It's the endless search for that which was, which animates a lot of people who like or want to like Key West. Hilton Haven is little more than a street sized alleyway off North Roosevelt Boulevard and it has many of those elements of old Key West that the nostalgia buffs like to hold over a newbie's head. Finding it is your first problem, and I wonder if this vehicle trying to poke it's snout onto the Boulevard knows it is coming out of Hilton Haven:
The street, if that is what it is, isn't labelled or marked in any obvious way, and it may not even appear to be a public street at all, at first glance. This might be nothing more than an entrance to the surprisingly spacious Banana Bay Resort:
Even if the casual visitor finds the public right of way through the resort parking lots, Hilton Haven itself remains more of a suggestion than a city street proper:
I am a sucker for old coral rock walls, even if they are held together with modern cement and surmounted by modern hurricane fencing rusting gently in the moist seaside air. Old Key West is delightfully evident here:
Juxtaposed with modern Key West right next door:
Key West in general is too small for total neighborhood segregation and buying or remodelling an expensive home is a crap shoot when it comes to enjoying your neighbors. In most American cities you can define your ideal zone by taking a quick drive and finding where you are comfortable. Key West pushes those assumptions back at you, as it does so much else in modern life. Just because you want an all-mod-con stuccoed palace doesn't mean your neighbor is ready to sell up the tumbledown next door prior to a move to Micanopy or Ocala...Hilton Haven has one other enormous feature that sets it apart from most other residential streets within the city:
If you want a dock in your backyard for the most part you have to look at land outside the city, but not in Hilton Haven. This is the mixed up street of tear downs and McMansions, the sidewalkless urban agglomeration that is surrounded on each side by tidal saltwater. To the south Garrison Bight:
With the ever busy Boulevard in the distance:
And to the north we have the open waters leading to the Gulf of Mexico, by way of the Navy Base at Sigsbee, beyond the obtrusive power poles:
And to the west Hilton Haven dead ends into the gut that opens Garrison Bight to the north and across that narrow channel we see the US Coastguard Housing on Fleming Key:
Hilton Haven has a few houseboats tied up and I saw what appeared to be the odd liveaboard dinghy squished up in the mangroves waiting for their owners return from a day in the salt mines.
For some, waterfront living in Key West is a tad bit more palatial:
Though the ultimate symbol of suburban bliss, the lawnmower, here takes second place to the symbol of the joys of open waters, the jet ski:
I'm pretty sure I spotted one of the city's senior "deciders" (to coin a phrase) buzzing the winding street on his moped, while one of his neighbors,seen here from behind, taking a slow pedal made time for a cheerful grin and greeting for the intruder with a camera in the right-of-way:
There are lots of small curiosities to catch the eye of the camera, the length of Hilton Haven, far more indeed than could fit in one twenty picture essay on the street.
But I couldn't leave this corner of rural/urban Key West without a tip of the hat to the long history of slightly irritable sign posting this narrow, confined city produces to this day from, apparently times long past:
The sentiment, replicated today in garish plastic has apparently been around for quite some time. I walked the street and risked no tow, and that is what I would recommend to find yet another last corner of mostly old Key West.
It's the endless search for that which was, which animates a lot of people who like or want to like Key West. Hilton Haven is little more than a street sized alleyway off North Roosevelt Boulevard and it has many of those elements of old Key West that the nostalgia buffs like to hold over a newbie's head. Finding it is your first problem, and I wonder if this vehicle trying to poke it's snout onto the Boulevard knows it is coming out of Hilton Haven:
My heart sank as we approached Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens Sunday morning. Traffic was intense, cars were parked at all wild angles occupying every inch of the verges of the approach road to the event, and Coral Gables cops were making some extra money working the detail to try and keep order for the annual Ramble Garden Festival. I am not much of a one for crowds, but my wife and I had been forced to scratch a long desired trip to the Dry Tortugas, thanks to strong north winds sweeping the Keys. "I don't get seasick," my wife remarked to friends who had planned to go with us. "But I don't like sharing a three hour, rough water boat ride with a few dozen strangers do suffer from it." So we cast around for an alternative and remembered The Ramble which takes place on the grounds of the magnificent Fairchild Gardens in Coral Gables:
The grounds of the Fairchild Tropical gardens lend themselves to this kind of thing as they are filled with all sorts of nooks and crannies overflowing with greenery and in each one lurked a specialised person with knowledge to give away, a plant to sell or a conversation to offer for the asking:
My wife is a member of the Fairchild Garden so we for in for free which is pretty cool as this is a special event and with a quick flash of her annual pass we were at liberty to wander at our leisure. At the entrance to the event itself someone had parked an early 20th century water organ, a hurdy gurdy mounted on vintage Renault truck and it was the source of the marching band we could hear from the parking lot:
There were food stands lining the approaches to the plant areas and we wandered in some bemusement.
Farmers markets were in their infancy when we left California and they have burgeoned everywhere- everywhere except Key West of course! Thus every time we see one we stop and take a look when we find them on the road. The Fairchild Gardens put on a magnificent spread for our edification, we small town hicks: 
Some stuff was more familiar to Key West resident:
And I have all the coconuts I need, thanks:
And even though I like a guacamole dip as much as the next habitue of Mexican cuisine, I was a bit taken aback to see a woman up to her elbows in the stuff, mashing industriously all afternoon:
There was also a food court offering everything from hot dogs to crepes by way of jerk and Asian cooking. 
We went for the one that doesn't ever rear its head in the Keys, as far as I know:
There used to be an Ethiopian restaurant in Tampa when I lived there for a very brief while, and mostly what I recall eating was gloppy sauces well spiced with no cutlery and a spongy sour tortilla type of bread for a spoon. We were offered plastic forks, even though I carry my own metal cutlery as I dislike plastic eating irons, but the food was as I remembered it more or less:
The weather was mildly sunny,mostly hazy and overcast with thin cloud cover and we found it quite pleasant to wander in the 80 degree temperatures (27C). For some it was bright enough to warrant shade:
I bought some garden tools which appeared to offer the benefit of folding up small when not in use and also of being built of materials likely to last a long while, a multi function steel rake and coconut frond pruner with a ten foot reach operated by a solid rod which should be easier to use than my spring operated contraption. I also got a rather powerful set of pruning shears that operate by ratchet action and are remarkably easy to use. All for $120, so we didn't get away scot free. My wife found the most elaborate hair pin for $20:
It's quite a hobby it turns out, turning wood on a lathe: 
They had a large tent filled with decorative bowls and the like with prices ranging from several hundred to over a thousand bucks. 
We quite liked one lightweight fruit bowl thing which carried a tag of $650 which seemed like it would have been nice in another more munificent era when our house was, say, actually worth money....This I could afford though, or at least a piece of it:
At $3 a pound Jak fruit was a bargain. I thought though, my wife gave me an old fashioned look when I asked for six bucks to take home a piece:
The seeds are encased in a lychee-like pod which is all held together by the toughest fibers you're likely to encounter inside something edible. After dinner I tore apart the fiber and we scarfed the lychee things inside. I really enjoyed it. She tried to.
"Oooh!" One of my wife's friends said over the cell phone as I drove the convertible home."If you'd have said you were going to Fairchild I'd have come too!" Everyone should feel the same way.
The beans are already substantially larger, one weekend after I photographed them and they are climbing like crazy. add a little water and up they go. I put that bed under the stairs so I could run string down to them to make a trellis. They seem to be thriving in partial Florida sunlight. Lettuce is another plant that supposedly needs less heat so i stuck that bed on the north side of the house, and with a mixture of lettuce plants and seeds we are seeing solid progress:
The largest bed is five feet by four feet and has a wide mixture of experimental plants. We kind of wanted to see what would grow and how, so we threw a bunch of seeds and plants and up they came, including eggplant, cucumbers, onions and and broccoli I think. They seem to be doing fine:
We put some more tomatoes into pots, threw in a ring of cilantro and watched them grow...Lisa gave us two pineapple cuttings so we stuck them in some pots and they are growing like gangbusters, and finally we potted a Key Lime, a mango and a pink lemon tree and they are doing nicely as well.
I find it mildly amusing that now after years of swearing off it i am once again come full circle and I can be found afternoons before I go into work, checking for weeds, watering and talking to the plants in an earnest effort to get them to grow. Victory Garden indeed, these are seeds cast in most unlikely soil, to paraphrase the Good Book. But they are growing, for now, with an apparent lust for life.
Gratuitous Bonneville photograph, under the house.