Pinder Lane

J Wills Burke in his book Streets of Key West says the Pinder family was active in the Methodist Church in Key West which may, or may not account for the lane named after one of their number......finding itself so close to this lot:Which is not only an attractive brick pile, it is also a landmark on William Street:Pinder Lane is close by the church just off Fleming Street which is marked by the Island House for Men on the corner of William and Fleming:And there, between these two landmarks, is a modest gap in the picket fences and greenery:It's a pretty little alley as we shall see, but a realtor's sign brings a harsh note of reality to the alley. A complex of homes down this lane is being offered for $3.3 million. Even now.It's still free to park the Bonneville a moment and take a stroll:Old fashioned louvered windows, always my favorites:

An ultra-modern hurricane shutter made of translucent plastic. You can leave this new-fangled shutter up all summer and it won't turn your home into a rattly dark cave as the aluminum ones do.

These are the old- fangled wooden shutters, by way of contrast:Pinder Lane is the home of tropical greenery as one would expect in such a wealth- generating place:It had just finished showering when I arrived:J Burke Wills suggests this lane perhaps was named for William Pinder a member of the city council in 1911 and descendant of a hail-fellow-well-met Pinder who rejoiced in the name of Sylvanus and was nicknamed "King of Wreckers" for his abilities in that field.

All shuttered up with shutters and plywood and of course the obligatory "No Trespassing" sign just to make it clear.

A tin roof, not yet painted white even if the owners wanted to:

More No Trespassing. Don't they suppose the gate carries the message by clear implication?

A TV dish antenna to remind us Key West is Very Modern:And a final look back at William Street...

...where the Bonneville awaits out of sight where I parked it, more or less legally, not blocking delightful Pinder Lane.

1100 White

I got a request to take a picture of a mural on White Street. I am nothing if not obliging but Page's Paints was rather less so. On arrival I found the mural was covered by an advertising banner that was screwed into the wood. I wondered what to do and thought perhaps I might pull the banner aside for a quick picture, but closer inspection showed it was screwed firmly into the wood frame of the wall.Life is just a series of ironies, so I figured I'll have to come back when the banner has been taken down.The 1100 block of White is a busy place, with busy business taking up almost all the block. Matheessen's is a reincarnation of a diner that was popular in Key West with the previous generation of Conchs ("konks"= native Key Westers). They have three locations in Key West two outlets on Duval, a candy store and a grill, andthier flagship diner here on White Street:We had a hamburger in dispatch a couple of weeks ago on a colleague's insistence and it was really quite good. They also deliver:Of course I was attracted to the pristine Vespa 150 ET4 parked in front of this building. The new 1680 talk radio station that calls itself KONK am broadcasts from here, as well as online. Which is just as well as this is a true community station and the signal does not transmit very far at all. I've always felt Key West needed it's own community radio station and perhaps this will last long enough to become that voice:It put me in mind of my own decade working in radio; I hope they are having as much fun as I had. Next door to KONK am was Maribel's beauty parlor, but more interesting to me was the campaign poster still flying bravely, right across the street from Jimmy Weekly's own business, Fausto's Food Palace. Lest he forget these people threw their support behind him...That would be Fausto's grocery store across the street:Back on the other side of the street is Mo's Restaurant which has quite a following. It started out as a French-Canadian place, but they sold up and left. Now, continuing the Gallic connection it is run as a Haitian restaurant:And across the street one can see the Mo's truck parked as it's own form of on street advertising. The Canadian Maple Leaf symbol is hard to miss:I'm told Mo's French Onion soup is outstanding. Close by I found a minuscule store closed but available to rent for $875, a space perhaps ten feet wide and twice as deep. It looked small to me:Next door the antique shop called In One Era makes the most of it's space by filling every nook and cranny with an astonishing collection of dust catchers:And across the street here we see the severely efficient yellow block of a building that used to house a place called Island Bagels. I seem to recall them as quite good but not cheap and rather unfriendly. Perhaps my opinion was catching because they were replaced by this gym which seems to do a lot of business:Further south on the east side of White there is a landmark in local real estate:Back on the west side of White more small stores doing their thing:For twenty grand this store offers integrated electronics, alarms, computing and I don't know what all. Terribly modern I'm sure:This delightful nook looks like a home, and a small one even by Key West standards.And beyond the green house ( if that is what it is) there is a car wash on the corner of Catherine Street:And for no particular reason I close with this picture of a Dad walking his kid down White Street:I just thought the kid with his out-sized Fantasy Fest beads looked happy. Silly me, he's probably worried about the Federal deficit too.

Lunch At The Beach

To sit on a beach on November, to watch the waves roll in and admire one's tougher neighbors out taking a tan under gray skies and strong east winds; that's autumnal sport in Key West.

I had expected to line up for a while to get my swine flu vaccine at the High School but I was in and out so fast I had time left over for a leisurely lunch. Not too leisurely because we have so many people out sick there is overtime going begging. It was an enormous pleasure to sit out at a picnic table and feel the warm, muggy wind blow in my face. I was so tired I didn't bother to indulge myself in my preferred activity, reading, I just sat and stared out at the water. Key West in winter is a different season. It brings with it spells of cold dry sunshine mixed with short bursts of overcast weather, a little rain and a return to the bright cold crisp sunshine. People make fun of a cold day slightly above 60 degrees (15C), but when one is used to temperatures closer to 90 degrees, (30C) it feels cold enough. I haven't yet pulled my sweatshirt out of the closet but I know it's coming, and I know we will be flooded with people, people who apparently have jobs and are determined to enjoy a vacation in "America's Caribbean" (Key West, that is, not the real one in the US Virgin Islands). So an empty picnic table and a bespoke burrito from Badboy (porkchilicabbagejalapenocheesericeandbeans) is just the job to celebrate a spare hour:
As my work was my next stop I was wearing motorcycle boots, Kevlar lined pants and my uniform polo shirt. The nurses at the vaccination station asked if I was riding a motorcycle. "Oh no." I said,"I just feel safer overdressing." The student nurse was very sweet to me and failed entirely to jab me as hard as I deserved for being smart with them. Visitors to Key West, even as winter progresses pretend it is summer and throw their clothes away with a ferocity that tells you they are determined to enjoy their winter break:
It's never out of fashion to build a sandcastle with your Dad:
The winds have produced white lumpy conditions in the Straits of Florida that, as long as winds were out of the east, were coming ashore with a ferocity not usually seen inside the reef. When my wife and I were out cruising we used to check the ocean conditions by looking at the horizon from the comfort of our anchorage. If we could see buffalo rolling along the horizon of the open waters we determined it was probably better to stay put. Next time you are at the beach look to the horizon and if the waves roll along looking like the humps on a herd of buffalo you will know what I mean.
I wasn't planning on going sailing so I watched the waves crash on the rocks placed off the beach to preserve the sand in just these conditions. I like swimming in calm waters, body surfing seems rather gross to me.

Offshore I could see a ghost, a cruise ship lurking. It vanished into the murk and the little green pilot boat came rolling back down the channel a few minutes later. I doubt the passengers on the ship even noticed how lumpy the buffaloes were running.That other nautical saying came to mind, "I'd rather be in here wishing I was out there, than out there wishing I was in here." I took pleasure in the trees, the sand, the stillness under the canopy.
The sea oats is growing nicely along the beach. It is supposed to be for erosion control and beds of it are always fenced off on Florida beaches. Visitors aren't supposed to pick it or trample it or disturb it.
I love staring out at the turquoise waters and gray clouds. Sometimes when the clouds pile up over shallow waters, even while standing in downtown Key West, you can see a turquoise sheen reflected off the bottom of the cloud. It's reminder of how shallow and clear and close these magical waters are, even to the fleshpots of Duval.
Visitors do the damnedest things. They swim in November in rough waters:
And they seem to enjoy it. Others don't:
Me? I dropped my can in the recycling bin and packed my sandwich wrapper to drop it off in the garbage can at work. Lunch was over, time to answer a 9-1-1 call or two. It's hard to imagine but not everyone was having an easy day at the beach.