Summer Signs

I confess I have never darkened the entrance of the European Village Cafe, but I am sure this fine establishment on Green Street, next to Kermit's does excellent business. What struck me about it was the giant TIPS jar on the counter at eye level for an incoming customer. It turns out not to be quite so apparent in the photograph...but thats rather the theme this time of year. Its when tourism is at its slowest and people who work in the industry tend to fall back on their savings to get them through to Fantasy Fest.

"High Quality Water" seems such an odd idea to me. I have no idea who to trust with what when it comes to mass produced anything. Food is routinely contaminated, transported thousands of miles and sold to us and the vast majority of us don't get sick. So they sell us expensive water. That makes me ill. I have no great fondness for aqueduct water as it tastes a bit chemical but paying through the nose for water seems like it is the fashion even before the transnationals buy up all the world's water rights. We have anticipated them and got ourselves used to buying water in expensive plastic bottles, or even more expensive glass. The mind boggles.

I'd like to think that this sign really means vehicles marked as city vehicles, not city employees on their own time. If I'm wrong I may have found myself another downtown parking lot on my days off.

Here's another one...a motorcycle would be high efficency (relatively) you'd think. I expect its really meant for hybrids and Volts and stuff like that. There's actually free motorcycle parking around the corner at the Half Shell anyway.

I wonder how this scooter ended up here, poking up like a rock surrounded by the kelp of daily wandering trash washed up against its wheels.

The mud pile on Caroline Street is part of the new hotel development planned for the old trailer park that used to lurk there, close to the water and relatively inexpensive in a Key West where trailers were okay. Now its hotels and resorts and so forth. The trailer court on Simonton Street is also slated for demolition soon. The diocease owns the land and the idea is to build housing there. I'd like to think they wouldn't forget the people who live in the nasty unsanitary trailer park but who knows.

Fine lodging is always an interesting proposition in a town like Key West. Being close to Duval is every tourist's heart's desire (check Trip Advisor if you don't believe me) but the drawback si that then you are close to Duval and people who drink lose their sense of propriety all too early on in the evening. Dumping bottles and glasses at random is a citywide pastime.

There is always delight in my heart when important signs slip on the banana skin of grammar, syntax or intelligibility. Shouldn't trespass be qualified in some way? Trespassing perhaps? of acts of..? You'd think the fence alone would be enough to deter all trespass.

I saw and I was ready to scoop, indeed I always am. I find that when I own a dog I tend to step far more often into than when I am dog-free. I guess my dog follows theirs and they don't pick up. When I lived in marinas I used to pick up everybody's obsessively for fear that dogs might otherwise be banned. For some reaon picking up other dogs crap is gross, Cheyenne shits vanilla ice cream it turns out. And lots of it I might add for she is a big girl.

In October and rapidly approaching the voters of the city get to decide whether or not they support a plan to study the effects of a plan to possibly dredge the main ship channel. Supporters of the plan call it widening. If the voters approve the plan businesses in the city under the aegis of the Chamber of Commerce would pony up the city's share of the study to be carried out under the direction of the Federal Government. Opponents say if they approve the study the widening is inevitable and will allow the giant cruise ships that many residents don't want crowding the city. Supporters of the plan say its just a study. Personally I wonder why anyone would want to spend that kind of money without a high hope of success. I doubt the study will say coral is at risk from the extra debris. Besides that line defenders of the status quo say Marine Sanctuary rules prohibit creating new channels without an Act of Congress, no less. So the rhetoric will doubtless intensify as election day draws near.

I don't vote on this as I live in the county. Lucky me, I get to watch from the sidelines and let my neighbors agonize over the vote!

Posted with Blogsy

Dog Days Of August

They call them the dog days of summer and because I have a dog, and because the heat finally seems to be on, this seemed to be the moment to contemplate heat and humidity and summer in the Florida Keys.

I was on Curry Lane after Cheyenne and I left the car not too many blocks away on Southard Street. And though my fur coated friend looks half dead she was having a grand time, sniffing back and forth, the sidewalks all to herself and no rush to be anywhere at all. Then she found the air conditioning drain and sat in the puddle, in the weeds, to cool off. Dog days indeed.

The funny part about the "dog days" is they have nothing to do with terrestrial dogs, rather the star constellation that looks like a dog whose brightest star is Sirius. Romans correlated the hottest days of summer with the appearance of the dog star Sirius so they called them the dog days of summer, and we and our dogs are stuck with it.

In any event the dog days of summer have finally hit the Keys. I have to say the weather overall has been unusual from last winter till today. We had almost no cold fronts and none of any great severity last Winter, while Spring was fresh and cool and pleasant and quite dry. Summer then never seemed to be ready to kick in until finally the rains came and then in over abundance of course followed by unseasonably strong wind and the heat and humidity and mosquitoes seem to have been kept at bay for the most part. Until now, and that makes this a summer delayed in the Keys.

And so, as schools open and the traditional summer harvest break ends, as people Up North starts to look for leaves to change color soon, as the prospect of frost starts to permeate the conciousness, that is the time Key West starts to bake in earnest. Geographers tell us heat builds in August owing to the fact that the sun, already starting to dip, has been steadily baking the northern hemisphere and that heat stored in the ground is being released by the time August rolls around and it takes a few weeks for the stored heat to be released. So it gets hot in defiance of the dog days stuff.

I incidentally still lack any botanical skills whatsoever but I did like the little purple berries that look like small pale grapes or large pale blueberries. Identity as always unknown. I offer them up to confuse or titillate or simply the way they struck me as rather pretty. When i was a child picking and eating grapes off the vine was my sign that summer was almost over and school was on the horizon.

It is said that a good parking space in Florida is any space in the shade, not always available and not often available for residents. I value my parking under my stilt house more for protection from the sun than from rain. Getting into an over heated car can be a trial especially at this time of year.

Walking sidewalks anywhere in the city it's a good idea to look for the shady side of the street. I keep an eye on cheyenne to make sure she isn't burning her feet. Sometimes you'll see people standing in the sun with an anxious dog on a leash pacing around, comical looking but actually an effort not to burn its pads. Humans should be required to go barefoot to appreciate the dog's point of view.

You'd think that the Keys in summer when heat and humidity clamp down would be unbearable and that's why the snowbirds flee, but it really ain't so. Heat is relative and many people say they can handle a hundred degrees of desert heat and good luck to them. Around here it doesn't often go above 90 and hardly ever hits an actual hundred, which makes me wonder about the whole theory of fleeing the heat of summer in the Keys. But there again I prefer it when people leave so one doesn't want to foster the belief that it's not that hot.

Nevertheless people flee in droves in the Spring in time to see their families for Easter, and then the influx is families for summer vacations, and now they are leaving and for a couple of months the streets should look like this:

The eyebrow house design has been made famous in Key West, the overhanging roof is a vestige of a design theory that upper windows could be kept open in the rain and thus help circulate air in the house. Apparently it doesn't work as the overhang traps rising hot air. Better to have functioning air conditioning.

I have lived without air conditioning in the tropics. I spent several weeks on a boat in the Panama Canal one rainy summer living and panting with my dogs, all of us breathing by fans alone. That was my toughest time without air, but even during a power outage things get pretty sticky. It can be done but I am not a purist in a world of energy convenience and i like my air. I really like my artifical cold air especially in the car. I figure having a blast of cold air in the car makes me a better driver especially when traffic is stopped, patience comes with coolness...

The fact is that air conditioning breeds inefficiency, we build to accomodate the energy consumption instead of building to conserve energy. Every time you see a cubic block of apartments roasting in the sun you have to wonder how people lived before air conditioning. The answer is they built homes that were suited to conditions. Old Florida homes had "chimneys" on top, vents that sucked the air through the house and out of the roof through a gabled arrangment on the roof line. Decking was covered by roof overhangs that provided outdoor seating that was weatherproof and cool, so the interior could be vented without rain or direct sunshine penetrating the house. All these techniques are lost in the rush to build cheap housing for millions of migrants who end up spending huge amounts to cool their boxes.

Check out the side of this old house, the cement water cistern with the downpipe directing rain water into it. I have the same arrangement at home because my house was built in 1987 before there was piped water on my street. I run my entire house on filtered rain water, I drink it, shower in it, flush it and feed it to my dog who prefers it to the chlorinated brine (4% seawater) provided by the aqueduct. When my cistern runs dry, twice in six years, or when I am doing a load of laundry I am grateful for the switch that enables me to access the piped water, but rain water tastes good, doesn't leave calcium in my kettle and doesn't drain the South Florida Aquifer. Yet cisterns are no longer permitted. Such is the madness of modern life.

While I acknowledge and understand the shortcomings of the eyebrow homes, every time I see one I am made aware one more time how people adapted to their enviornment in centuries past. People lived in Key West before air conditioning and got through summers just fine. If you look at pictures of people in those days they wore suits and ties and top hats under the Florida sun...Look around today and see how fashions have shrunk even as our energy consumption has grown.

So that is how we survive the summer heat. I admit I am looking forward just a little to the second cold front of October when the grip of oppression is broken and we start to enjoy cool breezes, dry weather and open doors and windows- "good sleeping weather," and the rumble and drone of air conditioning is slience for a few weeks at least. Posted with Blogsy

Key West Style

 I don't think I could live with outdoor curtains like these:

As pretty as they may be, in my world they would just end up a dusty dirty mess. Hurricane shutters I can and do live with. I have shutters like these on my bedroom and I have much improved my daytime sleep patterns since I stuck them up. My wife hates them but they really are a helop to a night worker.

It never ceases to amaze me how many unused empty lots of land and decaying houses there are in Key West. This is a town of limited land mass with a highly desirable climate (unless you need leaf changing seasons) and houses are expensive to rent or own. And yet...

Often I suspect family disputes, inheritances and the like are responsible for the odd and frequently charming, collapsing homes.

Then there are the well preserved and jealously occupied homes. This one nicely complemented by a neatly parked scooter, safe behind a jagged fence:

This one nattily attired in matching Italian vases, with a properly personalized sign out front.

Whereas this next sign is nothing more than a cheap and curling plastic sign purchased en masse from local hardware stores. Very gauche, I'm sure.

If Cheyenne gives the impression she has suddenly become a critic of local architecture that would be a mistake. It was hot, she was pausing in her walk and I snapped a picture. Mind you I liked the house and privacy fence and the big old lumps of rock scattered around to keep the front of the house vehicle-free.

Posted with Blogsy

The Joy of Truman Avenue

 It used to be called Division Street on the entirely logical, yet pedestrian grounds that the street divided the inhabited parts of the city of Key West  from the wilderness elsewhere on the island. The Cuban Restaurant Havana One, seen below appears to be thriving on the north side of "Division Street." That would have been the inhabited side.

Modern Presidents have found favor in the Southernmost City, think of Eisehnhower Drive, Kennedy Drive and of course Truman Avenue which was what they renamed Division Street after Harry Truman spent so much time in Key West while President. Not all of it is uplifiting, unless you find a strip joint to be a morale booster-Bare Assets, happily abandoned to dog walkers in the early hours of the morning.

Motorcyclist Magazine recently ran a cover story on twenty years of the Ducati "Monster" motorcycle, a lightweight simple psorty motorcycle that they say changed the face of motorcycling. The Bike That Saved Ducati, and here's one seen off Truman Avenue:  

On an older and more dignified note I found a  beuatifully maintained older Japanese motorcycle,a Yamaha XS650 that was built in the 70s to take on the big British twins.

         

The Yamaha XS650  was a much loved motorcycle in its  time and apparently this one still is.

I miss the old used bookstore that used to sit here:

I mean it was musty and dark and had a world class  collection of pornographic magazines but it was quintessential old Key West, Bargain Books was.

I suppose if we can't have collections of crazy piles of books to wander through then we must find our entertainment where we can. A painted palm above, a hint of a Minor Basilica below:

 Key West, mix and match to your taste.

Posted with Blogsy

Atlanta, Georgia

It was apparent our trip was coming to an end as we were turned toward home at last, first east then south. As we left Birmingham we promptly got stuck in a monstrous traffic jam on the freeway into Atlanta though it was mostly idiots pausing to stare at some poor unfortunate who wrecked, thus holding us all up. Eventually the I-20 parking lot released it's grip and we rolled into the city, home to Coca Cola and CNN. I must say every time I get stuck I traffic I appreciate a water cooled engine and an air conditioning cooled interior as we sit and watch motorcyclists stuck in line unable to lane split to get ahead.

Atlanta is Atlanta and you either like big cities or you don't. I love the HOV lane on I-75 through the city, as it also allows motorcycles and it cuts down the log jam of traffic. I've visited Atlanta and its suburbs in a previous life, a friend lived in a brick house in a leafy suburban street and I got a tour of the city. It is everything a city should be and if you like that sort of thing it will do nicely I'm sure, modern and sophisticated and full of energy. My wife and I had a goal which was annoying while we were stuck in traffic but I got my wife to the classroom with twenty minutes to spare. Her iPhone GPS and my driving- a fearsome urban combination!

The Viking school is an offshoot of a corporation that makes kitchen equipment apparently and they have schools all over the place. We actually got the idea from a travel magazine and my wife was very enthusiastic so this stop in Atlanta was our final goal. I dropped her off and being as how I am the bottle washer in our family, and kitchen ant killer, Cheyenne and I buggered off to find dinner and the La Quinta which my phone said was twenty minutes away. Far by Key West standards, close in Atlanta, a city where even cyclists apparently wait patiently (and insanely) in line...

The traffic jam had one good outcome. While stopped I got a text message asking if I was interested in overtime...anyway we got into conversation among the night dispatchers and when he learned where I was, Fred who knows everything gastronomical, had a dinner suggestion. He claimed they had the best chicken and pancakes in the South....so when my phone told me they were but ten minutes away what could I do?

Gladys Knight & Ron's Chicken and Waffles Restaurant Downtown Atlanta Famous Southern Soul Food Restaurant Open Late is quite a mouthful, but this stop filled a cultural void for me. I'd never heard of the soul singer and certainly I had no idea she liked chicken and waffles, the relatively new food fad. Many others apparently have heard of the place and they lined up to get in. Cheyenne ended up in the line of photography fire.

I don't know if I was there early or what but there was no line to speak of and they promised my food in ten minutes, which gave me time to walk Cheyenne round the block. Apparently at popular times the wait can last two hours, and call me shallow but I think that's insane to wait for food that long.

The food was fine but there's only so much you can do with the ingredients. I once suggested to my wife we make chicken and waffles my way, my first culinary suggestion to my wife who likes to cook. I said lets buy some Dions chicken and get some frozen waffles as a) we don't have a waffle maker and b) waffles are pretty much waffles outside of Belgium (I guess). And you know what? They didn't taste like these chicken wings fried in cornmeal (I think that's what they were), but we did fine with "my" waffles and chicken at home in the Keys. The hunt, as in so many things, was the fun in Atlanta and I enjoyed tracking the place down. My other alternative was a solo dinner with a sandwich from Publix next to the hotel.

I don't habitually travel with a weapon, who does? And my pants weren't sagging so food pick up went uneventfully. The parking instructions were too complicated for me so I parked on the street.

For Cheyenne dinner was just another opportunity to check out the scene which she did.

Meanwhile back at the Viking cooking school my wife was studying how to deal with fish. Cooking Classes Atlanta | Cooking Classes Nashville | Viking To Go

She sent me this picture remarking how some husbands were attending class with their wives. Hmm, I know I don't have the patience to cook but I do enjoy washing up.

Apparently the class was worth it. Of course the food was not allowed to leave the premises, liability or one of those obscure corporate lines of reasoning, so we can only guess how the students did. It looked pretty good to me and she enjoyed it while she learned some tricks new to her.

A stray Atlanta cat. Not impressed by Cheyenne. I wish I had a home for every animal.

But this is the only one I get to torture this time around. She was ready to be done with the car.

We got home close to midnight, driving the Keys when all the good tourists were tucked up in bars drinking, or in bed asleep, leaving Ighway One wide open. It was a thirteen hour day but well worth it to avoid the weekend jams on the only reading the Keys. A fitting end to an excellent road trip.

 

Posted with Blogsy