Casa Marina

I have heard people ask if a certain part of the city is safe, as though violent crime is rife just as it appears to be as they sit at home agog in front of their television sets. The sad truth is that life in Key West is far less glamorous and lived at a far slower pace than outsiders seem to expect. 

The purchase of a home in Key West is less dependent on the quality of a neighborhood than on the type of people who live next door. You will hear residents complain about the parties in houses rented to vacationers who think loud music and pool parties are why Key West exists. They aren't completely wrong but their unfortunate neighbors think they are as they ponder an early start to go to work the  next day. Casa Marina Resort in a  time of coronavirus: 

Meanwhile one can identify individual neighborhoods in Key West.  I was walking Casa Marina after the rain as I wanted and I hope Rusty was okay with a change. 

Casa Marina is the upscale neighborhood in Key West. If you are a moneyed Conch you avoid the city by living on Key Haven at Mile Marker Five or distant Shark Key at Mile Marker Ten. If you are an incomer who wants tropical winters and at the same time demand typical American conveniences like roofs that don't leak and central air conditioning and a yard you can swing a rooster in, you buy in Casa Marina.

Here you will find a muddle of architecture and much greenery and cars that were not built in Detroit. Every rule has it's exception but Casa Marina conforms for the most part to my generalizations. I like it in summer for the shade offered by the greenery and year round this is a neighborhood fails to roll up its sidewalks so one can walk like a normal person from Up North. Sidewalks in Key West vary between bizarre narrow slivers, pavement resembling a ploughed field and no sidewalk at all. I learned that wheelchair locomotion and uncertain walking with a walker frame can be quite complicated. Not in Casa Marina. Here you may mobility challenged and still get around like Wiley Coyote.

Casa Marina is actually named for the Casa Marina a massive pile built by Henry Flagler as a destination for his railway tourists. They were bused across the city from the coastguard base where the train terminus was located on the north side to his hotel two miles away on the south side. In those days the cargo wagons were driven onto ferries to transport goods to and from Havana while passengers walked aboard a ship that would take them to Cuba. Others lounged around at the Casa Marina resort built in the style of other Flagler resorts in Palm Beach and St Augustine. The Standard oil millionaire figured he had to give train passengers somewhere to wile away their winters in this tropical paradise if they were to ride his trains.

During World War Two the military used the hotel and then it was abandoned in the way Key West has of wasting its greatest assets. Nowadays it is a first class resort with all proper amenities so you can enjoy Key West without mixing with hoi polloi any more than you want to. So it is with the housing, expansive well forested and easy to navigate. Oh and if you need a dentist Claude my cheerful and very capable tooth puller ( he loves pulling teeth and does it painlessly) has an office here which is as close as I get to sleeping in Casa Marina in his comfortable dentist chair waiting for the numbness to set in.

Water Reflections

Sunrise and wind, shiny palm fronds fluttering, I sopped by the side of the road and pulled out my camera. It was a relief to see sun and not rain.

I parked in the greenest leafiest area of Key West, Casa Marina, and set off with Rusty. I saw a little humor in the zen van sitting patiently under the weight and indignity of a fallen palm frond. Rusty said nothing so perhaps it wasn't that  funny.

After the rain the air is crisp and clear and colors are brighter.

I hope before too long these signs will become part of the folklore of a time in the misty past. Doesn't seem likely just yet. 

Slowly the flooding will shrink and as the rainy season sets in flooding becomes part of the summer way of life. As the country re-opens I hear people pondering whether the way we live under lock down will persist when things are allowed to get back to normal.

Everything I have read about past times of crisis indicate things will most likely go back to the way they were because stasis is easiest for people and we all prefer the easiest path we are told. Some of us don't but you can't generalize about exceptions.

It's odd to find oneself envying the general indifference of a flower which buds and blooms with not a care in the world about coronavirus or any other pandemic.It does it beautifully too. 

Call The Police

Photographed by me last October seeking a 1930s effect

I was at work a couple of weeks ago when a woman called the police to report something suspicious. She told my colleague someone was photographing the pond in front of the police station. The pool of water is at the corner of Truman Avenue and Eisenhower separated from the police station by a wall of mangroves. I suppose in the right light it may be photogenic, I tried to get a certain old school effect in the picture above, but the woman was advised that taking photos in public isn't  a crime.

We live in strange times, I have to keep reminding myself of that. Cameras are everywhere, with home insecurity systems rife in a town where far too many people have second homes you will be photographed walking down the street. They spend most of the year somewhere else anxiously watching their remote screens for illicit activity..

I see a lot of beauty in Key West but not enough to sit and face it all the time. I was figuring the bench below was positioned so someone could test the theory about the boredom of watching paint dry.  Why else have the bench facing inwards? Some obscure city ordinance?

Once upon a time wearing a mask in public was suspicious. Should I have assumed the man below was robbing Sandy's Cafe or buying lunch while protecting his neighbors from germs? Either way I confess I failed to call the police and continued about my important task of dog walking.

Sometimes people call to report a dead body on the street. I think he's either drunk asleep or dead. Dead? I doubt it. When people are dead passersby know it in some visceral way. If they are unsure I can guarantee the "dead person" is sleeping it off. I can hear it in a caller's voice when they really are with someone who died, there is an unmistakable tension in their voice. Either way we send help of course and in a town where people drink to excess there are a lot of people sleeping on sidewalks. Or there used to be. Nowadays of course there is no one anywhere.

Chickens roam everywhere to take up the space formerly occupied by people. I can't escape them. That or I just notice them more now that they are the only signs of movement on the streets.

One can joke about watching paint dry but Key West is full of picturesque views and colors and shadows. It  would be easy to do this and no more were we not called to work and do things and be active. 

When I was  a child in England the Highway Code taught us to look left, then look right and then look left again before we stepped off the curb. It was backwards because they are in the third of the planet that has recreation driving on the left so traffic comes from the wrong direction. But the principle remains valid and yet all that good training about looking both ways is going to waste in this pandemic.

Truman Avenue can be crossed with relative ease most times of the day, rush hours excluded, and I wonder how long it will take to train Rusty to respect the traffic again. Probably one walk as he is pretty smart. 

There will no doubt end up being a call on record sooner or later as paranoia mounts, about some idiot walking his dog with a camera on a  public street. That will be me.

They Closed

Oh and by the way Turtle Kraals is closing. It would be easy to say the coronavirus is to blame but one could argue other factors have influenced the decision. Turtle Kraals really took a dive according to people who liked the place when an out of town investor, to much fanfare bought the bar and restaurant.I took the photograph below in 2008 to try to illustrate the appeal of a waterfront eatery with my Android phone.  

You could say the best thing about Turtle Kraals is the name, a reminder of the practice of corralling turtles for slaughter in less enlightened times, or the tower offering drinks with a view.  You can find those at Schooner Wharf and Waterfront Brewery, neither of which has announced imminent closing. When I was a boat captain I liked an occasional breakfast here on slow days with perfect eggs and strong coffee but more than anything I shall miss the ever more tenuous connection to the past. The upscale Boathouse is going to move in so less than ever shall we see even a pale reflection of the days when this was a commercial waterfront.

The corporate owner of Turtle Kraals is closing Charlie Mac's a barbecue joint on Southard Street and the Rum Barrel on Front Street closed a while ago leaving a weedy patch behind which is now being redecorated. No coronavirus issues there, just natural turnover.

 

Key West has built a reputation of sorts for being an agent of change. The idea of taking a vacation in Key West has been to allow people to let down their inhibitions and allow repression to retreat. In my own button down way I am not a huge fan of letting it all hang out but I suppose Key West can join New Orleans and Las Vegas in being that kind of place. Therefore it should come as no surprise that places close and things change.

 The owners of the Coffee Plantation seemed to have a good thing going with a strong community presence, doing good works and being seen out and about, passionate and involved. That is gone now and I suppose in a few years someone will mention the coffee shop and get blank stares back. I find myself in that same position at work nowadays and it doesn't make me popular. I refer to someone from years past, I started in 2004, and my younger colleagues look at me as though I am an idiot. I tend to stay silent and not bore the younger generation, preferring to find my history in books rather than my memory. Key West is a town with a rapid turnover, and always has from long before coronavirus.

The Asian noodle place on Southard Street announced permanent closure to widespread gasps of consternation but it turns out it was  landlord dispute that did them in, not the wretched virus. That's a story that has been told a few times in this town and you can pick your sides. A) It's a greedy landlord or B) It's a businessman with bills charging what the market will bear. Personally I'm tired of either narrative as it never changes and considering their standing in town I shouldn't be surprised if Kojin doesn't find another home. I'm not of the generation that finds expensive bowls of tarted up ramen noodles to his liking but millennials in Key West rave about the place

The list of places closing goes on, Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar, Loose Cannon, Med Men the cannabis shop, Pier One is closing and even a clothing store called Fresh Produce is included in the list of retail stores shutting their doors. However it turns out Fresh Produce, like Pier One is a chain and someone somewhere else decided to close them all down rather than just picking on little Key West.

You can drive yourself nuts with this stuff and I'm sure they will on Facebook and Trip Advisor as those are platforms designed to create drama but the evolving retail stuff in Key West is just a process speeded up. The much more pertinent concern about the lives upended takes a back seat. More people will come to key West to replace the workers who couldn't hang on. It's just the way it is despite the hand wringing and proclamations about the end of normality as we know it. People have always drunk in bars and corornavirus isn't going to change that. All it can do is change the cast of characters, wipe a little history off the slate and start again with fresh eager faces and their new appreciation for the wonders of quaint laid back tropical island living. We'll keep feeding the furnaces of industry well out of sight as usual. 

Truman Waterfront

The platform you see below is that of a ship tied up alongside the Inner Mole at the Truman Waterfront.

 Key West is still home to the USCG Cutter Ingham a survivor of World War Two, outlasting convoy duty and dangerous submarine patrols last serving in the Vietnam War, an extraordinary piece of history here in town, owned by a former city commission member. In happier days you could s troll the quarter deck and have a drink while watching the sun set. Nowadays it feels enough just to see it still there  with the park is reopened to the public. As of June 1st the Keys will all reopen to visitors and the checkpoints will be removed and hotels will be allowed to occupy half their rooms.

 I saw a cutter apparently identical to this one for sale online for some ridiculously low sum of money, $140,000 I think. I believe the guns are disabled but you get a cinema a commercial kitchen and dining facilities for 80 people. It seems to me to be slightly impractical but our financial overlords do seem to enjoy employing people to drive their personal liners around the world for them so I am probably failing to understand some of the nuances of owning your own fleet.

Back on earth Rusty and I practiced for retirement by doing nothing too strenuous and taking our time doing it. My blatant lack of ambition has led me to describe myself as the only immigrant who came to the US with no desire to make a fortune. My fortune has been in knowing what I want and doing it despite the inevitable peanut gallery. As the end hoves into view I have high hopes I may conclude my life successfully by my standards which granted, are not too high. 

Fort Zachary Taylor is one of the parks not yet reopened by the state of Florida which is not surprising really as this is one town in Florida completely closed to outsiders until June. Mind you having unfettered access to the best swimming beach in Key West without a lot of people would be rather nice. Unworthy thought.

For the time being on sunny days we can walk bike and, it turns out sleep on the green sward at the center of the redeveloped open space next to the harbor.  Rusty enjoyed the sniff and then rolled in the grass then sat and watched. 

Sitting there on the damp grass enjoying the bright colors reminded me how much I didn't want the former Navy base developed. I perversely liked the old dump, a mixture of gravel grass and neglect that persisted for twenty years after the Navy gave the city an unexpected gift of 34 empty access of waterfront land.

In the best traditions of seeking not to screw up everyone pretended the land wasn't there until it became obvious something had to be done. Plans called for the expected profiteering and I despaired but instead of marinas sports facilities and restaurants and parking lots some restraint prevailed and we find ourselves the proud users of open space filled with nothing too much.

The splash pad for children is closed for the Monet of course but it is a spectacular success normally giving youngsters a wholesome outlet for their energy while for the al fresco fitness oriented there is a circuit of various torture devices under the trees along the water front trail.

I like my cell phone so you won't find me joining the anti cellphone tower complainers.

Broadband for all would be my war cry were I to run for office which I won't so I'll let others complain about the communications towers and I'll focus on the flowers in bloom.

Oddly enough Rusty wasn't the only dog dragging a human hither and yon.  I find an occasional visit to this park helpful as it gives Rusty a chance to sniff and catch up on the news of who has been and who has gone by. On a glorious sunny day Truman Waterfront is worth the time.

There is also a handy water fountain which accommodates my water jug which when Rusty has drunk the gallon dry, needs refilling. As we head into summer heat Rusty does end to drink a bit more than he does in winter.

It's a simple place, lots of blue sky, green trees and peace and quiet.

Enough to make a boy thirsty.

I am not surprised the Keys will reopen June 1st. For those of us with jobs enjoying living coronavirus free, more or less, the re-opening will be a jolt I suspect and we'll all be taking precautions.  It is becoming ever more odd to live a life that feels more like a petri dish then normal boring living. We'll have to wait and see what happens...Will they get sick? Will we?  Will the economy bounce back? Will w ehave to start again? How soon will we know? Pandemics are not at all what I expected.

Dark Streets

I managed somehow to get to work early one recent morning and stopped on the way to take a few pictures of the serenity of the night. College Road is annexed to the city of Key West which uses it to house useful buildings including a school, a marina, a college, the SPCA, the bus facility, a hospital, a  rehab facility of no great repute (hence my own rehab in Miami) as well as the Jail and Sheriff's headquarters and a golf course with the original reason for the annexation: a housing development at the private golf course. None of that massive amount of useful activity shows at 5:20 in the morning. Nor, I dare say, should it.

I usually get up at 4:30 and take Rusty to "check the mail," a brief neighborhood walk to see what other dogs have been out and about in the twenty four hours preceding. I try to leave the house by 5:15 and generally fail spectacularly rushing down the stairs at I hope some time before 5:25, the absolute last minute not to look like a pill and arrive at work at exactly 6 am. The overnight shift as I know from long experience does not look cheerfully upon their morning relief if they show up technically on time but with none to spare.

It was a windy morning and I tried to catch the essence of the invisible air overhead. I'm not sure if it just looks smeared but anyway there was a fair bit of movement. It has been delightfully windy spring with lots of cool, not to say cold air blowing away insects and humidity. 

Moving on I took Flagler Avenue instead of the faster North Roosevelt as I wanted to save stopping and photographing the Boulevard another day. I had so much time in hand I could afford to hang around here and try to capture the night and the sense of emptiness in the middle of new Town.

These days looking at the roads I drive daily and have driven for two decades has an almost banal air to it, like those pictures one sees of daily life lived, except they are from a different era entirely. I have all too few pictures of my sixty years of daily banal living up to this point so in anticipation of things changing I have been trying to make a conscious effort to photograph the memories of daily life. Before the virus I was trying to capture the essence of my commute in pictures, trying to find a way to express the crowds, the traffic lights, the hold ups and the open roads without slipping into the obvious. It was much harder than I expected. These days these few pictures pretty much sum up my drive in to work. It is bizarre. 

Even at six o'clock in the evening when most people have gone home, the few that still have regular desk jobs, the road out of towns wide open. Even with the road work proceeding relentlessly slowly at the Triangle, the Cow Key Bridge as it is properly known, reflow quite smoothly through the winding traffic cones. How odd it is to find small pockets of advantage in the presence of this virus lock down. Empty streets that feel destined never to be filled again.