Highway Sights

The Overseas Highway named for Flagler's original 1912 Over-The-Sea-Railroad is officially US Highway One. It is quite beautiful too on a sunny day with a few clouds and not too much traffic.


However, commerce manages to balls things up from time to time. You'd think billboards would be banned from this most scenic federally funded highway. You'd be horribly wrong. This one greets me after the last turn on my 27 mile (42 kilometer) commute:


It strikes me at the issues raised by the Gulf Oil Spill were of far greater moment and infinitely more far reaching than making a law firm even wealthier. The stories of BP's excessively liberal payout system are legion in the Keys. Sign away rights and take tens of thousands for loss of something-or other. Loss of income? Not for these lawyers and their cheesy recycling of the most emotive picture:


The highway is hardly pristine thanks to our need for electricity while the pole on the left carries a traffic camera watching for traffic jams.


I have noticed my AT&T dsl service has slowed down a bit. It used to get bad in winter when the snowbirds are around. Now it makes for slow Internet connections when the high tech grandparents have left. Perhaps they demand service from their providers that we locals are scared to aspire to.


This is the highway devoid of billboards sweeping into Ramrod Key where I live. They could have planted some big shade trees along the road, you'd think, but no such luck. Landscaping is left to Nature's best effort.


The local supermarket, the Winn Dixie on Big Pine Key tries to suck in a few tourists with one of these grandfathered billboards. I like the Big Pone store as it is a lot quieter than the supermarkets in Key West even though they have a better selection.


I think we are spoiled for selection in the first place, in food and entertainment. Boondocks bar has been on a jag offering "tribute shows" and advertising em with these temporary ground level 'billboards.’


It is a Highway that many motorcycle riders aspire to ride once in their lives.


I guess I'm lucky I've ridden it enough to know it well, mile by mile even if it lacks hills and turns.


I hate how gas stations advertise fuel prices with the stupid and universal nine tenths fractions...Being anal I always round the decimals up to avoid succumbing to the advertising sleight of hand.


It looks as daft as any vehicle on the road but they have way too much enthusiasm not to enjoy their overloaded ride with them. I'm guessing they didn't notice the intrusive billboards.


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Some Working Stiffs

Summer will be gone soon enough and Up North as days become shorter in a few short weeks and as temperatures drop dreamers will start to wonder if perhaps they couldn't make it in the land of perpetual summer. They could read the paper for instance and monitor a parking lot:


Or they could use their mechanical skills to maintain a tour train...


...at the depot on Ann Street:


Two and a half million people come to Key West each year, some bright soul with not much to do has figured this out. Most of them spend at least a portion of their time people watching at outdoor tables in the land of perpetual summer.


Some people come for romance, and like the other dreamers they adapt to their unusual role by spending money. Perhaps the sex shop downtown can make every tourist a "dream girl" heaven help us all, for a night in some improbably expensive underwear.


Dream over, they pack their pink suitcases in the rental car and drive back to real life on the mainland.


Jobs in the Keys fall broadly speaking into two categories, government and tourist trade. You end up selling things to people or providing the services the service workers need to function - police, utilities, mail etc...


Service industry jobs in the private sector pay horribly, offer few benefits and require most workers to hold two or three jobs. There are a few exceptions. For instance the Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce gets more than a hundred thousand dollars a year but she has fossilized in that job and don't expect it to come available any time soon. This guy is wearing a name plate so he's a worker.


The Chamber put out a report recently estimating the private sector pays crap wages and the public sector should be shredded down to their level. Public sector jobs require employees show up and for employers to respect the law and pay overtime and permit unions and all that dreary nonsense.


The rising tide theory falls flat on it's face in Key West but civic leaders do spend a lot of time wringing their hands publicly about the high cost of living for the canon fodder in the trenches of the workaday world in Paradise. Selling boat ride tickets can't possibly be that lucrative, can it?


If you exhibit a penchant for sales there are jobs in Key West though you will need more than one to make it. It needn't be hard physical labor either.


Enterprising actors make a living performing at Mallory Square. Some of them have raised families, bought homes and lived thoroughly middle class lives with their tips. I'm sure this Silver Man is never a member of the AFL-CIO or of SAG and no doubt couldn't care less!


It used to be that all pedi-cab drivers came from Eastern Europe, one of those immigrant jobs that required no papers as they are ”sub contractors” operating their own business. Nowadays the economic slump means you stand an excellent chance of being pedaled around town by a native English speaker.


And it's one of those jobs that gives you time to catch up with passing friends, rather like store clerks and stand operators who hang on Duval, earn half a living and get to shoot the breeze.


I'd rather not deal with the public face to face and certainly not at Chamber of Commerce inspired wages.


Fortunately the are lots of workers who will. In fact during the boom years bar tenders and even bar backs made fantastic money when Duval Street was packed nightly to the rafters with drinkers with money, or if not money at least credit, before that went bad.


Standing around talking is a large part of cultural life in Key West. These are not tourists either. The ice chest on the scooter is one giveaway, the rag from the pocket, the headgear and the flesh tones.


Unless you work night shift an prefer the pleasure of your own company like me, you can get to know enough people on a small island that every block involves stopping and talking, or a least greeting in passing somebody or other.


Tourists visit bars and landmarks, though like the unhappy server I encountered recently, residents without private in Knesset rarely get to hang loose in downtown. She told a curious customer she hadn't seen the attraction in question as all she's done is work since she got here six months ago. It's not the sort of reply a tourist expects, nor is it one encouraged by the Chamber of Commerce but... it's the reality.


Rent a bicycle, employ a local.


Buy a knick knack and keep these aggravating stores in business though one wonders how they pay the rent at those prices... A thought also not encouraged by the Chamber bit I do wonder what they launder in these places.


Open containers are...legal? Or not, or only sometimes. I am a local so its not my issue as I am expected to be sober at work.


I'm not sure if this is legal either, nor am I sure it's naked in a technical sense, thongs being what they are these days and I didn't look too closely.


Frankly I'm not sure what gender it was either.


Local? Tourist? Beats me. Have a nice weekend and if you don't work shifts then thank a union you have the whole weekend off. And that you don't have the Key West Chamber of Commerce campaigning to reduce your wages for you.





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Boat Fishing Summer

Ambling home on the Overseas Highway I looked to the left of me and I looked to the right of me.


As it turned out most of the fish killing action was to the left of me, on the Atlantic side of the road, the south side if you talk like a mainlander.


There you are out in the ocean and your fishing guide stands on his platform and poles you along. When the flats pole is in action in means you are in shallow water, no matter how deep it may appear.


Some of the time is spent buzzing about on the horizon.


A lot of the time is spent maneuvering the boat on and off the trailer at the free launch ramps provided courtesy of the gummint up and down the Keys.


The view from the Highway to Key West is quite pretty especially in the Lower Keys after the Seven Mile Bridge where the road crosses more water and winds through fewer mangroves.


I often think of the boaters looking up at me driving or riding on the highway imagining that I am envying them their freedom.


I used to be glad when I was on the water away from speed limits and traffic lanes and crowds. At some level I miss the silence and skill of sailing but driving a motor boat has not made me a convert to driving an engine across the water.


I have found that sporadic use of a salt water immersed engine takes work to keep it functioning. Work and money, which is true to se extent of any boat.


Even though I am not one to pits my wits against fish a boat with a bed and a sunset view is still a pleasant place to be.

And around here, like Parrotdise on Little Torch Key there is a dock provided by the restaurant to encourage visits by water.


Thats the fantasy ultimately, jump in the boat at your dock and drive across the water to dinner without once stopping at a stop sign.


After last summer's desperate struggles with my bolshie outboard I find the smooth reliability of my twin cylinder Bonneville much more satisfying.


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Kojin Noodles

My colleague Fred has been working his way through the menu and every evening at work his praise rises higher for the new noodle shop on Southard just by Duval Street.




It looks cute enough from the outside but when I figured out the nice to go hatch it occurred to me that lunch wasn't going to be air conditioned on this 90 degree afternoon.




And the cooking goes on in front of you which would be a nice touch in artificially cool air. I took a seat at the counter which did not get me immediate and rapid service but I had the newspaper to keep me company even if the server had better things to do. The cook smiled though as he put together a roast pork sandwich on naan.




It was the eleven dollar special so I ordered one as it came with miso soup. The place offers half a dozen pho type dishes, Asian noodles vegetables and meat and only one vegetarian offering, a rather boring looking miso with tofu. My first Asian restaurant not catering to vegetarians.




Small bowls for ten bucks, giant bowls for 18 so I figured a soup and sandwich would give me a quick look across the menu board. The naan was soft flavorless and not the least crispy. It was the reason I wanted the sandwich, as I love naan, who doesn't, and I miss Indian food. The miso was full of mushrooms and dark with flavor. The sandwich had a weird sauce that tasted of mashed liver which gave me pause. Luckily I had a teapot with hot tea to wash it down. Unluckily the server was quite surprised by my request for hot tea but I am one of those weird people who like hot tea on a hot day to cool my skin by sweating slightly. I had some mystery tea bag from an old tin hidden behind the counter and left it at that.




Here is the cheerful cook filling eighty dollars-worth of pho bowls.




Maybe I should have had a nine dollar beer to wash it down. As it was I spent $14 and left a three dollar tip. Oh and when it came time to settle the bill, also requiring an age to wait, I was told with no prior warning the credit card machine was down. Luckily and unusually for me I had a twenty dollar bill, else I'd have had to add an ATM fee from the Bank of American Crooks machine up the street.




I could have spent nine bucks on an El Gaucho Ernesto burrito from badboy up Simonton Street and sat in air conditioning.
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