A good few years ago when I was taking a call for service in New Town my supervisor leaned over, looked at the address on the computer monitor and said, "Ah, Smurf Village." And then pretended to ignore me. Denise knew well enough that my curiosity would kill me, and she knew I was always interested in her stories of growing up in the "good old days..."
Since those early days the new homeowners have repainted them of course, various shades of this and that:
Smurf Village lies north of Flagler Avenue between 16th Street and 14th Street (14th unhappily also goes by the name of Glynn Archer Drive to make it more confusing) and Duck Avenue. Smurf Village is bisected by a couple of smaller one way streets, Pearl and Harriet, New Town additions to the list of women's names gracing Key West streets:
As well as the larger, and straighter, thoroughfare called Eagle Avenue:
These are all streets with fairly abundant greenery which adds to the charm, and homeowners in Smurf Village enjoy duplexes with yards large enough to grow a bush or two:
I haven't heard the term Smurf Village used in a while so perhaps it has faded from the lips of newer arrivals, perhaps the Smurfs are no longer the craze they once were and perhaps too, people who paid half a million or more for their duplex may not want to think of themselves as living in a cartoon character's toadstool. Even though they do boast those pronounced overhangs and easily identified silhouettes:
Make no mistake these are duplexes:
I know a couple of people who live in Smurf Village and I understand the interiors with two beds and two baths boast about 1200 square feet of space, a nice size for a Key West home. These days I'm told some of the less fancy homes -no central air, no swimming pool- are offered for less than $200,000, and the more upscale ones are offered around $300,000 so working folks could get a pretty decent home in this very pleasant neighborhood:
And like everywhere else in Key West, when it comes to real estate, if you wait long enough it will come on the market:
This sign looked pretty weathered so a cute Smurf home with pool may or may not still be looking for a happy new owner...
These papier mache things are everywhere around there, posed and staring fixedly into a future that will never come. It is bizarre, but at least some of the visitors think they are great fun:
And this guy isn't a statue at all, he just looks a bit like one owing to a slight lull in the flow of customers:
This next one looks like a New England purveyor of tinned seafood more than a rugged Key West Conch hunter. I don't suppose the punters really care one way or the other, it's just me being fussy:
And this one with his idiot's grin plastered forever on his vacuous face has overtones that dare not speak their name:
I am probably just too sensitive for this sort of thing. I needed something pure and innocent and traditional but the best I could come up with was this, though what the hell this little tableau is all about I have no idea:
And though it is decidedly traditional some critics argue the Pez Garden is not Art. It all defies definition if you ask me. The Pez Garden is the local name for the Sculpture Garden wherein some notable heads from Key West history are on display:
This is Commodore Porter who vanquished pirates and buccaneers from around Key West and set such a high moral tone locals petitioned the Department of the Navy to get him out of there:
He ended up a mercenary on the Barbary Coast helping North African governments deal with their own piracy problems. Which goes to show virtue is definitely not its own reward. I need to be invited to write school history textbooks, the little dears would get quite an eye opener.
And across Mallory Square, a young man was busy impressing a young woman:
Hemingway had his movable feast; I have my movable statue. Home James, and don't spare the horsepower! 
Or this one, walking in circles and frantically trying to get his point across:
I expect I can be forgiven for a being a phone curmudgeon bearing in mind my line of work, but I am generally slow to take up technology of the sake of it. Besides, I hate myself when I answer my home phone inadvertently by saying "Key West Police..." that's when I know work is interfering with my peace of mind. This dude takes indifference to a whole new level:
Part of me admires his indifference to societal disapproval but I guess everything gets blunted by the gut warmth of alcohol. This next guy I snapped on the fly. Street performers play to tourists in Key West and they are always looking around for someone to interact with, and that most definitely would not be me. I don't mind dropping a buck in the hat if they play well but I don't like interactive theater, thanks, so I hurry along:
On the subject of indifference I must confess I feel nothing about the Olympics in China. I am one of those who, lacking television reception finds it easy to block out the running around and discus hurling. Until I come across a small reminder, this one a trunk sticker on a statue outside the Museum of Art and History:
Ho hum says I, spotting something much more interesting up ahead. A crane, large and industrial no less:
It seems the Westin Hotel (nee Hilton) is expanding its garage. Either that or they are demolishing it, which is too much to hope for:
Across the street there used to be employee parking on a large gravelled lot. I used to leave my scooter there when the covered scooter parking was full. I was working as a boat captain in the Hilton marina and there was more space, now we have more housing bless us everyone, but it doesn't look like workforce housing to cynical old me:
My blood sugar was back to more or less normal by now and my headache was quite gone. That left me able to appreciate beauty once again and here is another of those weird fan palms I last saw on James Street. Now I notice them they are appearing everywhere:
And in closing, on the subject of parking, the lady and all her dogs was absent from her post on the street corner I usually see her at.
Perhaps she was having her blood drawn and hadn't quite recovered. 
Across the street is the Tropic Dive Shop and next to the police station is the other means of locomotion, the place with the big blue sign known as Duncan Autos:
When people want to meet at the police station I tell them we're next to the Ford dealership because that sign is easy to spot on the Boulevard. Duncan also sells Toyotas while Niles, further up the street sells GM and Nissan, and the "other" dealership is a Kia in between the two. Want to buy another kind of car? Head North...
There's a building that is supposedly undergoing refurbishment and every time I go by I see this raw, naked cement and it reminds me of third world semi-constructed buildings. It's occupied but has no plaster or paint on the exterior and it looks like an Albanian customs post, functional but graceless.
Times are hard and foreclosures lurk around every corner. Captain Runaground's floating restaurant is no more and I didn't even notice it's passing. I never ate there but it was there on Key West's industrial waterfront and now it is a a Thai restaurant, garrison Bight's second such restaurant:
The funky cover is gone with all the dangling bric-a-brac. My wife shrugged when I asked her if she knew about the change; "Of course," she said and I wonder how many other abrupt reversals have gone unnoticed by me. Some things don't change, bus stops as trash cans (drinking on buses is not allowed):
One of the great things about scooters is that you can always find some unnoticed spot to abandon them in. Here's one covered in dust, parked and forgotten, and likely only to be noticed if there is a fire in the neighborhood:
On my hour long lunch break I had intended to stroll all the way round the bight but such is the attraction of the unconsidered trifle I got about one third of the way round, as far as the light tackle charter fleet dock near the harbor master's hut:
Personally I prefer my fish alive and vital in the water but taxidermy is apparently alive and well and advertising in Key West:
I had a brief chat with the Security Guard in his golf cart and it was time to head back to the office and my computer screen. Ah, but before I go George Street is begging for a picture.
For some reason Key West streets manage to stretch to infinity. This must all be in the eye of the beholder (they aren't really infinitely long!) and I think it has something to do with the lack of land on all sides, and this knowledge inside my head makes what there is look longer. Which is of course the male human condition. Anyway that's George Street stretching south towards Havana at three fifty in the morning.