Varied Wheels

From time to time I like to take a stock check of the ways people get around Key West. Gliding on a $20,000 Harley is a popular path.


A Motokar powered by a version of the venerable Honda CB125 four stroke single is unusual.


Asian travelers will have seen cabs and utility vehicles much like this one in various guises but this particular model has been brought to Key West die by entropy as an immobile business ad.


The details are quite surprising, three brakes, spacious seating under shade, all hauled by ten or so horsepower.


One of the catamaran companies sells tickets from a Vespa sidecar, engineless and hopeless. I expect this unique three wheeler to end the same way. I like to see motorcycles, modern old or unique in use. They were built to be ridden, all of them.


A free Jeep? Surely not?


It would take one call to find out but I'd rather leave it as it is and enjoy someone's idea of a joke. The weird thing is someone out there will have their curiosity sparked.


Key West bicycles are more fun than pedal power back home. It's a well known fact.


As are mopeds in all their varied colors.


I liked the reflection in this silvered little visor.


Two wheels is how you get round Key West efficiently. A transportation revolution you might say in the land of the SUV.

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Bus Stop Grammer

I dropped the Bonneville off for new tires at JK Motorsports on Stock Island.


Thus I was on foot, the most despised human status in America, and found myself 23 miles from home. $4 and a short wait solved that problem, by launching me on a forty minute bus ride up the Overseas Highway in air conditioned comfort with a chauffeur and everything.


I sat in the shelter and carefully read the rules, sad to see they were trite, unexceptional and very pedestrian. But the fact that the author can't spell, raised the silly notice to the level of divine.


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Art For Sale

I have been reading in the paper this past week about The Studios of Key West and their funding problems, and the future looks bad for the current occupants of the armory.


For now there is no change at the Armory building on White Street but rent must be paid and the money has dried up.


What happen d was the Rodel Foundation as was persuaded the organization to take over the vast space in the renovated Armory and pay hefty rent to the Historic Trust that oversees the building.


That worked fine until the Rodel Foundation collapsed. The paper said it was a divorce between the founders but I seem to recall Rodel. Lost a fortune in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.


So now the studios of Key West are trying to renegotate the rent from $16,000 a month! to possibly $9,000. The historic trust has already given up, rather decently on a quarter million in back payments but there is no hope the Studios can keep paying vast rent without Rodel's half million a year's grant.


It's a shame that the Studios will be closing as they have provided not only a space for exhibits, like this by Suzie dePoo, known in art as Zuzek of Yugoslavian descent, but also they hold classes talks and concerts.


They have a website of course TSKW Link but it shows nothing untoward as far as the Studios precarious future is concerned.


There isn't much to discuss because it is merely a matter of mathematics and the crash of 2008 has wrecked many an artistic funding path.


At a time when school funding is being ravaged and some municipalities are facing bankruptcy it's hardly surprising when arts funding goes kaput. We will look back on the crazy nineties with fondness the further forward we go, I suspect.


And just across the street we have the likelihood of as many as 157 units of housing being emptied by a development plan for Peary Court. It seems the Navy has sold the land to a private developer after closing it as military housing and allowing civilians to rent the homes.


Peary Court has a storied history with activists chaining themselves to trees to prevent the land from being developed. You can see how it was in the movie Crisscross when it was the scene of a night softball game. I remember walking across Peary Court as a grassy short cut between Garrison Bight and Southard Street twenty years ago.


Now the future of the much despised housing is up in the air.


It's one more never ending Key West saga, Peary Court in all it's permutations.



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Simonton By Eaton

Buttonwoods on Simonton are coming into their own again. They provide shade on a hot summer afternoon as one ambles along Simonton to check out the secret garden.


One doesn't have to arrive in the garden to see a few bright frangipani or "frangy pansy" as a passing visitor described them. I rather prefer that name actually.


Oops, the secret garden is no more, the parrots and some plants have moved to Elizabeth Street.


There's a useful sign on the clean, closed gate.


Free School Lane is still lined with pretty homes but the garden is gone for sure.


Now that's a car port with style!


The walk was a bit long for my Cheyenne who needed nourishment along the way. And of course she found it, a slice of sunbaked pizza in just the right spot to refresh and reinvigorate my lusty Lab.


Had she brought her trousers and wallet Cheyenne could have bought an astonishing fanciful cake from the window display on Simonton.


Karol does a bang up job of building multiple storey confectionary.


Across the street some optimist is trying to offload the haunted theater to some uneducated punter.


The reason they say the bums never sleep in the protected doorway of the old pile is because the ghosts frighten them off.


I don't believe in ghosts but I do keep my eyes open. I liked this reflection:


Check this out, our northern cousins are trying to out patriot us. This despite the fact no one has ever had the heart to hate Canada.


We support our troops fighting the ice on Hudson's Bay. Good job chaps. Meanwhile here in the land of the free there is some mumbling about closing the Federal Courthouse on Simonton.


It was just recently renamed in honor of the late Judge Aronovitz, and I doubt anyone will actually force illegal Haitians, fish poachers or their lawyers to travel to Miami every time they want to have a Federal hearing.

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Changes On The Boulevard

Years ago it was Waldenbooks then it became Borders Express then it closed as the brave new world of electronic books swept the land.


Cement fore and aft, ladders, scaffolding and men in coveralls.


To the trained eye it has become apparent that change is in the air. I suspect some minor chain store selling pet supplies might be in the offing.


Further up the main shopping drag in New Town, change has come and gone. A bank is now established where Boater's World used to sell yacht stuff.


And this lot aren't going anywhere, there're gone:


I'm not sorry to see the end of Blockbuster, the chain that forgot what customer service meant, even as technology wiped out a few more service jobs. Meanwhile a supermarket is holding a "going out of business" sale, which strikes me as rather odd.


Going out of business sale of lettuce? Weird, but I'm told Albertsons is to become an all-organic Publix Greenwise store.


I find it hard to imagine there are that many organic shoppers in Key West in summer when the hipster snowbirds have fled the summer breezes for the humidity of Kansas, but I'm sure Publix knows best.


Shop till you drop meanwhile for cheap lettuce and beer.


While this lot rub their knuckles and prepare to expand their empire just a few feet further into the southern waters toward Cuba.


Any bets how long before Publix Havana opens up? Years ago Flagler dragged Cuban pineapples to winter residents of New York. Tomorrow who knows how far south the Publix Empire will stretch?


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Middle Fleming

The back garden to the library at 700 Fleming was own the last time I strolled by. It's been closed a while and now mysteriously it's open. Too bad I didn't have time to stop by.


The library bicycle rack is always full. It's the oldest public
library in Florida and sometimes I wonder if it is't the busiest.


Classic conch cottage and bougainvillea blooming.


Really blooming, it's thick around here. My own bush at home is doing quite nicely too, though on a much smaller scale.


I believe a local group called Just For Kids is responsible for the many decorated fire plugs. As bright as bougainvillea.


Right next to the classic Key West homes we find these apartments, classic stucco which I was more used to seeing in California.


I'm not much of a window shopper but you never know what shop keepers think will please the visitor's eye. Like a jar of seashells.


Anxious cyclists, with Mom telling the kid to do as she says not as she does. Helmet for the nipper, fashionable cap for Mom.


There they are dwarfed by the big brick building that marks Simonton and Fleming.


Bricks were expensive to bring to Key West but enough came as ship's ballast to allow for some construction that wasn't wood.


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