Sunset Marina

As part of my voyage of exploration on the little Jetson Bolt electric scooter from Costco I made my furthest point of exploration to be Sunset Marina on College Road.

Though these days it looks less like a marina and more like a housing complex:

When we decided to take jobs in Key West we moved off our anchor and took a slip here in Sunset Marina nearly 20 years ago. It looks much the same seen from here:

The office used to have a crane to launch small boats where the striped barricade is now: 

And this building behind the office was the only place where people lived in apartments, just three of them:

All these buildings are arecent innovation and when I went looking for a picture of the old parking lot I couldn't find my own so I cheated and found Google Street view from a few years back. From this:

To this (we are back to my own camera here!):

It  seems there are 15 building with parking underneath, as long as you coordinate with your neighbor. Their advertising offers two bedroom apartments  of 800 square feet at $2800  which may sound a lot but they offer all modern conveniences, not always the case in Key West and you can have a dog for a $350  deposit so I'm good with that! Happily I don't expect to need to live here but it's nice to know Rusty would be welcome.

This gate separates the marina property from the Sheriff's headquarters and jail and also the homeless shelter just to the right of the picture. The shelter closes in the morning so twice a day a stream of people unable to afford permanent housing passes by much to the discomfort of their housed neighbors nearby.

Here is where the apartments are:

And here the boats. Behind the boats are the Sunset Condos whose residents are carefully locked in by their own gate and they too object to the homeless of the Overnight Shelter. 

Don't be poor in Key West; no one will love you.

Boca Chica Beach

I have no idea why but Rusty hasn't wanted to go to Boca Chica Beach in a  long time. I'd bring him and he'd sniff and two photographs later he was sitting by the car. Then last week all that changed and he was totally into it. Why? He wasn't saying...

To my surprise Monroe County has chosen to clear the old road and turned it back into a wide easy to use path. It used to be open t cars but a hurricane, Wilma as I recall in 2005 wiped out the roadway and it was reduced to a  footpath. It's a popular spot for dogs though why this sign (below) is necessary I don't know. Picking up seems obvious but perhaps I think too highly of my fellow humans.

On the other side of the path the US Navy has rebuilt the fence torn down by Hurricane Irma in 2017. Not much ambiguity here:

Boca Chica is a training base and squadrons visit from all over the US and Canada to practice dog fights and aircraft carrier landings and take offs. They make quite a bit of noise but we were spared.

Boca Chica manages to look good most times I visit and this was just another lovely morning.

More signage that in a perfect world would be too obvious to state. Rusty ignored it but I always carry a plastic bag. Happily they have taken away the rash cans that used to be posted here. I took this picture in 2016 shortly after Rusty came into my life:

 All they did was encourage people to pile their trash and it was very difficult to empty the barrel.  Now the message is backed up by no trash cans:

The fishing boat was slowly making tracks. I find the telephoto on the Panasonic FZ1000 quite effective. The FZ300 has a longer lense but it gets badly jagged in JPEG at extreme distances and I am too lazy to shoot in RAW photo mode to correct it. The FZ1000 has a bigger sensor and does a much cleaner job even if not at such huge distances. 

The  sign on the telephone pole has been wiped clean...

...on one side.  The warning used to be "get ready for what you may find" (gay men enjoying themselves) but that apparently is no longer acceptable. Just another sign of changing times I guess. 

I did some bird watching while Rusty rooted around as usual.

The pile of rocks is still there with more detritus dangling everywhere. 

And more irritating aphorisms:

This innocent piece of wood put me in mind of a green man staring angrily across he clearing:

I noticed the hammock swinging close by an old Cuban chug that washed ashore. There are far fewer refugees trying to cross from Cuba since the US ended the wet foot/dry foot policy which allowed Cubans who landed to stay. 

Still a few do risk their lives out there while we swing at our ease on the beach.

A  man named Raphael started piling rocks after the aforementioned Hurricane Wilma, just another person attracted to this beach in ways that defy explanation. Like this guy I saw there the year after Red died:

 The original builder of the bothy on the beach was known as Red and he has apparently gone to his reward, well remembered.

We walked to the end of the beach where you have to wade across a cut to get to the rest of the wilderness alongside the old State Road 4A  but the tide was high and I wasn't wearing my Crocs and I don't think Rusty was particularly interested, happily for my sneakers.

The old Navy fence rather the worse for wear:

Back at the car Rusty wasn't ready to go. So I got out my Kermit chair...

...and struggled to take a selfie with my security guard at my back:

Other essays I've photographed over the years at Boca Chica Beach:

2008:   https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/04/boca-chica-beach.html

2009:   https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2009/12/boca-chica-beach.html

2010:   https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2010/11/boca-chica-beach.html

2013:  https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2013/06/boca-chica-beach.html

2015:  https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2015/05/boca-chica-beach.html

2016:   https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2016/12/alone-at-boca-chica.html

The Easter Seals

As part of my test of the Jetson electric scooter from Costco I rode out to College Road on Stock Island where I haven't been recently. I cam across a construction site.

This open space used to house the Easter Seals and now is apparently schuelded to be rebuilt as housing.

They say there will be 104  affordable housing units on the land which sounds pretty good ina  town with a huge housing shortage. However no one ever seems to define what the term"affordable" really means. Usually it ends up looking like 250-300 thousand dollars to buy or $2200 a month to renta  two bedroom which is not always that affordable for many bar and hotel workers. 

When in doubt I turn to Wikipedia and as I have no idea who the Easter Seals are (or were in this case) this is what I found:

Easterseals (formerly known as Easter Seals founded in 1919 as the National Society for Crippled Children)^[2] is an American 501(c)3 nonprofit providing disability services, with additional support areas serving veterans and military families, seniors, and caregivers.

Easterseals addresses the needs of individuals and families throughout the lifespan – from inclusive child care to respite care – in order to help people "reach for their full potential."^[3]

Easterseals meets the standards of the National Health Council and the Better Business Bureau/Wise Giving Alliance.

The name "Easter Seals" derived from an earlier fundraising program: beginning in 1934, colorful adhesive seals, the size of postage stamps, were sold around Easter; purchasers stuck these on mailed envelopes to demonstrate their support for the organization. Because of the program’s success, the organization changed its name from "the National Society for Crippled Children" to "Easter Seals." They have since changed their name to "Easterseals."

I took the picture above of their building just over a year ago but nowadays they apparently have relocated o North Roosevelt Boulevard so the work continues even as construction takes place on College Road.

The northern half of Stock Island was annexed to the city of Key West and the arc of College Road is home to many services critical to the city's operation. The original impulse to annex the land was to build housing and a gold course here but College Road is home to the Florida Keys Community College soon to be renamed by the state legislature, also the hospital, Gerald Adams School, the SPCA and the city transit bus depot newly uilt where the old garbage transfer station and waste burning plant used to live.

There is the homeless shelter, a marina, condominiums and the Sheriff's headquarters and jails for adults and juveniles. So it is no surprise to see buses and ambulances traveling the street.

And soon between the botanical gardens and the gold course, next to the water pumping station we should see 104 units of housing.