Higgs Beach Made Better

I had delayed returning to Higgs Beach t see the new fence and when I did finally check it out I was astonished.


With one quick move the authorities seem to have solved the problem of the bums taking over the pavilions at the public county owned beach in the middle of the city of Key West.


The old Astro City playground seen above has been replaced by a shady, waterfront child's park in the sand:


It was busy when I was there with mothers and kids coming and going.


In many respects it's a better location, with shade, an attractive ocean view, shade from the casuarina trees and the useful picnic pavilions line the fenced area.


These used to be residentially challenged cabanas filled with drinking squabbling bums who made a pleasant aft noon at the beach an impossibility for anyone with any sense of decorum in public places.


It's easy to point a finger in a shitty economy and say these are the dispossessed but unhappily these are the hobos and bums made romantic by early 20th century authors (John Steinbeck leaps to mind) though these modern incarnations are not by any stretch romantic.


The have relocated across the street to the wooden picnic tables next to the dog park, and there they sit. Key West offers an amazing array of services for the poor and homeless and hopeless, not surprisingly as this city is packed with millionaires and working poor. But there is a population, that swells in winter, of travelers and they seek no help and prefer to be viewed as rebels and outsiders.


It seems clear to me the relocation of the childrens' playground accomplishes the relocation of the bums, but also paves the ay for the new road planned to run inland from the beach, moving Atlantic Boulevard away from the shore.


Next the county will have to find the money to move the dog
park which was built with donations from citizens and now sits directly in the path of the planned relocated street. Once Atlantic is moved the remainder of Higgs Park will be mostly dog park, children's park a d recreational facilities, tennis courts and the like and the bum problem which has plagued this place will evaporate.


And the kids get their water front playground.


One has to assume the bums will move and some other neighborhood will be blogged for a while.



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Birds And A Dog

Minding their own business.


What's this? A peacock stalking something or someone.


I hear them cawing in the early morning when I walk Cheyenne at Ramrod Pool. I am familiar with peacocks from my youth when a farmer near my school decided to raise them. Noisy buggers, and nosy too. My dog as usual ignored all wildlife in her pursuit of pleasure.


This one was the leader of the pack and looked ready to pounce on my Labrador.


When Cheyenne became aware of the visitor she turned to say hullo. The peacock wasn't having any and scuttled off.


My Labrador ruled the road once again.

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Sunrise Light

My dog ignores this stuff when I take her for her early morning stroll. Sometimes I remember to take my camera and record the moment for posterity. But I never take it for granted.








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Ramrod Key Signs

Some signs I saw when out with Cheyenne. This one struck me as homey, over at the canvas shop.


Prisoners doing the work paid laborers could do. What's a little unemployment tom worry about? Never mind we tax payers pay their modest monthly benefits even as the private sector fails to give them real jobs.



For those with a job there's paradise 27 miles up the road. Who said sex doesn't sell, and I am sick of seeing her head floating above the Overseas Highway every commute.


And what I can't understand is how do cheap t-shirts and sandals pay for these huge billboards?


I wonder what the hell they are laundering and how they get away with it.

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Car Talk - Say It Ain't So!

From the news wires this shock horror story:

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, hosts of National Public Radio's popular "Car Talk" program, will retire in September after decades of dispensing automotive repair and driving advice laced with a side of wicked humor.

The pair, in their guise as the self-deprecating Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, have been taping the weekly show for WBUR, Boston's public radio affiliate, for 35 years, but say it is time to "stop and smell the cappuccino."

Elder statesman Tom Magliozzi turns 75 this year.

"My brother has always been 'work-averse,'" Ray Magliozzi, 63, said in a statement. "Now, apparently, even the one hour a week is killing him."

NPR will continue to broadcast the show with material curated from the best of the more than 1,200 episodes recorded by the Magliozzis over the years, with occasional updates from the brothers.

Gary Hunter, who helps manage events for the magazines Classic Motorsports and Grassroots Motorsports, said he would miss the program, and that his girlfriend Sally would miss it even more.

"My girlfriend doesn't work on her car; I do," he said. "But she listens to 'Car Talk' on the way to work on Saturday. I'm always amazed that she is totally not into cars but she enjoys their bantering and people calling in and the scenarios."

The brothers urged their fans not to grieve: "Thanks to all for the nice comments, but this isn't a wake! We won't be taping new shows, but we will still be polluting the airwaves!" they said via Twitter.

"Car Talk" was first broadcast in Boston in 1977 and picked up nationally by NPR 10 years later. It is heard weekly by an audience estimated at more than four million listeners on almost 600 stations.

"The early days of Car Talk was a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and people actually worked on their own cars," the pair quip on their website.

Among the celebrities who have called into the show are broadcaster Morley Safer; actors Ashley Judd and Geena Davis; and astronaut John Grunsfeld, phoning from the Space Shuttle.

At the end of each show, Ray typically warns the audience, "Don't drive like my brother," to which Tom replies, "And don't drive like my brother."

The brothers won a Peabody Award in 1992 for "distinguished achievement and meritorious public service."

Both brothers, veteran car mechanics who operate a garage in Cambridge, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They gave the commencement address to the university in 1999.

The Car Talk offices loom over Harvard Square in Cambridge and is dubbed "Dewey, Cheetham & Howe" after the imaginary law firm featured on the show.

The much-loved broadcast has made its mark on popular culture in the Magliozzi's native Cambridge - referred to on air as "our fair city" - and beyond. The brothers provided the voices for animated cars in the blockbuster 2006 Disney Pixar film "Cars".

The Evolving Truman Watefront

The Mohawk has gone, dragged off to an unhappy fate to be sunk off Samibel Island to make way for a fancy new marina and shopping center planned to occupy the waterfront.


The floating museum is no more, a survivor of World War Two, packed with memories and mementoes of a fascinating life afloat. The space behind the canon is where the Mohawk used to be.


Now it is just empty waterfront.


No doubt the old Navy Warehouse will be the next to go, plans for a farmers market and a tree filled lark have been swept aside in pursuit of a high end development.


The worst of all hazards is to be in the way of Progress.


The old launch that used to sit here, blocked up, has vanished.


I was glad to see quite a few people visiting the remaining floating museum, the Ingham, a rather newer Coastguard Cutter than the venerable Mohawk.


It was a ninety degree afternoon and I had nom clue where to stash my dog were I to take a leisurely tour of the ship.


So I contented myself with watching from afar.








Cheyenne seemed more impressed by the force of the sun,


...unlike the brave visitors on the ship.


She ducked into the shady grass for a rest.


I like the bright white sunlight of summer.


Even the parking lot was full


The common complaint is not many people come by here so they might as well build the expensive marina. It's time tom prove them wrong before the Ingham suffers the same ignominious fate of the Mohawk.



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