My wife's shoulder is recovering nicely from her surgery and she is able to start thinking about getting out and about a bit, so it was we were in Big Pine Key looking to order some window blinds. The blind shop happened to be located in a tiny shopping center whose location on Highway One is/was marked by this large tin lobster like thing:
Imagine my surprise when I pulled into the unpaved parking lot and found Anchor towing loading up the old clunker that formed the pedestal for the lobster. They wre busy doing their work and the wife was anxious to see the blind lady (the lady that sells blinds, not...oh never mind) so I didn't get to ask them if this was a removal for a l,ong overdue paint job or if the departure was permanent.
It's lobster mini season this week, two days and nights of mayhem on the waters around the Keys when any yahoo with a boat in South Florida invades the islands and has permission to harvest lobster from local waters (
outside canals please!) This money raising ecological madness happens every summer ahead of the start of commercial lobster season which opens in August and runs into winter, hurricanes permitting.
I loathe the mini season as it gioves people license to rape the waters, they don't give a fig about ecology or habitat and they drive cars and boats like maniacs. But they do spend money so we are stuck with them. The metal lobster sculpture however was another story. By the time we came out of the blind store the space was empty:
Let's hope the real live lobsters do better than this old timer did.
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One of my ever popular "kids on a scooter" series, just bcause this is Key West (Stock Island in this case) and
everyone rides a scooter in this small corner of America. Personally I think everyone should ride a scooter but that would be silly wouldn't it? I just hope this youngster gets the bug and doesn't let go until s/he has one of their own. A pity Dad wasn't setting the proper example with a helmet of his own. "Do as I say, not do as I do.":
These two youngsters striding in the sun accidentally obscured what I was photographing in passing. The Harley rental place at Hurricane Hole on Stock Island has vanished. Oh well, another empty store front to be filled as we all bound into this improbable economic recovery they are telling us about. Meanwhile no Harley for
you:
That wise old saying about scoundrels wrapping themselves in flags came to mind when I saw this bumper sticker. I figure if he really were a decent carpenter he could have found a name to reflect that. Yes, you answer, but you are just a cynic. Not a cynic I reply, a sceptic (and there is a difference).
Sometimes people confuse Naval Air Service Police cars for civilian police and traffic slows to a crawl around them. The NAS police cover military bases all over Key West and can frequently be seen traveling from Boca Chica to the city on Highway One. In this case I rather wished they had jurisdiction and could have politely told this nice guy on his Harley that following too closely is a) a violation and b) dangerous. I loved his loud pipes though (said through gritted teeth).
We have been having some rather slow traffic jams on Stock Ilsand thanks to much needed roadway repairs. After one spectacular foul up that had traffic backed up for two miles in Key West the state Department of Transportation graciously decided to figure out a better solution. That nevertheless presented a short back up for a while, so that people, caught for three hours in the original major traffic snarl up got pretty fearfuland at the slightest provocation would pull a u-turn to get out of anything that looked like a back up. I wanted this picture to show the "Keep Off the Median" sign in the background:
I arrived in Key West after just ten slow minutes on Stock Island. Slow driving that gave me the chance to snap the pictures I showed up above..
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I was walking past Moped Hospital on Truman Avenue, which is a major player in the world of 50cc scooters in the US and I happened to see these two products of a bygone age through the window.
For older Americans Cushman scooters are what they remember of youthful two wheelers from the past-war years. Nowadays these loud sheet metal contraptions look like something beyond quaint. I liked that one of the importers of Kymco scooters into the US shows them off in their window, albeit with no ceremony and in rather dusty condition. And just up the street from the mouldering Cushmans I saw this sign:
Which is a healthy reminder that
some people in Key West have real jobs. Other people are reporting that their establishments in the hospitality industry are doing land sale business.
I noticed recently that an empty lot on my street which had been for sale for years is now boldly showing a "sold" sign on it. One wants to think the recession is drawing to a close...Summer meanwhile is in fullbloom and the poinciana trees I wrote about earlier are still flaming in the hot streets of key west, here forming a rather fetching arch over Olivia Street:
It was in this area I passed a parked truck somewhat the worse for wear. I wonder why it is people let these eyesores molder way infront of their very eyes. But I suffer from a congenital inability to collect anything. I am the opposite of a pack rat.
My complusions would lead me to dispose of unwanted carpet of course, but I hope not in the public trash cans provided for the temporary relief of passers-by. Perhaps it wasn't a local occupant who abused the city's largesse with this object dumped in the trash. Perhaps there was a tourist out there on Petronia Street that suddenly found themsleves encumbered by some formerly necessary carpet, and finding it surplus to requirements they felt complelled to toss it in a public trash can?
But it's not just household trash in public trash cans that caught my eye. I was forced to wonder what this appliance was doing on Truman Avenue, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag awaiting curbside pick up? Waste Management operates a generous pick up service for appliances that need to be removed but when I put out my old fridge they told me to tape the doors closed to prevent accidental suffocation by any passers-by moved to play inside it. They never said it had to be weather proofed:
I usedto have a motorcycle once with a dashboard mounted radio. I rode that fully dressed Yamaha Maxim 650 from Fort Myers to Santa Cruz California in 1991 and thoroughly enjoyed the trip, but I never did get to understand the purpose of a dash mounted radio. Underway it was hard to hear, and when parked I was afraid of depleting the bike's battery as already motorcycles wer ebeing deprived of kick starts and the Maxim was a heavy brute with the bags and full fairing and shaft drive made it hard to bump start. At least, unlike this Harley, my Yamaha's windshield was unencumbered and offered a clear view of the way ahead:
I did manage to find a motorcycle more spartan than my own, one evening at work.
This orange Yamaha 600 appeared in the parking lot at work one night bearing an "Under 21" tag from the great state of Florida, thus letting us know the registered owner is not allowed to drink alcohol or ride without a helmet but is allowed to vote and to volunteer to fight the Taliban if s/he so chooses.
It was a study in contrasts, the kid's minimalist cortch rocket with twice the horsepower of my 860, and absolutely no capacity to carry anything escept the rider with a passenger possibly perched high on the back.
So much motorcycle evolution in thirty years,and most of it leaves me indifferent. Ah, old age.
I was mulling over a bunch of photographs my wife took on her vacation in Nicaragua and I thought she took some street scenes that might be of interest. Nicaragua is a rated as the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, wedged between Haiti at the bottom of the list and Honduras one step above Nicaragua. So street scenes here have a flavor that tends to be quite different from suburbia USA. Not all people have actual wheels to get around so they end up walking. When my wife and I were sailing down Nicaragua's Pacific Coast a decade ago we walked a ton too, though not usually with a load on our heads:
The US influence is obvious on the streets, the yellow lane paint, the green road signs and the fact gas is sold by the galon, not the liter. A new sight on the roads that caught my wife's eye were these Bajaj three wheeler taxis, based on the Italian Ape of years past:
The more traditional cab is a multi purpose pick up truck hauling people and stuff, and they don't spare the weight as economy is critical when you live in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere:
Nicaragua is fixed in the average American mind, if there is any consciousness about the place at all, as the place where the Sandinista revolution took over the government 20 years ago and President Reagan instituted a Counter Revolutionary War to win back the country for capitalism.
Those days are long past and Nicaragua has been at peace long enough it's difficult for an outsider to see any signs of that civil war. Nowadays it's a matter of working long enough and hard enough to make ends meet. The Danish government built some pretty decent roads across the country more than a decade ago and they are still there. The trick was the Danes sent their own engineers to Nicaragua to see that the money was spent on the actual project so the main roads are really quite excellent:
Earning a living is tough when there isn't work and Nicaraguans have to be adaptable and tough to try to figure out how to earn some cordobas, (20 to the dollar, roughly). Imagine earning minimum wage standing out in the sun all day doing cleaning windshields rather than take charity:
I find the anti-immigrant rants in the US to be extraordinarily uninformed. Granted these people who seek to make some money in the US don't have papers, but they don't come to the US for charity either. These are people that work:
One aspect of Nicaragua that always intrigued me was the legacy of Sandinismo, the leftist ideology that left behind a series of social reforms that make Nicaragua one of the more progressive peasant socieities in Central America. It's modest stuff, regulated hours and conditions on the job with some protections against arbitrary firing, but it's revolutionary in this part of the world.
The World Bank has figured out that Nicaragua has the 14th most "free "economy of 29 in the Americas and is almost 70% "free" which I suppose means capitalist. And there they are out there beavering away as best they can:
It would be hard to imagine threading one's way through this sort of rush hour traffic on a motorcycle if you were used to the orderly flow of North American streets:
And even though it looks romantic, a horse and buggy isn't the most efficient way to travel, unless of course you can't afford the cost of gas:
In Key West pedi-cabs are a tourist attraction, in the provincial capital of Rivas they are actual taxis:
And where would be without a picture of the local fuzz? If stimulus money doesn't stimulate I wonder how long it will be before Key West officers are "protecting and serving paradise" with less than pristine cars? It seems we are all a recession away from being on the ropes, so one can only imagine what local government budgets look like down there: 
And there's another Bajaj doing sterling work hauling people and their chattels: 
A one horsepower cab: 
A one horsepower pick up:
One feature of street life in Nicaragua (and other Latin American countries) are these gruesome noise pollution devices. They trundle around town advertising in loud horribly distorted voices, or alternatively they can be hired to announce political races or new city ordinances and the like.
And yes these countries do have helmet laws, though brain surgery here would be a bargain compared to getting the noggin reassembled stateside. And before you sneer at the level of private medical care in these countries remember the doctors here trained in the US and Europe and nursing care is amazingly affordable. Rely on Key West Diary to waggle your stereotypes.
I've driven in all these countries at one time or another and I've found traffic to be no worse than anyplace else. It's a matter mostly of getting in the flow and remembering the basic right-of-way rule in all developing countries: whoever has the biggest wheels gets to go first. And whatever you do, don't get in a wreck because then your worst stereotypes will all come true!
Across the street the fish vendor seems to have got a good thing going. It hasn't been there that long but it seems to be doing well, in a town with lots of fish competition:
I can't help myself; I like photographing Key West homes and especially at night, double especially if there is a Bonneville in the frame:
Some dude came by and nearly gave me a heart attack when he asked if i was selling my Bonneville. "Argh! Never!!" I squawked. "Oh," he said, "I thought you might be photographing it for eBay," he went on "Nice bike," obviously to mollify me after he saw my pained expression.
How about this Conch Cottage with deep velvety black night sky behind? And the Bonneville blah...blah...blah.
without the flash and with a five second exposure this was what I got of the area behind the picket fence: 
And across the street this rather formal topiary hedge. I'm not sure if it counts as an actual topiary being as how the hedge doesn't properly look like a carved animal but I was figuring maybe you could call it a caterpillar and be done?
Not to mention Cuban food next door:
And my friend Amy runs her gym on this stretch of White Street as well. Their original shared location burned down across the street from Sandy's Café but the Stay Fit Studio landed on it's feet here:
Florida lobsters don't look he least bit like Maine lobsters with big claws and everything. They more closely resemble large craw fish such as one might see in Louisiana, but left unmolested they would live 120 years hanging around under rocks and minding their own business. Lobster has become a fashionable food, despite the fact that the "bugs" as they are known, are bottom feeders and their meat doesn't offer any of the health benefits associated with eating fish with scales. People do like to hunt them down as early as possible on the two days of mini season:
On my way home from work, around 6:20am I stopped the Bonneville on the bridge between Cudjoe and Summerland Keys to watch the boats processing up the channel toward the Gulf Of Mexico:
The thing about mini season is that it is basically open season on the lobster. There are limits to how many one can harvest ( and it's not open to commercial fishermen) and the Marine Patrol tries to get extra units into the islands for this peculiarly Keys event but it's tough to patrol every nook and cranny. Inexperienced people end up snorkeling (air tanks aren't allowed) and they can end up getting into trouble all too easily. Especially inexperienced unfit townies down from the mainland.
They go out on the water all day, or as long as it takes to get their quota (whatever it is, I can't remember). Then they come in to eat at restaurants everywhere and spend a ton of money which is the point of the exercise. I spoke with a local restaurant owner who told a story of a table of eight who complained about the quality of the food and he just turfed them out. "Better to lose a four hundred dollar tab than try to make a bunch of assholes see sense," he shrugged. We like his place and eat there often, so it's hard to imagine he dropped standards suddenly and profoundly. The excitement of the lobster chase can make even mild mannered accountants lose their marbles, I suppose. 
Me? I'm not that fond of lobster; not fond enough to get up before dawn and go out blundering about in the dark trying to beat a bunch of crazies to the punch to snuff the life out of an animal that would live longer than you and me combined. Call me sentimental. 
