Places I Miss

It is an irony of the human condition that change is a natural part of life, nothing is static, and at the same time we all bitch constantly about things changing. Let's face it, if things stayed the same we'd moan about that too, out of boredom if nothing else. So it is that I like to be cautious when I do my own mumbling about things changing in Key West. And things have changed recently, and there are places I actively miss, places I'd like to go and hang out when I have an hour or two to spare in Key West, when I've too little time to ride home, but too much time before my next appointment. I never wanted to got to the Benihana Japanese Steak House on South Roosevelt but my wife did, in a half hearted way; a reminder she said of childhood. Now of course I regret my intransigence on the subject of dinner-as-theater, because all that's left is the sign and the shell of a building next to the former Martha's, a restaurant that captivated me for years. Martha's was an old fashioned steak house of the kind our parents used to treat themselves to, and they offered prime rib and baked potatoes and all that sort of robust fare that these days one treats oneself to with one eye on the food groups. The reason Martha's left a hole in my life wasn't just the occasional prime rib, it was the view I got as I rode by at night looking in the panoramic windows and seeing the diners warmly illuminated by the glow of the lamps on their tables, all set at different levels inside the restaurant, with a back drop of swirling fish tanks. It always looked warm and inviting. Now it too, like its erstwhile Japanese neighbor, is just a shell, not sold in time to capture a portion of the real estate bubble, yet as closed as closed can be, and useless. I'm told the numerous stray cats who hung out in back and were fed on table scraps have been kept nourished by anxious neighbors... spay program anyone?

Key West enjoys Cuban food and there are tons of outlets for the peculiar Latin/Caribbean cuisine, but one that lived only a short while and died used to sit on a corner of a large empty lot on White Street, kitty corner to Glynn Archer School and its painted orange tiger. "Chicharrones" it was called, the dream of a Cuban housewife who opened the restaurant as a labor of love, what she wanted to do, not the job she had to do to earn her living. The food was excellent and varied, the interior decor was earnestly kitschy mixed in with lots of pictures of old time Key West, family mementos surrounding the red and white chequered table cloths. I expect the property owner will make a nice increase in rent from the new building filling the space to capacity, but I miss the eatery.

Old timers in Key West can be desperately superior and annoying as they dredge up memories of a time that is so long gone it seems buried in the Pleistocene Era. Old memories have the value of currency in this town, so here is my contribution to my old timers crotchetiness. This cafe on Duval used to be "El Cacique" (Spanish for the chief) and it was my pleasure to eat breakfast here. It was so long ago I don't remember much about it, but it was where my circle of dock rats would break their daily fast. On a more modern note the Coppertone kid on top of this building, the old Dennis Pharmacy has gone. I was not a great fan of the place but I ate there now and again. The pharmacy has moved to New Town in the Professional Building and the cafe has I think found a home on Petronia Street, and now there is a crisp clean modern bank on the corner of United and Simonton. So be it, even though I liked the look of the old place better.

The great heart break for my wife and I is the closure of the old Sands Beach Club, a delightful nook on a small strip of sand with decent food, outdoor tables, dog friendly and they even had Guinness on draught. Now there are what appear to be condos, more condos going up. Of course I have no pictures of my wife myself and our Labrador enjoying the Sands. The past is gone.

Across the street the Reach resort is back all blandly spiffed up and Shula's, a steak house named for a sporting figure I believe, has gone and not come back. My colleagues liked Shula's for a splurge and I was happy to join them in formal celebrations, as formal as Key West allows. They grilled a really delicious vegetable at Shula's, as much as the meats I thought.

What to say about PT's? Lots of people loved the sports bar ambiance in wood panelling and television screens. It was conveniently close to the dinghy landing for liveaboards, and the food was fried okay. I am no fan of television in my restaurants and people chasing balls even less so. But PT's had a lovely slogan "where locals eat," and it wasn't totally a lie. Until one day, suddenly it was closed. Half Buck Freddie's, the department store, cut-price overflow, is there now still with the "#1 Local's Spot" sign above the door.

This little shack on Eaton Street used to be a bakery, called Cole'z Peace, and it was a wonderland of breads and pastries. I'd stop all the time riding my bicycle or my scooter down to my job on the waterfront and my wife would order mango bread loaves which we would eat as dessert with butter. The bakery closed after the founder (Cole'z father as it was) sold the operation to people unable to sustain it. However the restaurant store up the street still sells some of the bakery's products so the logo (at the top of this page) is still hanging on in the city. This location became an art gallery for a while ironically (I thought) named Poison, and now? Now its just another in the myriad inconvenience stores that seem to thrive on every street corner in the city.

The Lemonade Stand sounds like a convenience store but it wasn't. It too has gone the way of all flesh and the building across the street from Blue Heaven restaurant is now for rent.

The Lemonade Stand was an art gallery and the artist had lots of innovative artistic ideas, marathon painting sessions and she made a large number of portraits of local figures illustrating if you like a slice of local history. But its gone. The housing bubble was cursed by a lot of people but I don't think everyone appreciated how much money was made available (even if temporarily) by easy credit and an appearance of prosperity. I dread to think what will come next on Petronia at Thomas.

In the also ran category I put the next photograph. A few years ago the original owners of El Siboney Cuban restaurant put the place up for sale for three million dollars and that looked like the end of that. Cole'z peace disappeared after its sale, after all.

Instead the new owners at 900 Catherine have absorbed the cost of their mortgage somehow, kept the same enormous band of red shirted staff and they sell the same high quality, high quantity Cuban food at amazingly reasonable prices. Their salads continue to be so-so, but their main dishes are easily enough for two. And the place continues to be packed day after day. Cool.

In the honorable mention category I put this next place, happily operating on Upper Duval. I love this joint, honest food in the middle of tourist chaos, a ring side seat on the streams of humans tramping Duval's sidewalks. And if you like felafels this is the place to be.

I put it in the "honorable mention" category because I fear for its future. Its there today but who knows tomorrow? And there in a nutshell is the truly crappy thing about change. You just can't tell.

Kite Boarding Curry Hammock

It is said that when Spanish explorers found South Florida Indians living in the mess that they considered the Everglades to be, they asked their hosts, with some perplexity, where they slept. After all, the Spaniards, overdressed in rusting armor could not conceive of people living out their lives in the river of grass, as damp and leaky as it was then, and continues to be to a lesser degree, today. The Indians pointed to clumps of trees and said they slept in the hammocks, and the Spaniards who managed to cock up the meaning of just about everything they came across in their meanderings, thought the Indians were talking about the creepers they stretched between the trees to sleep in, hence the modern use of the word hammock to describe the contraption we use while on vacation to rest in. In fact the Indians were describing the small clumps of dry land which rose a few feet above the river of grass and allowed relatively spacious hardwood trees to grow and provide shelter for the Indians to live in. Thus it is in South Florida that hammocks are places where trees grow (and where for all I know tourists could also be slinging hammocks). And at Curry Hammock State Park one can wander a trail right through something resembling the original meaning of the word hammock.And we even found ourselves a meadow, though appearances can be deceptive. This meadow was covered in stout crab grass, not the lush soft grasses found in more temperate climes.

It happened this past Sunday that by some miracle of timing my wife and I both had a day off together and we had chores to do. So it was only appropriate that we cast off our cares and take to the road, not, I am sorry to say on the Bonneville, but in the eminently more civilized convertible, which my wife converts all the time except when it's parked. She will ride the motorcycle quite happily but she feels togetherness is promoted when two people take a little tour and can actually be heard when they speak to each other.

The state park isn't large where it sits on Little Crawl Key, (a name to conjure with) and offers visitors lots of access to the calm waters of the Straits of Florida, on the south side of the island chain. Apparently small children are encouraged to be off their leashes, discriminatory perhaps but rules is rules.

Curry Hammock lies at Mile Marker 56, technically within the city limits of the relatively new city of Marathon, which is no place much to write home about as it is a wide spot in Highway One about 12 miles long, and the second largest city in the Florida Keys. However it does contain more than one thing worth seeing and Curry hammock is one of those. The helpful information board near the sparkling clean, environmentally low flush restrooms, offers a list of the top ten things to do at the park, and I was glad to see "nothing" was rated number one. A piece of advice more than one visitor acted upon, vigorously:

Including the lucky few who filled the park's 28 camping spots next to the day use area:

The weather continues windy as we prepare for another cold front later this week and this state of affairs favored number 9 on the park's lists of activities: kite boarding.

This is a strenuous pastime and doesn't allow for much time to read apparently. There were several brightly colored kites buzzing dementedly back and forth along the waterfront.They were controlled by some very determined men in wetsuits who spun across the horizon doing pirouettes while the older, more sedate visitors stumped around onshore providing a serene foreground for the waterborne madness.And from time to time they would pop up like jackrabbits out of the water and change their direction of travel as though pursued by a farmer with a shotgun.

I thought the kite boarding was an excellent sport, silent, non invasive, non polluting though probably ruinous for their backs when they get to middle age. There were also a few people interested in the more traditional sports associated with Florida Parks. Pastime number five for instance, on the park list:

And though best friends are welcome, on leashes, they aren't allowed on the modest sized beaches, thanks to owners' habits of not picking up, if you follow my drift and leaving unwelcome surprises for bare feet in the sands that mask all defecation:

And thus, tour completed, sunshine enjoyed, water drunk, back to the main road of life, our life in the Keys:

The two lane stripe that leads to Publix, and then home with Chico bags bulging with strawberries and tofu, and all such delights that somehow make their way to the end of the road, and by way of the convertible to our house, at the end of the weekend. And chores still not done, thus undone and valiantly so.

Porch Lights

My Bonneville parked in front of the No Parking signs at the Conch Republic Seafood. In my defence it was three o'clock in the morning and no one else was around on the boardwalk.

The people at the Fort Lauderdale Triumph dealership sucked air through their teeth when I said I didn't want to "upgrade" the exhausts on my brand new motorcycle. To make them more noisy is what they meant by upgrading. In order to make modern motorcycles meet high European air pollution reduction standards manufacturers employ useful little tricks to clean the exhaust fumes. They add fresh air to the combustion chamber and put a catalytic converter in the exhaust system. They quieten the air intake with elaborate air filters so new owners tear it all out, add loud exhausts and gain a few horsepower. When I told the lads at the dealership I liked my Bonneville as is because I like to ride fast, they scratched their heads and wrote me off as eccentric. It's much easier to ride fast on the open road when the Old Bill can't hear you coming for a mile. Loud exhausts would be a real pain wandering the streets of Key West as narrow as they are, and at three am it would be hard to go roaring around town snapping pictures of the pretty, illuminated houses when the good burghers of the city are tucked up asleep. Bike Week generates tons of negative, anti- motorcycle comments in the paper. Some argue loud pipes might save lives, but I know they make residents crazy with irritation.

I never thought of myself as a night owl but I love taking off on my lunch breaks and wandering the city when no one else is around. My colleagues like to take their breaks earlier, Noel goes home to play video games with Matt and Diggy roars off on his Honda and rarely tells what he does. I leave for lunch hours later and the streets of the city are mine, all tourists have either already staggered home or are still wobbling on Duval Street sucking down one last cold one before vomiting in a nearby flower bed to give their vacations the proper flavor. Deserted is how I like William Street:

I don't like to use a flash for night shots, partly because the flash isn't much goodon my little pocket camera and partly because I like the warmth of the sepia tint that shades the natural night tones. Plus I can't be bothered to carry a tripod which laziness forces me to get imaginative on how to prop my camera. At three in the morning I can park the Bonneville in the middle of the street and use that to act as a support for the camera:

This next picture I got by balancing the camera on the branch of a convenient tree. One can poke around in the lower braches of a tree at three in the morning without attracting critical comment. I love the look of these porches, even if sometimes they appear too formal to actually sit in:The streets of Key West aren't overly endowed with street lights fortunately, and there are lots of trees overhanging, all of which adds to the ambiance of the middle of the night. That and the fact that everyone feels the need to illuminate their homes like Christmas trees.Then there is the matter of noise, or the lack of it. No planes, no engines and when the Bonneville is turned off total silence descends over the whole street. There isn't even the sound of air conditioning humming on a cool winter night.

In the part of town west of White Street known as Old Town, the city's Historical Architecture Review Committee lays down rules for what can and cannot be done to these homes. It's actually trickier than at first might appear and as one can surmise, HARC is the source of lots of controversy. For instance one source of irritation has been HARC's requirements that windows be made of suitable materials that are in keeping with the historical theme. However home owners anxious to use modern hurricane resistant materials have to stick to the historically authentic renovations. I get the best of both worlds: the opportunity to enjoy these preserved homes and also to go home and bolt on my hurricane shutters as the next storm heads our way...

And to close, the historic Fleming House, all balconies and strings of lights just sitting there all night long, waiting for someone to come by and appreciate the historical serenity of these quiet streets. And when I get back to the Bonneville I can fire it up and take off with only a slight chance of disturbing the lightest of sleepers. I get to go where my less acoustically sensitive brethren make a great deal of rumbling and piss off the slumbering residents with their altered exhausts. Noisy motorcycles, another source of communal irritation in the sensitive, narrow streets of Key West. America's hardest town to live quietly in.

Eight Bells For Bob Unanski

There are people who come into your life in the most unexpected way, Bob and Barb Unanski got together with us for Thanksgiving 1998. I don't know where anyone else was but my wife and I and our two dogs were sailing Baja California that November and Bob and Barb were nearby on a Taswell 43 called Freya. We ended up sailing all the way to the Panama Canal on and off with them. It was buddy boating of the best sort, hopscotching each other,meeting, parting and sharing card games and meals along thousands of miles. It was an enormous addition to our sailing life through Central America. Bob and Barb squeezed into a rental car with us for a five-hour drive to San Jose the capital of Costa Rica when one of our dogs needed to see a vet. We all slept in one room in the Best Western, Bob and I out snoring each other, they said. Barb and my wife that is. We helped each other through the Panama Canal and shared another amazing Thanksgiving in 1999 in the San Blas islands of Panama, under the coconut palms of a deserted island. Traveling alongside Bob and Barb was magical.

Bob, a man not given to being around dogs, seen here helping Debs, our husky mix , hunt for monos, monkeys in northern Costa Rica. The monkeys took great delight in tormenting Debs from the high branches of the trees hurling chattered insults at his fenzied ineffectual pawing.Bob was an electronics engineer tremendously proud of his employee number 22 with Tandem Corporation, a pioneer of the Silicon Valley revolution in California's Santa Clara Valley. He wa salso a keen Ham radio operator W4RFU, and spent hours at his desk onboard Freya with his electronics. I was fond of noting that cruising brought us together and made us firm friends despite our different social, political and career backgrounds. He was like a father for me when we were out sailing. In 2004, cruising the Bahamas he helped rebuild our water maker on our cabin table, his patience and perseverance a shining example to an impatient young wretch like me. Bob seen here in another picture from his website showing him with his wife Barb in the back alongside her sister Anita, celebrating his 70th birthday. He died in Arkansas February 27th 2008. He was 71 years old.

After they sold Freya they moved to Arkansas to be near family and I wished they could have come to the Keys to enjoy the cruising life ashore that we enjoy so much. Its hard to imagine he's dead, but he died quickly in an aerobics class of all things, here one minute and gone the next. It's all our fates, and we should all be so lucky to live as well and generously as he did.

Sailors used to mark time by ringing bells and when they changed watch they rang eight bells and it was also customary when they died to ring eight bells, and Bob was a sailor through and through, and I shall miss him every time I think of all our miles together. Go in peace good friend, and fair winds.

Toxic Triangle

There are some low income apartments for sale to qualified Monroe County residents, and they are close to the waterfront off Trumbo Road. If the developer were to tell people the apartments were at Key West's Toxic Triangle it might make for a hard sell, but luckily for Ed Swift there are only a few of us that remember that designation for the waters off Trumbo Road.They are nice enough units offering garage space underneath and a price tag I believe of around $180,000 for a one bedroom. They are part of a luxury deal because this isn't a charity operation. The larger development is called the Steam Plant, because that is what it was before they decided to build apartments:The low cost units look like quite a deal to me, but the Steam Plant luxury apartments are supposed to sell for several millions each and they have all the penthouse bells and whistles, including I'm told individual elevators from the garages. Its quite the lump, which isn't surprising when you know that this was actually a power plant supplying the city of Key West with life enhancing energy.And that, in the long version, is where the term Toxic Triangle comes from. The power plant had to spew its effluent somewhere and there is tidal water nearby, across the street actually.There was a time, not so long ago that people lived on pleasure boats tied up along this waterfront, and it didn't cost a thing. Of course there were no amenities but inasmuch as the basin is protected from wind and wave to the south by downtown Key West , and to the north by the Coastguard Base it was a good place to tie up out of the rougher waters of the main harbor. It still is for the few commercial boats that continue to tie up there. Behind them lies the US Coastguard Base where the coasties keep their cutters:
The base entrance is at the end of Trumbo Road:The Toxic Triangle isn't locked in everyone's memory as a foul blot on Key West's history, not at all. I spoke with Carol, a colleague of my wife's and she remembers coming down here for picnics and to go swimming. She thinks of this sylvan spot as a sort of public swimming pool, crystal clear waters and a good spot to relax.This is also the spot whence the Sunset Key landing craft takes off to haul moving vans and garbage trucks and delivery vehicles across to the luxury island. I actually took the trip over there a few years ago helping to deliver furniture. The development of Sunset Key generated its own controversy when the city took control of the Navy's old Tank Island, so called because of the (unused) fuel storage tanks on the deserted fill island, and sold the island and the mainland waterfront to the Hilton developer for all of eleven million dollars . When the landing craft was being serviced in the boat yard to take over haulage duties for the new and exclusive development the yard workers baptized the vessel and painted a new name on its bulky stern. "Tank Island Whore" was what they painted to express their disdain for the resort. Apparently the name was spotted by the new owner of the island and there was unhappiness all round. Nevertheless when I see the craft plowing across the harbor in a welter of foam, the unfortunate name keeps popping, unbidden, into my mind.

The Toxic Triangle is also home to the School Board headquarters, on the inland side of Trumbo Road:

And it seems likely that the School District may soon give up this land, with its bus yard and elderly ex-military buildings. The land is waterfront and valuable and could be sold for money enough for the district to design a purpose built headquarters somewhere less developmentally desirable. The buildings themselves have benefited from a lick of paint or two since their use by the military:

Its hard to imagine anything other than yet another development of expensive homes taking the School District's place and that will be something else for us to look forward to. Meanwhile the big yellow buses come and go. And across the way is a development that sprang up almost a decade ago, as far as I can remember. It was an Argentine company of all things that put in a bid to develop a ferry terminal in Key West and on the riverfront in downtown Fort Myers on Florida's West Coast. The company, called Buquebus collapsed inevitably in the great financial meltdown that wrecked Argentina. and its legacy is two ferry terminals that are still known to some people by that peculiar name (pronounced: boo-kay-bus). The one in Fort Myers isn't used anymore as it is more efficient for the ferry to dock at Fort Myers beach as the Caloosahatchee River is a slow speed zone for 20 miles to downtown Fort Myers. The Key West Ferry Terminal is a surprisingly modern facility, all steel and glass and light, though a bit of a hike to get to Duval Street if you are elderly and loaded with luggage, after your three hour ride from Fort Myers Beach. And across from the Ferry terminal is a monument to the man who first enabled easy mass tourism in Key West, Henry Flagler himself: In the background you can see the panels painted by local youngsters to mask the construction detritus along Trumbo Road. Of course they reflect local conditions to some extent, though where the notion arose that a shark might nab a cat dockside, I'm sure I don't know:Another day at the Toxic Triangle as it faces a fresh new incarnation, condos for all.