Our Boulevard Nightmare

 

When I come out of work in the evening I see this, a row of cars coming at me almost on the same side of the road as the lane I want to take outbound.

At the first traffic light, at First Street appropriately enough, the Boulevard becomes one way inbound, towards Duval Street from distant Stock Island. It used to be, in the distant past a four lane road, two in, two out. It's been a year and I can hardly remember what it was like when you could come and go more or less as you pleased on North Roosevelt Boulevard, "The Boulevard" to locals. On days when snowbirds were crowding the street on the way out of town you could take Flagler or South Roosevelt and take a slightly slower route but with far less traffic. Nowadays outbound traffic is forced onto those roads and they can get jammed easily in the afternoon rush hour. On a small island one jammed street has rippling repercussions.

All of which is true and annoying, especially for people who work conventional nine to five jobs and find themselves jammed on the streets morning and evening together. However the really big problem is for the businesses which line this formerly lucrative street and now report a drop in business so precipitate many of them fear imminent bankruptcy.

From my perspective it doesn't say much about Key West shoppers, if the mere closure of one direction of the Boulevard persuades them to stay away from local stores. The whole one way loop is perhaps two miles long... And the merchants have been begging for business for a long time now, the whole year the road has been torn up in fact.

The harsh fact is that in the grand scheme of things Key West doesn't amount to a hill of beans and that fact comes as a surprise to of us who live here. When the state put this forty five million dollar job out to bid (North Roosevelt is US Highway One, not just a city street) it went a company That as usual offered the low bid and this was just one small project in their pile. So it got on the back burner and no progress has been made. It doesn't matter to the big shots that our main street looks like this with no change in sight:

The Spottswood family decided to renovate their string of hotels and restaurants from the Triangle where the road comes into the city to the former Travel Lodge which is now the Bayside Inn next to the GM dealer. I am told they gave their employees three months severance which was decent and it makes sense for the businesses to get a fresh look in time for a fresh street. The newspaper said some 500 rooms have been lost temporarily.

So our state representative, she of the vacuous smile and shiny forehead, organized a meeting and Important People came to Key West, always an attractive business destination, and made lots of noise about how sorry they were things we're going so slowly etc...and suddenly workers appeared in the muddy trench and started wandering around acting busy. Here they are finally hammering a new seawall into place. It's only been a year since they started the job...

With all this whining and moaning city commissioners decided they had to do something so they authorized night work and more controversially agreed to proposals to turn portions of the Boulevard into two way traffic October 15th. The idea is that two way traffic will encourage shopping. Personally I have some reservations about this idea.

I'm not certain two way traffic flow will make the entrance to businesses smoother and more appealing. Dust, mud and broken asphalt is reportedly putting people off so my solution would be to work day and night to finish the job and replace everything and restore normal status before we get our winter traffic jam in a few short months.

As you can see the contractor has decided too few is still better than too many hands to make light work.

I know this: when the one way flow was instituted confused drivers, and this is a tourist town filled with outsiders driving, went the wrong way on a clearly marked one way construction zone. What will happen when the flows are changed is anyone's guess. I very much doubt I will be motorcycling here after the change, not unless I get a death wish.

I saw this sign outside Banana Bay Resort and the arrow is pointing the wrong way. Thats encouraging, take a walk down Hilton Haven Road, a dead end.

For a while there the deadline had slipped to the Fall of 2014, but after the Big Cheese Gathering they promised the contractor would get back on deadline and by July next year all will be finished. Fat chance I say. It'll take more than a garden mower to finish this job.

Supposedly when this is is finished the Boulevard won't flood after a rainstorm. Currently the left lane floods after a brief squall which pushes our fearful giant SUV pilots into the sole remaining dry lane near the crown of the road. What they will do when that is their outbound lane I don't know. Put two inches of water on a roadway and everyone panics so I see a lot of panic in the immediate future. Whether that will help shopping I don't know.

They say that the construction includes building storm drains to relieve flooding so the roadway should stay dry when the work is done. Supposedly there will be median flower beds with turn lanes and a new traffic light at Searstown. I have to admit I love the inbound lanes as they are now because it's a very direct route to my job next to Bayview Park. Removing some traffic lights and dealing with reduced cross traffic makes for a shorter journey for me. I dread the return of regular traffic lights as they are so incredibly slow to change. In order to avoid sitting for minutes at an empty intersection a lot of people prefer to run red lights and instead of dealing with that, the powers that be think that adding red light camera is he solution. Nope, the answer is to install traffic sensitive traffic lights. Oh well, that'll be the day.

I guess that as usual I'll stand on the sidelines and see what happens. Hope for the best and expect...the best.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Cruise Ship Central

The date of the referendum draws near, barely a month away and the terms of the debate seem to be set in stone. Business interests led by the Chamber of Commerce want a study to consider the impacts of widening the ship channel into Key West. Everyone else says no thanks. "Everyone" is of course a exaggeration but that's what opponents would limit think. The truth will become apparent October First when the vote is taken.

Cruise ship passengers land at the Outer Mole which the Navy ceded to the city while retaining control of the waters inside the basin. Those passengers come into the city on trolleys contracted for half a million dollars a year from Historic Tours. The bulk of the rest land at the Westin Pier and the city gets a much smaller share of those landing fees. A very small number come to Key West on cruise ships small enough to park at Mallory Square, block the western view and piss off the vendors who rent space to make their sales during the sunset celebrations.

All of them want to visit the bar area of Duval Street and check out the museums and attractions behind Mallory Square and do a little dust catcher shopping.

Merchants further afield express resentment they don't get the shoppers and the money off the cruise ships even as Loca residents complain about the crowds that descend off the ship in their thousands. It's a jumble of competing and conflicted interests.

I took a cruise ship once for a week with my wife and it wasn't a terrible experience. Te ship managed not to feel crowded and though we didn't gamble or watch stage shows our cabin with balcony was comfortable, room service was great and the adult pool was very pleasant. Of all our stops in Mexico, Grand Cayman and Jamaica, Key West was the most lively and interesting to me, as I struggled to imagine myself a visitor to my own base of operations.

The city makes millions off the visitors and shipping fees yet the numbers are declining, somewhere around 850,000 cruise ship tourists a year. Business people fear that if Key West doesn't learn to accommodate ships that carry six thousand passengers each, double the current complement, Key West will lose more traffic and more revenue. Channel Widening, Key West, Feasibility, Cruise ship, Environment, Dredging

The opponents say widening the channel will be a never ending job and the silt from the operation will kill the coral, while silt moved by the movement of the giant ships will only add to the problem. They say a city of 23,000 can't comfortably manage 6,000 passengers from two concurrently visiting ships, but double that with two giant ships and the city will be overwhelmed. Key West's moribund environmental organizations finally figured out whe they stood on the issue and whispered their very reasonable opposition. Dredging the Key West Channel for Larger Cruise Ships: Referendum on the Horizon | Last Stand Puts fire in your belly doesn't it?

Proponents of land based tourism argue cruise ship passengers degrade the experience and Key West will lose visitors who seek an exclusive tropical vacation in the city. Proponents of channel widening say cruise ship visitors whet their appetite for Key West and come back to stay after visiting off a ship.

Proponents of the study say only that it's a study, opponents argue the study will pave the way for inevitable dredging to widen the channel. The latest argument now focuses on National Marine Sanctuary rules and the lawyers in the crowd now argue that dredging a new channel is specifically outlawed and can only get Federal permission by act of Congress that overrides sanctuary rules. That has been a tough nut to overcome but I have no doubt the will be plenty of argument over that either way the vote goes.

I don't see the vote as final either way. Thee is too much money and emotion at stake for either side to treat this referendum as anything other than merely an opening salvo in a prolonged siege.

I am not attracted to this stuff, which comes to life by day and sees thousands of people shuffling around looking for mass produced souvenirs.

I have to say I chose deliberately to come in the eary hours to treat the space as mine own.

Mine and Cheyenne's of course.

Key West The Newspaper now has an Internet only presence advertised by these rather clever billboards around town. Cruise ships dominated the headlines. The Blue Paper | Key West The Newspaper

Even the current crop of "small" ships dominate the city skyline. You can see their distinctive smoke stacks across the city.

I wonder what this scene would look like with a ship capable of carrying six thousand passengers?

Cheyenne likes walking Mallory Square but in the heat of summer, even a modestly warm summer like this one she only has so much energy, and the cool bricks make a pleasant spot for to rest up. She wasn't actually locked behind a fence. I just made it look that way.

I took a quick look at the forthcoming season of plays at the Waterfront Playhouse but I don't think they'll be seeing me at this collection of over the top musical nonsense. I hae to hope the Red Barn puts on a few dramas this winter to keep me amused.

Happily I live in the county and I won't vote on the referendum. My interest is that my employer stay solvent and keeps paying me...but I have to wonder why our business leaders feel that selling the city for a bowl of cruise ship pottage is the only way the city's economy can flourish.

Posted with Blogsy

Pez Heads

It has occurred to me that I have neglected the Pez Garden. Like so many people who live around here I pay it lip service, I walk by on my way to the theater, or to photograph something more interesting at Mallory Square, or to drink rum at El Meson...but stopping to read the plaques? Moi? Hardly. And its been my loss. This was the only head I saw actually smiling, and with good reason it turns out.

Amid the collection of heads there are of course the heads of the famous, the well known or notorious depending on your point of view. But these heads, two among dozens, celebrate relative obscurity combined with human decency. I like them. Joe Pearlman was a leader of the Jewish community, and a leading light of Florida's oldest synagogue which he held together through the Depression, a time that almost wiped out Key West completely.

This next one reeks of obscurantism. A strong single woman with a feminist agenda and depicted with a mannish hat? Would it be impolite to suggest she was a lesbian before her time? I suggest it not in the spirit of criticism, but with the sadness that comes from acknowledging the impossibility of her being able to come out if indeed that was what she was, and it seems likely.

Whatever sexual preference she was born with, she lived a full life and did her part to help young women in her town. It's a splendid biography cut short by an early death.

I'm going to go back and collect more heads. There's lots to see:
Key West Diary: Pez Garden

Posted with Blogsy

Key West 4am

I went to bed early exhausted by my bizarre alarm clock driven lifestyle and then, as the Gods had chosen to use me as the butt for their own inscrutable joke, they woke me up at a decidedly ungodly hour. I had nowhere to go on a Sunday morning while it was still dark and there I was off work for the weekend, and totally irretrievably conscious so I did the only thing a man can do when lying awake at 3:48am staring at the black space where the ceiling should be, thinking about the inscrutable ways of Fate. I took my dog for a walk.

Cheyenne was utterly delighted, after she had shaken herself into full consciousness and was able to appreciate the fact that I was awake and not leaving her behind for once. Such joy could only be rewarded one way.

I took her to Key West, her favorite place to walk and I opened te car door and she hopped out and was lost to me. I put her collar on her, took the leash and my phone/camera and a couple of plastic bags and by the time all that was assembled she was breaking loose toward Truman Avenue. No scent was safe from her enquiring nose.

Let's face it, it was no great hardship to be out in Key West under a pitch black sky, warm air cooled by a gentle breeze that just won't stop blowing this perfect August. There was hardly anyone around now that the bars had closed, forced to close by the four am deadline imposed by the city. The drunks had gone home the workers hadn't got up and it was me and my dog and the odd unlit bicycle and occasional buzzy scooter on the streets. It was all terribly un-respectable being on the streets at that hour.

That being the case we got off the street and I trailed my Labrador into the urban jungle that is Bayview Park. And there I found a monument I hadn't previously noticed. Why? I don't know why I walked past it. Perhaps I had seen it before and not noticed it. Here it is, and I found it interesting because it was dedicated to those who served in Vietnam. And below was the name of one who died in Operation Desert Storm. The poignancy of all this struck home especially hard at a time when yet another overseas war is in the offing as our leaders have now decided that Syria is worth dying for. I didn't believe the Domino Theory then and I don't believe it now. I guess Halliburton is just feeling the pinch with all these Federal cut backs. So off to war we go. Every time.

The joy of walking Key West is to be in a place where nothing is as one expects when walking an American city, crooked houses, narrow lanes and droopy foliage. And then we come across mainstream condos. Weird huh? Pelican Landing has always appealed to me in a funny way, perhaps as a reminder how most people live. I appreciate modern conveniences but I do find modern architecture to be soulless or at least driven to seek eccentricity as a motif for modern buildings. The condo blocks that line Garrison Bight along Eisenhower Drive do a good job of expressing nothing very much. They look out of place here but such structures, and much larger versions line all Florida's coasts.

I always wanted to live in a condo but my wife warned me off them saying my personality wouldn't do well with an owner's association. She's probably right so the fact that they aren't right for me makes we wonder... The perversity of being human.

See, this is the Key West they think of:

Or this, also nicely kept up:

I see pictures but Cheyenne smells smells. It takes a lot out of her running around in the August heat. And it's not that hot at that hour.

We were heading back to the car which we left on Olivia just off White Street and as we ambled along, side by side I heard the sound of a cat purring. Cheyenne heard nothing and kept stumping along. I couldn't believe the cat, it was loud! It was so loud I wondered if it was a piece of jammed machinery, an air conditioner compressor that couldn't compress... or something. I wondered what kind of cat it was, mostly they try to make no noise at all when Cheyenne hoves into view, not purring wildly like a steam engine. I had to investigate. I was a little tentative because I wasn't sure what the hell kind of cat I might have found behind the parked car. It turned out, to my astonishment it wasn't a cat at all. I don't usually shoot pictures with the flash but it was pitch black so I turned on the flash and fired away. This was what I got:

He never even stirred. It wasn't a great picture so I thought about moving in closer for a better view. However on reflection I figured getting a close up shot of a naked sadhu in all his penile glory probably wasn't to anyone's advantage. I left him to his noisy slumbers, gray head propped on his bag and a dried palm frond strategically covering his nether regions. To take our minds off the foregoing let's read a few uplifting bumper stickers.

The next picture puts me in mind of the movie CrissCross (1992 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which if you've seen it you'll maybe know what I mean...

We left the city behind and drove as rapidly as was legal, home to breakfast and then bed for a nap. It was a good morning, perhaps the Gods knew what they were doing when they woke me up, in the dark and set me on the path of pleasing my dog.

Posted with Blogsy