Robert Duvall's line about "the smell of napalm in the morning" from Apocalypse Now comes to my mind when I pass a working boatyard. I love the smell of drying fiberglass resin, the mixture of dust and copper bottom paint hanging in the air. I like the chaos and the sense of new things rising out of the old and worn. I like boatyards because I know boatyards from many years experience. Ask any boater and they will tell you hauling out is the most stressful part of ownership, watching one's precious hull swaying around in the slings, out of its element. I remember it well, to quote that other movie chestnut, sung by Maurice Chevalier.
Spencer's Boatyard lives in a corner of Garrison Bight Marina and it's a left over from a more industrial time in Key West. These days there are three haul out facilities left in the Lower Keys, Spencer's and two on Stock Island. How it is that Spencer's has survived into the 21st century in a town that is remaking its image so rapidly, is a mystery to me. But here it is apparently thriving:
Thriving is a word I use advisedly though one can never be sure, but the yard seemed full of work even though the facilities are not "polished"
This yellow boat I've seen swinging to a mooring just off the docks at Spencer's and out of the water its lines as attractive as when the boat is floating, and that's a rare attribute:
The smooth lines of the shear offset the angular lines of a nearby Swedish built Vega 27, a small sailboat notorious for making long journeys. It doesn't look like much but its an amazing machine, and this one has to be at least 30 years old:
One thing about hauling your boat out is when you get to paint that toxic copper bottom paint on the hull to discourage growth the result is instant good looks. I mention this because I am giving my skiff a coat of paint this week in hopes of going swimming next week and I look for the same result. Instant, creamy smooth, improvement:
The yard is right off Palm Avenue, the street that bisects Garrison Bight marina with a bridge through the middle. Spencer's is on the north side of the bridge but is blocked from the open water by 50-foot wires at the entrance to Garrison Bight so big sailboats can't get in. But there are big honking motorboats in here awaiting attention:
And tell me this massive prop won't be a glowing bronze work of art when it gets cleaned off and fresh green bottom paint is applied to the fiberglass bottom of this beauty:
To one side of the yard you will find the Key West Sailing Club which is not the Key West Yacht Club (that's the expensive one!):
No this is decidedly not the expensive one. When I lived in the city I was a member for something ridiculous like $10 a month, and I could take out any of their 17-19 foot sailboats for a spin. That was one advantage of living in the city, nowadays I like to be at home and drive my motor boat, which is the advantage of having a dock at your house:
And this is also the end of the yard that holds the facilities. The thing is, when someone who lives on their boat hauls out they need to continue to live on the boat- it is their home. Which means they need to do their ablutions in the yard. These facilities were more than usually...rustic:
In our years sailing together my wife suffered some pretty gruesome shower blocks but I think this might have been a bit much even for her.But there again in an active yard everything tends towards the chaotic, including work benches and project areas which are melting pots of paints and chemicals and poisons:
And though it may look like chaos to you, to some intrepid boater, in the midst of all the stuff lies a critical component for the very project he is working on in his cabin. So out he pops like a prairie dog, pops down the ladder, grabs the thing, nods to the stranger while exchanging a pleasantry about the weather, and finally pops back out of sight:
Indeed checking aloft one can hear the halyards clanking against a nearby mast (a halyard is the rope one uses to raise and lower a sail), a sure sign the wind is picking up:
And check out those clouds! This had all the makings of a classic summer squall, the wind got fresher and cooler and small waves starting building across the enclosed waters of the Garrison Bight Lagoon:
And the clouds raced across the sky and the waves raced across the water pushing weeds and trash into the seawall at the yard:
And though it may look like chaos to you, to some intrepid boater, in the midst of all the stuff lies a critical component for the very project he is working on in his cabin. So out he pops like a prairie dog, pops down the ladder, grabs the thing, nods to the stranger while exchanging a pleasantry about the weather, and finally pops back out of sight:Indeed checking aloft one can hear the halyards clanking against a nearby mast (a halyard is the rope one uses to raise and lower a sail), a sure sign the wind is picking up:And check out those clouds! This had all the makings of a classic summer squall, the wind got fresher and cooler and small waves starting building across the enclosed waters of the Garrison Bight Lagoon:And the clouds raced across the sky and the waves raced across the water pushing weeds and trash into the seawall at the yard:
Half of me wanted to be snugging down my boat, and then sitting in the cabin listening to rain pelting down on the deck. There's no feeling quite so snug as a decent anchorage or a secure berth when bad weather hits. The rational half of me wanted to get the hell away on the motorcycle before the big fat wet cold raindrops hit from the clouds. The dog wanted me gone too:
I got to Mile Marker 9 before I had to stop and put on my waterproofs for the rest of the ride home. And that too is a snug feeling, tucked inside a waterproof cocoon with big heavy slugs of rain splattering down around you and your motorcycle. Different strokes, same good feeling.
Photographing North Roosevelt Boulevard presents not a few challenges. There's tons going on along its two mile length and cramming it all into twenty pictures seems like an impossible job. Then again this isn't the most visually appealing part of Key West, but it seems to me it is still a story worth telling, perhaps it is especially worth telling because it is such a peripheral area of town. This is Key Plaza where Key West people go to shop, I mean this is the real locals shopping area.
Can't get more real than K Mart, and in this picture we see the third most profitable K Mart in the country. Not surprising really because as we shall see, there ain't much in the way of competition. I read a plaintive comment in the Citizen's Voice a few months ago. "If they let us have a Wal Mart we wouldn't be so poor," went the comment. From the height of middle class mediocrity I could sniff on reading the plea as of course Wal Mart is all things bad in corporate America, but they do help make ends meet for many milllions of Americans. Not in Key West where the cold harsh reality is that things cost more here, not because we are a "long way away" but because we are isolated. And here's the competition, flying the flag, Sears Roebuck and Company:
Searstown was an early development in the wilds of far Eastern Key West, built up in the salt ponds and mangroves, a 1960's outpost of shopping civility for an island that relied on Fausto's and Pantry Pride for groceries and then Sears stepped in to compete I suppose with downtown Kress: 
Nowadays Publix is located in Searstown, along with a six screen Regal Cinema and an Outback, a Champs and a whole bunch of stores both chains and locals. There's a Home Depot in Key West which was built in 2004 as I recall and that opened up a lot of shopping possibilities. Beyond Searstown is a region for a future essay, currently a line of chain hotels that will soon make way for a giant convention center(!). Megalopolis here we come... Meanwhile we have got used to Albertsons, next to K Mart:
And then in the third big shopping plaza called Overseas Market we have Winn Dixie as the anchor supermarket. This chain used to advertise itself, years ago as "the beef people" on their old signs and for the longest time I thought Winn Dixie was a butcher's shop. 
I love the totally black sky at night, and no one in the parking lot except me and my trusty Bonneville which of course I have to sneak into a picture...
I know Pier One, and Ross next door have given local shoppers a few more choices when it comes to furnishings and clothes. Around the corner from TGI Fridays there is a dark delivery area alongside the mangroves. I love poking my way round these spaces, sneaking a peek as it were behind the facade of the nice stores up front:
And shining a light into the bushes, where Salt Run Creek flows, from the Riviera Canal out to the Gulf of Mexico to the north. Our residentially challenged locals hang out around here too, not so much for the shopping I believe, as much as for the peace and relative quiet:
Until my Bonneville comes rumbling through at some ungodly hour. I saw no one while I chased the dirt road with the Triumph, doubtless they were all asleep like solid citizens, not drifters like me. 
As I viewed this picture I thought to myself, "hmmm, Anywhere USA" and all I can say is that this really is Key West and not the back side of your local shopping maul. And just around the corner across from the back of K Mart lies this magnificent structure in all its cement glory:
Looking at the Professional Building you'd think this would be the spot to take refuge in a hurricane. Well, it turns out Wilma did a number on this place in October 2005. The building is on stilts with parking in the lit up space underneath, but the roof yielded and the entire building flooded from the top down! It was a nightmare for the many offices in there, which lost all their records and their furniture, including my optician. The building was closed for ages while they gutted it and rebuilt it from the inside out. 
The family owned Gordon Food Service bought this little warehouse and added it to its chain a few years ago. That was weird because apparently they don't sell alcohol, the family being religious in some manner and teetotal, and for a while they were dumping their stocks of wine and beer from the Smart and Final store at fire sale prices. A bit of a stampede in heathen Key West ensued. Nowadays we get our fizzy water here, but I believe restaurants appreciate the bulk supplies. 
Then you can have your burgers your way, just next door, past the Borders Express bookshop:
Looks familiar doesn't it? This doesn't though, the "mobile" seafood vendor at Owens gas station:
In the land of the perpetually underpaid and intoxicated there are several pawn shops that seem to do quite well, all over town, including here:
The Boulevard is home to one of three overnight gas stations, this one has a car wash, the other two sit across from each other at the intersection of Truman and White Streets. I read a thread on the Adventure Rider forum about a Georgia kid who rode to Key West and backon his sports bike and he prudently filled his tank in Florida City because he didn't know if he could find gas in the Keys...Dude! This is the US you know! And this proves it!
You might meet a cop here doing a business check at some unearthly hour, buying coffee or a soda. Not this one though, Officer Cardona is Puerto Rican and he prefers his cafe con leche to an Americano.
Shining like a beacon in the night. And that's it, one quick look at the Key West that tries to emulate Main Street USA. Like it or not. Which is my cue for a gratuitous picture of the Bonneville, across the street from Sears at the Blue Lagoon Motel, of which more later.
I forget sometimes how obsessed with alligators outsiders can be when it comes to Florida.There are a few things people associate with Florida, with varying degrees of revulsion. They are: 1) Hurricanes. 2)Humidity. 3) Bugs. 4)Alligators. Well you can get a pretty good slice of all four at Big Pine Keys' Blue Hole. The Blue Hole isn't blue, the one in Belize is because its out in the Caribbean Sea, this local hole is actually the product of some rock mining and it would be hard to expect a quarry to produce water of a hue comparable to the Western Caribbean; so it doesn't even try:
Green Hole would be more like it, if one lived in a less charitable, less visitor oriented world. But part of the expectation for the keys is blue, turquoise, azure waters, and fresh water holes must conform, in name at least.
The Blue Hole gets a mention in every guide book, not because it's buggy and humid but because it has alligators, and fearsome animals they are too.
The sad fact is that like sharks, alligators are much more at risk from humans than vice-versa. A notorious court case concluded last year with two young men going to the slammer for torturing and killing an alligator they plucked from this very spot. This dinosaur was just lying there, showing but one tiny sign of life, the nostrils opening and closing rapidly as it breathed.
There used to be a bunch of turtles sunning themselves on the logs, and whether they ended up as alligator lunch or turtle soup, a Conch delicacy, I don't know. Perhaps they were off enjoying a less threatening area of the hole that evening. Alligators are fresh water creatures and when the Blue hole flooded out in the hurricane season of 2005 the alligators had to be rounded up from neighboring islands and dumped back in their hole. They, unlike American crocodiles, don't do well in salt water. Unlike crocodiles, alligators are more aggressive and they don't back off when humans show up. Plus they run extremely fast on land. I am cautious around them as I find them less predictable than sharks. There are thousands of alligators in the Everglades and you can canoe among them on the Myakka River near Sarasota. That is a creepy experience I shan't repeat for a while.
Less dramatic are the white dots across the water in an inaccessible area of the Hole. They may be herons or ibis, depending on the shape of their beaks and the color of their legs, which just goes to show I will never make the annals of the Audubon Society though one day I may bestir myself to visit the Audubon House in Key West. What I learn there I shall promptly forget I'm sure.
The Blue Hole is, in my estimation a modest little attraction, though it is a peaceful spot to contemplate the glories of Nature. In this one is not helped by the abundance of fencing and the absolute dearth of benches. For some reason the short paved trail round half the hole has nowhere to sit to allow for contemplation.
Which means visitors tend to gravitate to the observation platform and one ends up contemplating Nature rather as though one were waiting for a bus in a municipal bus shelter which tends to spoil the effect:
Rather than invest in benches and the adornment of relaxing vistas with seats, the Wildlife Sanctuary has decided the Blue Hole needs a more complex parking arrangement than a simple pea rock parking area:
The Blue Hole has long been ADA compliant with a cement parking space and cement walkway to the observation deck for visitors in wheelchairs. Despite all this construction busyness the Blue Hole is what it is, a quiet spot just off the busy road. And even if forced to stand, one can take a moment to enjoy another splendid Keys sunset in the woods:
And, lest there were any doubt I paid my latest visit on my favorite form of carbon creating locomotion:
Parked rather sneakily at the back, unmarked, "entrance" to the Blue Hole. For locals who know, only, I fear. 