had set aside a table at the back of the room for us with a bird's eye view of the piano. He was alone last Friday, his partner Eric was away invigilating university stuff where he works I believe, and thus left Michael togo a little while. I usually play ballads the pianist mused with a wicked glint in his eye, and proceeded to knock a few more spirited tunes with the loud pedal fully deployed.

He did not hold back. I wasn't sure our friends were in the mood so I offered them an out by suggesting we cut out to dinner. I was quite delighted when they didn't leap at the suggestion and we sat firmly in our seats until it really was time to leave and eat Thai food.

The day was overcast yet the heat was enough to keep visitor around the pool and in it. The views of course are lush in a hotel by the name of The Gardens...An American in Paris came belting out of the machine and floated around the rafters.

The hotel is quiet and genteel and very comfortable and filled with knick knacks at every turn.

MisoHappy on Southard Street was pleasantly intimate: 

 Chuck and I work out at the Broga Studio and we end up talking about the wild conversations Sean our instructor enjoys, a man of no filters and many opinions and a provocative sense of humor, Wayne his partner (in the yellow) is sick of Broga and tired of hearing about it so he and my wife decided spontaneously to start a knitting club to offset the exercise oriented conversation.

 I rejected twigs in lieu of cutlery preferring to stick (pun intended ) to my European roots, a culture that has long since embraced the fork as the most sensible way to eat.  Asians in Asia use sticks very effectively but in their culture the bowl is brought to the mouth. In our effete Western idea of good manners the plate stays firmly on the table but the chopsticks are used to convey the food perilously across our chets some distance to our mouths. Makes no sense, combining the worst of both etiquettes...

 The whole fish was excellent though even when eaten using twigs.

A culture laden night out in Key West. Sleep was welcome after all this activity.

Conch Little League

I have never had a facility for games involving teams and balls. When I was at Hogwarts (Downside  School) team sports were a requirement, part of the curriculum for a young Catholic gentleman, but my ambitions were apparently elsewhere as I hated standing around in the rain and sleet waiting to get hit by a ball.

Not so the youngsters of the Southernmost City where baseball and its derivatives are considered the equivalent of a religion for young Conchs and their families. To be a Conch (a native of Key West, pronounced "konk") is to love team sports and they have the facilities to prove it.

I stopped by my favorite picnic table for a spot of al fresco lunch on a busy day recently and strolling around to digest my Cuban croquetas I noticed the names on the monument built to the glories of baseball past.

These names are not only a multi-ethnic mix of Cuban and Anglo in a  time  (the Fifties and Sixties) when the rest of the country was struggling to come to terms with national ethnicities and skin colors. Here there are names a resident of this island would recognize instantly and back then Key West was always a bit different managing to integrate ethnicities with less hassle than the rest of the South. 

Even earlier baseball fans will recognize Boog Powell a famous Conch of major league fame. It has long been my belief that what marks you for life is not where you are born, in this case Lakeland,  but where you went to high school and Boog graduated Key West. A Conch indeed, and he is claimed as a Conch despite the place of his birth..."Powell received the nickname “Boog” from his father. As Powell explained, “In the South they call little kids who are often getting into mischief buggers, and my dad shortened it to Boog.” All of which I think proves my point conclusively.

Looking at the plaque above you will recognize the owner of B.O.'s  food shack on Caroline Street.Talking to my Conch friends  other names leap out. Including I am told Mana Casas, not Mona.

I have always wanted to sit in the bleachers on a  classic night game in the summer heat of Key West and I have yet to fulfill that ambitions as so far it has been thwarted by indolence and a little shyness. A Conch friend of mine is having a baby boy soon. I'll talk to him in a decade about taking me to a game... 

This is all serious stuff and parents get quite passionate about their offspring's performance.

I like the symbolism, the lights the colors and the atmosphere of all the pent up emotion.

It doesn't matter that this is the Southernmost City and all that stuff the tourist brochures strut about Havana being closer than Walmart...This is where the heart of the Key West community beats. At the diamond.

It is also, incidentally where you will find me from time to time, devouring some All American Deli lunch from Publix  just down the street.

Papio Kinetic Sculpture Parade

Had you been wandering down Greene Street yesterday before lunch you might have seen, as did I, a large bright green iguana gliding down the street.

 So large was the lizard a woman was holding its tail off the ground as it went down the street.

Further down the street Star Wars machinery appeared pedaling firmly as they went. Yesterday was indeed the Fourth of May and the force may well have been with them.

Some passerby identified this female in costume but I forget what they called her so possibly she was part of the parade. Or not.  It was one of those days yesterday, you never knew what you were going to see. Earlier in the morning walking Rusty in the leafy streets of the Casa Marina district our path was crossed by a  bare chested man on a bicycle wearing a scarlet tutu. I have no idea what that was about either. Just one of those days.

Meanwhile the force was not entirely with the starships as the light on Duval Street went red against them and held them up for a bit in traffic.

 And looking the other way a few more pedal powered machines appeared in front of Sloppy Joe's.

 Followed by what appeared to be large insects.

 Just another day on the road to the Custom House on Front Street.

 Which was where they were all supposed to assemble:

In  2009 I went by the East Martello Museum on South Roosevelt and had my first encounter with the art of Stanley Papio. His heavy metal sculptures were not well received in his neighborhood. His art was other people's junk.

Nowadays in the Keys he is celebrated as an icon of local art. Jolly good.

This sort of mobile mobile is  in honor of the dynamic junkman! Perfectly suited.

 I wandered around with my wife checking out the exhibits.

 The middle school behind the police station:

 Not sure what this was all about but lots of string was involved:

Two cruise ships were tied up at the docks. I don't know what their passengers would have made of all this:

 No vehicles except..possibly...

The permanent exhibit of Johnson sculptures was also getting some action from the kids in the background who were enjoying the mariachis.

 The peanut gallery! Looked like fun but we had an exercise class to attend:

 The MARC House exhibit:

 And the British Racing Car  club had a giant pedal powered car on display. It looked excellent:

 Don't ask I never saw what was inside the box:

 We left before the parade started:

 And still they were arriving:

A good morning's work.