Van's Night Out

Last week the moon was waxing full and I was home alone Friday. Obviously I should take the van and go see what I could see. Obviously I wasn't really alone as Rusty wanted to come too. Layne was in Miami Friday night so I was in charge of the outing. Obviously we weren't going to eat well but the views should compensate.

Since Hurricane Irma swept this area in 2017 the state has brought in a bunch of money and rebuilt the support for Highway One with some rip rap also thrown behind the seawall. Accidentally they built a dirt roadway which has allowed vehicles to crawl around the edge of seafront, at least for now. 

 

The camera smoothes out the gravel surface which is very bouncy in a five ton van on a road surface with rocks, potholes and as rough a surface as you like. But at walking speed the lumbering van will get there, a private spot right under the roadway and right above the water. 

It makes me laugh to see myself posting a photo of waterfront location worthy of Instagram posing. The fact is there aren't many waterfront spots in these islands thanks in large part to the marshy nature of land which reaches the very edge of the water most places. Mangroves aren't really fit to be walked along or certainly driven over so the Keys are really suitable for edge of the water parking. Funny that isn't it?

Fishing is why people hang out on bridges and in parking lots and unfortunately it feels as though there aren't enough trash cans in the keys (and there are a great many!) to contain the garbage. Parking my van means parking my home which comes equipped with tanks and bags to store liquid and solid waste and I like to leave no sign we were there, wherever it is. I failed this time as I kicked over Rusty's left over kibbles in the dark and scattered them in the gravel. Ant heaven it turned out and a nest of them got busy removing the unexpected bounty.  It was heavenly for Rusty too, as the moon was up and the landscape was illuminated all night. After a week at work I fell asleep at 7:30 and work up completely refreshed at 3:30 (!). I sat in the doorway and Rusty sat outside watching and listening. It was perfect, even though the phone image is a little bit crusty!

When I woke for the last time in the morning Rusty was ready so off we went, familiar walks in an unusual format. I live here! I'm van camping here! Confusing. Rusty knew what needed to be done:

My idea is to make van travel fun and so far he seems to be getting used to the idea of sleeping in a box, even though he gets really excited every time we get home. I like having my life right there, a box filled with water and electricity and all the bits and pieces for comfortable living. Webb the spartan sailor thinks the van is a bit crowded inside with stuff. He has a point but three of us reside in the box and we all have needs (one is a woman, nuff sed).

It was a good morning with nothing much to do except pull out the electric toothbrush, boil a kettle and put Weetabix in a bowl. Just like I was at home. Well, we were at home so I pulled out the morning papers and swiveled the driver's seat while Rusty sat outside digesting his breakfast.

I wasn't going to get away without another walk, that I knew, but first I had some reading to catch up on. Leaving the bed made up was easy and comfortable as a day couch. With the doors open a pleasant cool breeze blew through and pretty soon Rusty was curled up in his bed on my bed next to me. I have been reading the biography of James Beard, the original food guy. I was curious where the current food fads came from and Julia Child wasn't alone in her efforts to create cooking awareness. James Beard it turns out was a complicated character, driven by being gay in a very straight world and fearful of being uncovered. He was run over by his own gay scandal as a young man at university and that trauma played a central role in his unhappiness and inner turmoil. The US was not gay friendly in the 1950s. However what I do find interesting is how he inserted himself into the food culture and found his way by being determined to have a voice after failing at opera performance and stage acting. It was a slow start to the book plodding through his formative childhood but the story is picking up the pace as we pass World War Two and beard starts to get recognition. I enjoyed my Kindle to the sonorous rasp of a dog snoring.

When the hound from hell woke up he made it clear he was more important than James Beard so off we went. I confess I left the phone in the van and set off with bag, leash, camera and nothing else.

There were a few cell phones about taking pictures, and some fishing poles with humans attached but we managed to weave our private way to the top of the hill and looked down on the water and Bahia Honda State Park in the background, where the campers are packed tight and reservations far in advance are required:

I mentioned I left my phone in the van so I had nothing to write with when I met these bandits. I was beetling to the trash cans to discreetly dump Rusty's latest dog egg when my Carolina Dog was hailed by name. Oops. I had nowhere to write down names but indeed I did recall meeting on Duval well before the pandemic when faces were uncovered. I wasn't wearing a mask but we stayed well apart and I congratulated them on moving to the Keys from upstate New York. 

Rusty needed to keep moving, of course, and I was aware that my wife was heading home about now and probably expected me to answer the machine that must never be left behind. So we walked back to the box  in good order and got on the road to home twenty whole minutes away.

I could have stayed all day. I really like hanging out in and around the van even though I have a perfectly good house to enjoy. Odd that.

70 square feet of bliss. Is that possible?

A Small Nowhere Space

In 2009 I rode my Triumph past this barely noticeable gap on the shoulder of US 1 and I stopped to take pictures. Sunday was a rainy day and I was hunting around for a dry foot walk for Rusty...why not Park Key, an update?

There is a sign to Keep Out which seems unnecessary but I dare say the idea is when you slip and fall and hurt yourself the county is covered against the inevitable lawsuit seeking damages. If you can put one foot safely in front of the other and don't jump off seawalls you will be fine.

There's not much here except some nice views and surround sound traffic noises from the highway.

Someone has parked what looks like a small cat boat in the protected shallows off Sugarloaf Key.

The picture above is Park Key and below there is the remains of a boat ramp and a small pier which was built on indestructible PVC pipes:

Rusty approved for a five minute exploration.

Parking is available on the shoulder at Mile Marker 19...

Rusty ahd to wait while I played with black and white for a few minutes...

In the end we had to go. He was pretty clear.

Sleeping On Through

If you are Up North you have had snow and really cold weather. Good luck with that, and spare a thought for me as I face a 55 degree night tonight after work. Or for him hoping his hung over has worn off and he has found his way to shelter. During the course of my ramble with Rusty yesterday morning he moved but as you will see not far. He's not dead, so don't call 911 breathlessly telling me you've seen a corpse: he drank too much because life got the better of him. It used to happen to a lot of people around here but they're much reduced in number.

Curry Mansion is there on Caroline Street to remind us that Valentine's Day is coming. My wife looked up from her Amazon page and said Happy Valentine's Day we're getting watches. I haven't worn a watch in decades, but the past is the future and by Wednesday I should have an article strapped to my wrist once again. Apparently it will note my physical activity so I hope someone will care, perhaps some Moldovan hacker will count my steps or squats or whatever it does. I know my wife will be making sure I get up every hour I'm sitting at work. I am become patient in old age, this too will pass and I trust the next fad will be less weird and intrusive and annoying on my wrist. 

I like to walk and I don't need an Apple device on my wrist to make me walk. I walk early in the morning, well before six o'clock when no one is around, ostensibly to be social distanced but actually because I like walking with Rusty and no one else. Silence around us and a running commentary in my head. It's winter time here and there are more people around than in the sticky months of summer and some of them are exercising, some are stumbling and this homeless guy with a pack and a firm controlled stride compelled me to record him, a Sasquatch figure loping along with me hopping around urging my camera to wake up in time for this sudden vision of woodsy folklore. I caught a fuzzy image of the mysterious legend.

Key West has been a fabulous source of things to look at during the pandemic. I have found myself obliged to look deeper and think harder about what I see, and knowing this will all end before long has prompted me to remember what I felt as I saw. This page really is a diary and that aspect is becoming more and more apparent to me. Retirement beckons in one year and three months and with it I hope the end to the pandemic to allow easy roaming once again.

I was watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on television this past weekend, avoiding rain and tired for the moment of the printed word, so I was seeking escape and journeyed to South Florida with the man whose television programs gave me hope for the medium. He killed himself yet I still think about him and I still miss his acerbic view of the world. His walk around Key West with Norman Van Aiken was a nostalgia trip for me seeing the Key West I used to know 15 years ago, long gone, and even then not a revolutionary phase of this turbulent island's life. But it was messier, it had more of the Bohemian and less of the conformist, the balance was still teetering even though the end was in sight. It was clearly not the Keys West of 1980 and yet there was a sliver of hope that fashion and style and symbols of wealth could be kept at bay a little longer.

I got some encouragement when Van Aiken declared Key West wasn't ready for his nouvelle cuisine and left the Town and Tavern restaurant for the wealthier pastures of Miami Beach. Nevertheless he took Bourdain to Conch Town Cafe and over his shoulder you can see the Lemonade Stand art studio now a bric-a-brac shop. I read Solares Hill, the weekly irritant to people in power, before time shut down the café and the Internet ended the newspaper assaults on the Keys bourgeoisie, replaced by online social madness unedited and allowing anonymous voices the freedom to throw up into the four winds of public opinion. I wonder what David Etheridge would have written on the events of January 6th. I should have liked to have held the newspaper with his words on it at the café.

At five in the morning I watch the cleaners hosing down Rick's, their loud voices reverberating around the tree bar and in my head I translate their Spanish jokes into the banter I used to listen to from the field workers on my mother's farm in Italy. The themes remain the same, sex money, time off, home and round and round. I never was any good at small talk, failing hopelessly to grasp the significance of sport in men's lives, unwilling to discuss women and uncompromising in my politics. You don't want me at the dinner table, nor do you want me on a work team discussing the above mentioned ways to pass the time. 

The men (no women) who clean the recreational areas downtown disappear long before anyone of importance wakes up and only a handful of joggers will run through the shiny wet sidewalks, the only trace of the morning labor to prepare for another day of crowds and drinks and unmasked faces. I miss a few things about pre-pandemic life but substitutes have largely worked. My wife and I exercise at home, a half hour a day and I find I save huge mileage and money not driving back and forth to the gym. We buy new releases to stream though I do find myself missing movie theaters...I don't miss people talking during the show,  that I need to remember before I get too misty eyed. Friends have fallen into a void and the exchange of ideas has dried up and that irritates me. But this period is a pause, a strange looking glass time when past is past and the future will be recognizable no matter how much the experts warn us it won't.

I get to walk and take pictures to please myself, I see the signs of pre-pandemic life lying around and I'm glad I leave it to others to gather in groups and act as though 430,000 Americans haven't died breathlessly in pursuit of herd immunity. My wife has been cleared to be vaccinated and all she has to do now is hope the supply of vaccine will keep speeding up. My relatives in Europe have not seen even a whiff of vaccine in their lives and despite the oddities of recent life in the US I remain firm in my belief we are better off here than there.

Key West manages to be insouciant and rigid all at the same time. Masks at all times, drinks at all times, take care but keep the economy churning. It's no wonder we all suffer from pandemic fatigue and confusion. I suppose Anthony Bourdain would have worn or refused to wear a mask as our own inclinations lead us but he isn't here to be pithily dismissive of one opinion or the other. The Southernmost City he walked in 2005 was in his mind full of artists and fugitives and other romantic characters but Key West has changed as has every city in the world over the past fifteen years. It would be nuts to expect otherwise. Defining the change for the better or the worse is all dependent on your perspective.

I think my problem lies in not knowing what has happened Up North over the past few decades. The glimpses I have caught on recent road trips leave me wondering what there is to discover.  We drove Michigan last summer in our first effort to bed down the van, to sort out life in a small space on the road, not a boat, different, smaller, harder to handle in some ways. Two things we see looking back was how much easier van life would be today with a year's worth of experience under our belts and how gorgeous Michigan was in the green bloom of sunny summer. Wisconsin too, except they didn't wear masks so we sped past them. It wasn't the Michigan of protest and kidnapping politicians and all that flag waving stuff. We even got some pretty good cheese. And we didn't get the virus.

I look back at 1918 and the Spanish 'Flu that originated in Kansas and was spread around the world by war. We have to remind ourselves that outbreak lasted three years. We read those words and gloss over the implications: three years. We are starting out year two here and thanks to science we have vaccines, but human nature being what it is I am sure we will find a way to spread this aggravation out for two more years. Fear of vaccines boggles my mind and every day I join Thomas Jefferson in thanking Dr Edward Jenner for his life saving work. But Facebook makes everyone an epidemiologist and illiterate certainty will lay us all low for another year I am sure at this point. I used to hope vaccines and good sense would end this pandemic this Spring but I am reluctantly settling in for another year of mask wearing and isolation, grateful for my job and my bosses who take the risks seriously.

As I work my way round to the end of today's musing I find myself back on Duval Street a few doors down from the Smallest Bar and the drunk in the white soled sneakers had found his way to the stairs at the strip club. You'd think I asked him to pose but I promise I didn't. Sure as eggs is eggs there he was backside in the air balancing on his forehead in a manner that could only be produced by the mother of all hangovers.

I thought that in his way it was a piece of performance art, the feeling left behind by months of Covid, the loss of friends and family, the cutting off of contact, the isolation of the virus, the hopelessness of even trying to drink your way out of your aggravation. Wake up to another day and the headache will still blind you. Better to keep your head down and pretend the world is not there.

Altered States

It was a funny moment when I looked at this picture on my computer and asked myself: where is this?  It could be a Sarajevo back street, or a customs warehouse in Puerto Corinto, but in point of fact it's an alley a stone's throw from Captain Tony's bar.  It doesn't really look like Key West does it?

It's a funny little town, built on trade and shipping and a splendid climate and those features of life in Key West continue. Of course there isn't wrecking going on as there once was, that strange practice of rescuing cargo from sinking ships but trade is as important as ever, no matter  what the hurdles:

Its a  source of wonder to me that these little stores can make a living and this winter has seen far fewer visitors at least to my eyes. 

I have to admit I'm counting down the days to Easter a variable date which combined with meting snows indicates when the high season of packed roads is over. This year that date falls at the beginning of April so two more months of snowbirds. That seems doable. 

The thing is when you aren't dining out, there are no movies, no concerts and no plays what does any of it matter? Commuting is a little restricted but not by much, listen to the radio, play a podcast and you're home. There haven't even been the usual crop of road blocking fatalities on Highway One this winter, so far.

It's the paradox of living in a highly touted tourist town: it's nicest at it's emptiest and this year continues to be oddly empty. That virus, when will it ever end?

Those Chickens

The city of Key West has now made it illegal to deliberately feed wild chickens in the city. So had you planned on bringing a big bag of bird seed with which to stave off avian famine you will now be flouting a new law. If you drop your fries accidentally and chickens eat them you will be just being a klutz. As far as I can tell it goes like that in the Southernmost City where wild chickens have been the subject of endless visitor fascination.

In the grand scheme of things this isn't really a  big deal especially as we all know the chickens will do fine as they have plenty to eat. Its not really about the birds, its about re-training tourists to see Key West through a  different lens. The mayor announced before the most recent election, which she swept, that she is onboard with a new vision for the city as put forward by a leading developer. In this vision Key West will attract fewer visitors but they will be wealthy people interested not in getting shit faced on Duval but on enjoying the ambience of an upscale historical little city in the sun. Not a place that welcomes sweaty wife beater vests and chicken feeders. I hope the jury will be out for a while on putting water bowls out for passing dogs (like Rusty).

Over the years I have come to respect the chickens in Key West. I grew up spending my summers running around a small Italian mountain village which was home to more chickens than humans so when I saw these birds on the streets they didn't seem that strange to me. I find chickens to be delicious, but while alive they are noisy messy birds. I have noticed they are also very family oriented birds. You'll see them wandering around town in tight family units, rooster, hen and chicks. Rusty doesn't like to go anywhere near them as he has faced off  against an angry hen and she gave him no quarter. He crosses the street to avoid chickens when he can and I encourage him to do that.

The cruise ship shut down has hurt downtown Key West during the pandemic and many stores along Lower Duval have disappeared, presumably owing to a dearth of shoppers.  The argument against the ships has been they don't contribute much to the city's economy, but after a year of no cruise ships Lower Duval looks pretty ravaged. I suppose the theory is that new and different shops will repopulate the empty spaces but I struggle to imagine a Duval Street filled withy stores that locals might want to shop in. The state is planning to tear down the recent vote in Key West to limit cruise ships so what happens next year, hopefully after the virus, will be interesting to see.

Key West has carefully cultivated  a reputation as a haven for Bohemian non conformists but its a reputation that is enjoyed more in name than in fact. The original city residents, the Conchs have put up with it reluctantly because they profited from the flow of eccentric seekers and their dollars. Businesses have done the same but as eccentricity shrinks and conformity is forced by new residents  who have no interest in allowing Bohemians to wander the streets Key West is pushing itself into a new vision of itself. 

The fate of the chickens may be uncertain but not because of the feeding ban, but because of the drive behind that ban to fundamentally alter the nature of the city. I don't think they have chickens wandering the streets of Boca Raton and I doubt  Key West will either before too long. I hope I'm wrong.