So, there flew the gauntlet, right off the page of
Skootin Old Skool, in remarking on a recent post in
A Scooter in Turkey, which looked at working scooters,and very picturesque they are too. The Seattle based Old Skool Orin said something to the effect that there is nowhere in the US that would see such examples of working scooters. I felt this was a challenge that needed to be answered.
Key West is full of working scooters, like the examples above,one ridden by a man who anywhere else in the US wouldn't be seen dead scooting to the office, and below that a little Yamaha Jazz, worse for wear but fully functional and obviously used as a daily rider. This gent casually skipped off the scooter, not even bothering to park it properly and sauntered off into Albertson's grocery store:
And Key Plaza, in New Town, has set aside lots of scooter only parking for customers. This sun worn sign shows the parking has been around for a while:
As has this daily rider with his 250cc Honda Nighthawk complete with saddlebags, drum brakes and flowing beard:
Because this is America a lot of what one sees here doesn't look as exotic as one might find in Turkey, in the mysterious and seductive Levant, but the same principles apply. A Tomos two stroke moped might be hard to find on US city streets if one isn't in Key West, where this Slovenian work horse finds favor with the large Slavic migrant population:
Baskets are a feature of mopeds, scooters and bicycles that are used around town to haul anything and everything.
Imagine my chagrin when I spotted a man riding away from Home Depot with four bags of potting soil wedged on his scooter between his legs...and my camera was not to hand! He elicited no attention as that sort of scooter transport is normal around here. Saddlebags show up all over the place too, on motorcycles...
...and Yamaha's ugliest scooter ever, the 250cc Morphous which a lot of people thought looked really cool, before they stopped importing it:
On the more traditional front we can see Honda Elites in various cubic capacities, this one, possibly a 125cc on the Boulevard with two riders, most likely snowbirds (the matching helmets are the giveaway, a not very local touch) out shopping:
In Florida helmets are optional for riders over 21 years of age with medical insurance, and the state also issues motorcycle tags with the notation "under 21" for youngsters. I didn't see the tag on these two joyriders on North Roosevelt Boulevard ("The Boulevard") but I expect they are over 21:
And when one is driving down the street in a car one shouldn't be surprised if one is accosted by a wizened man old enough to be one's grandfather puttering along on a scooter:
It may not be Turkey but I don't think there are too many men like him riding scooters around their home towns. As for actual working scooters deliveries are frequently made on two wheels around town. These vehicles typically use ice chests:
Or my favorite 50cc ride, the Honda Metropolitan (known, confusingly enough in Canada as a Jazz):
And then there is the factory designed delivery vehicle from TGB, which comes in two models, a 50cc (pictured here at Jenna's deli) or the 150cc 4 stroke, both with built in delivery boxes on the back. I fancy the 150 as a touring vehicle if I get the urge to see America slowly, as I did in 1981 on my Vespa 200:
Aside from getting 100 miles per gallon (40 kilometers to the liter), scooters also offer the bonus of easy parking which in Key West's congested Old Town gets critical in winter when tourist season is at it's height. The city offers lots of parking spots for two wheelers, though scooter riders do get creative as well, while some riders just dump their vehicles in automobile spots treating them as though they were cars:
Chinese scooters have made huge inroads into the Key West with their low prices but Kymcos, Yamahas and Hondas still compete. There are a few Italians, some Aprilias a very few Vespas and Victor the Honda dealer on Southard Street is now also a Genuine dealer so a few of those have showed up. Of classics there aren't too many. This sad Vespa sidecar doesn't run and the Sebago employee who staffs it on Duval street told me that if it were running it would be complex and expensive to park it as an advertising tool. I have no idea why but it is something very bureaucratic so he is reduced to pushing it home, ignominiously at day's end:
I also came across this delightful Honda CB125 on the Boulevard at Napa Auto parts. It had just shy of 7,000 miles (12,000 kms) on the clock and it looked great:
On the subject of classics this home in New Town has been slowly working on restoring a couple of Honda Fours from the 1970's here flanked by an older model Yamaha Zuma one of the most popular scooters in town, now also available as a 125cc:
The Chinese scooters like to look cool by using Italian names like this Taiwan Golden Bee,
fast motorcycles in Italian:
Or this TGB model called the
Key West, named for the town that lives and breathes scooters:
Then again the fashionable home will want to have a scooter that matches the front door. Cool huh?
And if you live in the city you will start to recognize vehicles and their parking spots. I like this Harley Road King on White Street:
Or there's this one, a BMW 650 Dakar that I've seen around town ridden by a guy who may even be older then me.I saw the bike at Jiri's motorcycle shop on Stock Island and he said the owner rides all the time, a bit like me I suppose:
My own Bonneville I photographed at an uncharacteristic distance, at the Big Pine Shopping Center. The Triumph usually looms so large in my life I thought it looked funny dwarfed by the vast expanses of cement in the rear of the shopping center:
For those not equipped with their own working scooters rentals are widely available. These of course are usually enjoyed by tourists so they are true working scooters:
John in Turkey challenged me to find a working scooter with three people riding, which I failed to do, not least because that would be illegal, no doubt. However I did manage to find this particular pair riding happily (and illegally) down Duck Avenue:
Certainly Key West doesn't look much like anywhere I've seen in Scooter in Turkey, and the two wheelers won't look as exotic or unusual as those photographed by John, but Key West, by any standards, has a healthy and vibrant population of working scooters.
There are people who will tell you that heaven on earth is not to be found in Key West. Far from it, they say with a nudge and a wink. It's Big Pine Key in all it's bucolic glory that offers true contentment. Big Pine Key is called that because it is the largest island in the Lower Keys, some ten miles by three from tip to distant tip, spanning both sides of Highway One and it's downtown traffic light. Big Pine Key offers people miles of pine forests, stunted smallish pines it's true, but forests nonetheless. One can also find a home here with lots of land backing up to National Forest protected areas inhabited by the diminutive Key Deer ("small white deer" according to their critics, who are fed up with their gardens getting eaten). there are also lots of canals and mangroves lining the edges of this island: 
For the better known areas I have written essays on the tourist attractions at Blue Hole and the Watson Trail and their pine trees, and just recently I took the Bonneville to an open space I discovered. This time I chose to ride my bicycle around some backstreets that had come to my attention on one of my other visits...
For some people this idyll is only available for part of the year. I was moved to guess this signpost indicated a snowbird from Michigan might be in residence.The street address of 29173 indicates the Post office puts this home in the lower portion of Mile Marker 29 on Highway One:
I lived many years in California where the concept of "snow bird" was not really known though some people made a habit of hitting up Mexico for longer winter vacations as they close din on retirement years. However this East Coast and Midwestern habit of shuffling back and forth with the seasons seems weird to me. Especially as many Mid Western states boast summers more humid and less bearable than summers in the Keys, a time of year when water sports become comfortable in 82 degree waters....
My boat is on it's trailer this time of year with 70 degree waters, which are too cold for swimming in my estimation. Yet, this is still where people want to be in winter and one can hardly blame them. This is January in the back streets of Big Pine Key:
It was quite delightful cruising the streets in the dry crisp winter air on my bicycle and no surprise I wasn't alone. This guy whizzed by on his splendid recumbent, took a turn whizzed back and seemed to be having as much fun as I was, doing nothing much in particular, just enjoying a day off:
Everyone has a boat on these canals though I'm not sure how much use they all get. At this particular seawall I saw a fine example of summer fun, a slide:
Or how about a nice al fresco workshop where you could do your pottering around in the shade, safe from the weak winter sun?
With all the bad news about home prices around the country you'd think that even here, in this slivers of land still attached to the US prices would be slumping. And so they are in a few spots, but mostly what seems to be happening is that houses for sale, and there are lots of them, aren't selling. Some foreclosures have reached the market and a very few homes are on offer for quite a bit less than we are used to seeing. However mostly people seem to be convinced they can sell their home sin paradise for the ridiculously high prices of years past. Some brave souls are still spending money to do up their homes, an encouraging thing to see:
But bucolic Big Pine is a place where people like their space, they like the absence of busy city facilities and out here they are more than an hour by car from Key West, and probably forty minutes from Marathon in the other direction. This is off the beaten path:
And to be happy out here one doesn't really need a McMansion, people have had their fish camps on Big Pine canals for decades,and some of them have survived the endless round of construction and change going on around them: 
It's a long, long way to Duval Street from here.