City Hall at 525 Angela Street isn't completely empty. The building has essentially been condemned and most of the city staff that used to work there are now in temporary digs, rented for a million bucks a year according to the paper, at Habana Plaza on Flagler Avenue. The old place on Angela Street is now marking time.
I went by recently to take a few pictures because it seems likely that this place will be torn down sooner or later. The question is: what will come in it's place? Across the street the owner of the hotel has expressed her undying opposition to any reconstruction saying a building site will send her establishment into bankruptcy.
Which attitude would pretty much end all construction everywhere in the city. City Hall is old and worn and Hurricane Wilma in 2005 didn't help.
After the flood waters receded city employees complained of mold problems throughout the building and after some considerable dithering the decision was made by some important people, that the city does in fact need a new city hall. So almost everyone was moved out.
I wandered in and met Miz Alice in Human Resources who was as usual very friendly and cheerful at her desk. She said the Internet Technology department is still in the building but HR is a lonely lot down in the semi-basement, an off white hall with electrical cables snaking across the walls and a rather worn gray carpet underfoot. The entrance smacks of a 1960 era school:
I didn't bother to go upstairs, indeed I've never had reason to go upstairs.
One used to pay parking tickets at the little booth downstairs and on the last occasion I lost my health insurance card I visited Miz Alice in her lair for my replacement. Other than that I have never had much reason to visit city hall. And what exactly a Cemetery Consultant is I have absolutely no clue. Nor shall I presumably in their brave new city hall, wherever that might end up being.
The back of the building is a large parking lot, properly metered and very useful too for any activities one might be involved in on the 600 block of Duval which is a short walk away.
The old building really does need to be replaced. The old louvered windows have been covered inexplicably by cement bricks. A rat's staircase according to one wag who used to work in the building.
The question is what to do next. Replacing city hall and the fire station would supposedly cost 18 million dollars and the city has already spent 750,000 on architect's plans. The other idea is to build a new fire station here and use the rest of the space for a parking garage. All that and converting Glynn Archer School, mentioned in a previous essay would cost an estimated 25 million dollars.
On the Simonton Street side of the building lies Fire Station Number Two.
It is an unprepossessing place and clearly also needs replacement. Whatever plans have been mooted so far the idea remains to keep the Fire Station in place. This is the first line of defense for Duval Street and the core of Old Town. Response times are critical in a part of town consisting of old wood buildings with no off sets.
I myself would take no joy in being a fire fighter working 24 hour shifts and never knowing when Dispatch will roll you out of bed with a horrible tone. Sometimes they bring us food on holidays and they know how to cook.
Walking back around to Angela Street we see the hotel across the way. The idea is that construction noise and dirt would drive customers away when they build something on the lot.
It is vegetated enough you'd think there would be some cover for the guests. City hall itself is shaded by trees, which hides the elderly nature of the building itself at first glance.
The municipal trash can has another of those cute little notices on it to encourage everyone to use the bins:
Eventually I expect they will start binning the building itself. Whatever comes next, and whatever it is will arouse controversy in our little tea cup of a town, I'm glad I remembered to snag some pictures of the old place.
My wife is full of surprises. She wanted to go out to dinner and she wanted to come here, to Key West's latest Hungarian restaurant.
The place was guarded by this guy who was yelling for help, his leash was caught around the plant. When his owner finally figured that the dog didn't like to be tied up and let him loose he sat quietly by the doorway into the restaurant. Key West has yet to implement a new state law permitting dogs in outdoor restaurants. Weirdly enough I am not a huge fan of taking my dog with me into restaurants because I really don't need the hassle of looking after her on my evening off. Happily for me Cheyenne is quite content in the car, especially in the cooler days of winter. Having her sit in an air conditioned car while I eat dinner seems absurd. 
We took inside seating, paradoxically, preferring not to sit out in the heat of the evening. Ilona's has a long list of micro brew beers, keeping up with the fashion, and we asked for two beers not hoppy and bitter and we got precisely what we asked for. My wife's Terrapin had a honey after taste she really liked and my Sweaty Betty (sic) from Colorado was several steps above a Coors blandness. They sell wine too.
We were amused to see among all the wines on display a bottle of Bull's Blood from the city of Eger. In September 1995 my wife and I rented a car in the Czech Republic and spent three weeks touring Eastern Europe at a time when western ways had barely started to penetrate the former Iron Curtain. We landed in Eger during the annual wine celebration and we carefully brought home a plastic barrel of wine, that they filled for us, one among many souvenirs from the trip.
Eger Bor (bor is Hungarian for wine. Magyar is a very confusing language) was not on the menu for us on a steaming September evening. September is the quiet month in Key West and we had the Friday night inside dining room to ourselves. 
The menu offered standard Key West dishes and sandwiches, but we went for the Hungarian side of the page. Beef Stroganoff:
Chicken Paprikash, which had just a hint of peppery bite. 
I don't know what came over my wife but she went for a shared ending to the meal, an apple caramel cheesecake and coffee.
Outside a jazz trio was performing to the outdoor bar and garden part of the restaurant. 
This place in the middle of Appelrouth Lane used to be where the German restaurant called Martin's used to live. They went all upscale directly on Duval and lost all this charm for some reason.
Appelrouth Lane is the alley that ends opposite the Strand Pharmacy on Duval.
And to make our $45 dinner out perfect we got to ride off on the Bonneville.
My wife only got to ride back to her car, across town. I got to ride all the way home to my dog, suffering the pangs a deep sleep in the air conditioned house.
Down the stairs she comes ready to swipe my face with her tongue and whack my legs with her tail. The moon has been a mere sliver of it's former self and as usual a new moon brings a spring tide in it's wake. So much so the canal has been full almost to overflowing in the morning as the Atlantic tides rise as full as they can. That puts my little Dusky 14 footer and it's 25 horsepower motor at dock level just about.
The presence of a great deal of fresh water has brought out the mosquito vector control people in force. Mosquitoes don't breed in salt water happily or we'd all be dead. Controlling the mosquito habitat ("vector") is an endless task and as one might imagine it is a task that pleases just about no one. I wasn't surprised to see the brown mosquito control district helicopter buzzing Summerland Key across the salt ponds. They drop an innocuous cereal-like pellet that messes up the mosquito lifestyle without poisoning the world below.
Mosquito control has been in the news lately with two members of the board up for election this year. It has been described as a scandal that the smallest public agency in the county has the director with the largest salary, around $185,000 a year I believe. At a time when public employees are under attack by the forces of darkness that want us all, private and public workers, to be reduced to poverty, the district is doing a piss poor job of drawing attention to itself and it's dirty laundry. A manager is being prosecuted for allegedly using work phones for private use- a man who reportedly earns better than a hundred thousand a year and stands accused of being an idiot, unwilling to pay for his own phones like the rest of us. And yet while the bosses tussle about buying television air time to advertise their services and how much to pay themselves, the workers keep working. Which is as well for those of us that don't much like mosquitoes.
It's hot and humid still in the Keys, and we are seeing lots of rain that makes fresh water puddles which encourage mosquitoes to breed. There is some talk of dengue fever, and speaking as one who contracted it in Central America years ago it is no particular threat to healthy well nourished people, though the flu-like fever is no fun at all. Still one can't help wondering if the threat of dengue spells more problems for a beleaguered public health system in a country that likes to think it can function without government, or if it is just a tool for government to expand it's powers, as one more anti government conspiracy. Perhaps it's neither and perhaps mosquitoes and dengue and cell phone bills are just one more way to pass through the doldrums of September without going mad from boredom. 
"...didn't have her collar on." Perhaps that wouldn't have saved her from abduction if the person who found her wanted her and didn't do the right thing and drop her off at the SPCA on Stock Island as one should. On our frequent walks around town I see things that strike me but have no context so I take a picture and hope I remember to add to my next list of inconsequential curiosities. Like this shutter next to Blue Heaven restaurant studded with staples. A former public bill board I suppose now painted over. 
We have had the first round of elections running up to this November and the other day I actually saw someone taking the time to remove a losing candidates bill boards from the side of the road. I wish I remember whose it was. Such civic pride might induce me to vote for them next time around. I am by turns amused and annoyed by misspelled signs. Sometimes I am tripped up by the essential ie spell word checker but I would resist the temptation to post a notice without first checking the spelling.
Parking is always an issue in Key West. This next is a shot I took down Southard Street and yet not a few hours later a neighbor from this area called Dispatch to let us know an out of town car was parked in a residential spot (you have to have a tag stamped with the word "Monroe" or have a sticker to enjoy the privilege of these special spots). 
Parking rubs some people's nerves quite raw. I am glad I live in the suburbs on these occasions, and I feel privileged my expensive vehicles get to sit under the house and out of the sun's damaging rays. This next sign made me laugh out loud; happily it is September and no one was around except Cheyenne to listen to me bray.
This sign isn't a misspelling, it's just a sign of age and wear and tear at the elderly Fire Station Number Two on Simonton at Angela Streets.
Cheyenne completely ignored this sign on the fence as she stumped by. Perhaps she felt it struck a little too close to her own home. 
On the subject of Angela Street this next sign always stirs passers by, the dead end at the cemetery on Angela at Grinnell. However the "one way" sign is now pointing the wrong way. Very confusing. Why the powers-that-be made that decision I couldn't say. I just try to remind myself of the new reality before I embark on the street.
A while back they decided to make a bunch of narrow streets in Bahama Village one way in varying directions. I suppose those changes were necessary in these SUV encumbered times but I still find myself making extra circuits in the village in an effort to find a street heading my way. I am a slow learner. Chickens, here's another one for those that like to see them roaming the streets. Actually this is a rooster known to British/English speakers (an intemperate lot) as a cock.
A friend gave us a piece of Frangipani promising if we planted it, despite it's severed state, it would grow. This one was trying to make a go of it in a garbage can. I think it's fate is sealed even as mine is showing signs indeed of sprouting. 
In the midst of life we are in death. This next place has been on the market for some considerable time but unless someone decides to buy it, one has to suppose it will remain moribund on the Boulevard.
There are a few VW vans around town. Like classic motorcycles they are a source of nostalgia for me even though I suffered all the traits of unreliability that both my vans could possibly have inflicted on me (and are famous for). If you want to hear my wife swear like a fishwife ask her about the splendid $7,000 Vanagon I insisted we buy years ago to enable us to travel more comfortably (with our then Labrador). 
I read from time to time the question on Trip Adviser, "Where do locals eat?" Outback, Miami Subs and so forth are the places locals can afford, but tourists don't want to hear that reality. Conchs do love their Dairy Queen across the street from the Weather Station. They even have stickers on their cars to prove it. 
No really they do.
Dairy Queen is tucked away out of sight but if you want to meet locals at their favorite watering hole that's where you go. Sorry about that, reality intrudes once again. I haven't yet seen 105 degrees on the car temperature gauge as we saw in our cross country trip across the Great Plains this summer. But I did see this:
When we started the process of trying to renegotiate our home loan with Wells Fargo the witches of the Bank Too Big Too Fail argued we were spending too much for gas and could cut back to make our $3,000 a month payment on our devalued house more affordable. Yup, sure we could. 
I expect gas is cheaper where they live and do business collecting TARP funds.
It's that time of year again, a new pair of $30 Crocs to replace the last set I wore out over the summer. I went with a different shade this time. The clerk at the Neat Stuff store on Flagler Avenue where I get my Crocs said they are Salmon colored (not crass pink). 
They are not as nice as my old Fuchsia pair, my wife says, but the old ones were worn completely out. Their state of disrepair would have made the Witches of Wells Fargo happy.
And so it goes. New footwear, more bills and summer creeping toward the end of hurricane season. So far so good. 