Truman Annex

I was in Key West yesterday without my shadow and so I went o see the Truman Annex, Key West's gated community. As you can see it prides itself on not being part of the Conch Republic:

The guard hut on Southard Street acts as a symbol of apartness during the day and no stops are required as there is no one inside.

This was the reason for my visit in the absence of Cheyenne:

However it's only ragamuffin visiting dogs that are banned from the sterile delights of Truman Annex.

The story goes that the man hi developed these 17 acres first came to Key West from New England and lived rough, as many have. He went on to bid on the Navy property being handed to civilian use as the Navy presence in Key West shrank. He went bust irst time around they say but rallied and pulled together the creation of a community apart "in the style of" Key West.

Apart behind fences and gates and guard huts.

The Key West style is pretty obvious...

...white paint, peaked roofs...

...white picket fences and palm trees.

to me it looks like Legoland, a version of Key West's Old Town for people who can't handle the real thing.

There is no smell of stale beer, no passed out paralytics lying in their own vomit on the sidewalks and no shop clerks soliciting you to buy dust catchers for fie' dolla'.

Okay, here's a test. Is this the real Key West, or a gated facsimile in the "Key West style?"

Some people say these homes are not well built but this place has been chugging long for years now and sure there re some signs of wear and tear but I think the mumblings are not spoken in the spirit of reality.

Truman Annex is effectively amaze of identical streets and lanes, and unlike the rest of the city this enclave went to court and secured the right to allow short term rentals (less than 28 days) without the property owner purchasing a city permit. This debate pitted permanent residents against future residents who wanted to make some rental income in the meantime and the outcome is in my opinion one more negative about a community that is neat and sterile set in a larger community that is messy yet vibrant and complex and chaotic.

The streets of the Annex make an attempt to act as continuations of the streets outside, beyond the gates. Above we see Noah invoked, not he of the Ark, but he who is the developer's son...as it happens. Below Fleming Street passes through an iron gate at the U S Post Office.

It takes an army of workers to keep the grass short, the hedges trimmed and the coconut palms respectful.

Beyond the fence lies the rough grass of the park-to-be at Truman Waterfront. The city has agreed to follow through on a promise to put an old folk's home on six acres on the other side of the fence, between the private community and the harbor. There have been protests from people across Key West who want all 34 former Navy acres to become a manicured park but the retirement home now has the official go ahead.

The Truman Annex Master Property Owners' Association which runs the Annex took on the city a few years ago and proposed closing the gates on Southard Street. The city commission folded like a cheap suit giving up its rights to a public street but the Navy intervened and said slowly and clearly that they needed Southard Street to stay open 24 hours a day to service their waterfront base. The new Berlin Wall under construction at the gate was torn down promptly without a peep from the TAMPOA bullies. I never did expect them to assert their second amendment rights and show up armed with popguns to take on the largest military in the world but it might have been fun to watch!

The Annex's history has a few markers to remind the observant of the storied past.

Key West - The Weatherstation Inn above, gives you a chance to taste the Annex without commitment. and sleep not too far from the biggest attraction in this part of town, the Southernmost White House.

It's been years since I took the tour but it was memorable and I highly recommend it. Followers of this blog know I love history, and unlike the myths of piracy the Harry Truman stories about Key West are very real and beautifully told.

He used to stroll the streets of Key West accompanied by one very discreet Secret Service agent. He met citizens, shook hands and hung out in Key West totally unmolested. What a terrible nation we are become where we segregate the President as though a Monarch.

The Truman Little White House has events and regularly invites descendants of the Great Man to speak in Key West. I have no memories of my grandfather and had he been a President I am not sure what I could add to the recorded history of his life but the Truman grandchildren keep showing up and smile dutifully for the newspaper. These chickens are the only ones I saw polluting the grounds of the Annex but they were on Truman's hallowed ground so I suppose they got away with it.

There are a few benches near the Westin entrance on Front Street.

And the business og making money is never far away.

Walking tour anyone? Dog-free of course!

And there it is, Truman Annex.

 

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Meeting Jeffrey

I suck at taking pictures of people and I can only tell you SingingtoJeffreysTune doesn't look at all like this. But I did actually get to meet him in Fort Myers yesterday.

I think he has been following my blog as long as anyone and how silly is it we've never met? Done that, got the photo and my wife was there to witness the encounter in Southwest Florida.

We talked a good long while over a slow lunch so when it was time to go back to the blessed Florida Keys it was afternoon and the light over the Everglades was lovely. Check out those clouds. It was hot and dry and windy in the Everglades yesterday on the birthday in 1890 of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the woman who write so passionately about this area that she is credited with saving it from total destruction. Florida is a state that has only slowly one to terms with the importance and beauty of its peculiar geography.

Jeffrey and I were talking about being slightly mentally deformed; he writes code for a living, I answer 911 calls. We talk to much and too fast and we understand each other perfectly. The world shrank, my wife was a spectator and my dig was asleep in the car in the air conditioning. At the Micosukee Service Plaza on I-75 she sank her forelegs into a retention pond and drank deep. No alligators appeared and she drank deeply.

Jeffrey wanted to meet Cheyenne, the dog of a million photos on this page but all she could think as she shook herself and descended from her air conditioned chariot was how bloody hot Fort Myers was of a Spring afternoon. 91 degrees actually. She posed for a picture and got back into our cool breezy Ford Fusion to escape the heat.

We stopped for a pee at the Indian service area off the freeway in the middle of the Everglades. It was hit and dry but it was break from the four lanes she malls of the congested I-75 corridor we had left behind on the coast.

The Miccosukee are a branch of the Seminoles who retreated to southFlorida swamps in the19th century along with a few runaway slaves to make a life away from white people and their intrusions. They have extra-territorial lands next to the Seminoles in the middle of the state.

We white transgressors pay fullump price out here as we stand and listen to the wind. I love this part of Florida as flat and uninteresting as it looks when you first see it. It is wilderness, hot and buggy and remote.

They live in villages behind privacy fences and they build tiki huts with palm fronds tightly woven as roofs.

We were but two hours from Jeffrey and civilization but we were a world away.

I miss you already, Parker's Dad, with the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of parenthood.

And no, I still cannot read computer code.

 

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Key West Real And Unreal

Let me say up front a friend invited me to go with him to the inaugural Marathon Race on the Cow Key Bridge but I got my head down on a project and I didn't go and I regret it bitterly. I met some participants in Key West's best event, the world's first and only Zero K foot race after the event and they had a great time? Bugger me! This photo from the web shows the course, a harrowing quarter mile (maybe) across the only bridge connecting Key West to Stock Island. I'd liked to have strolled it to raise awareness of awareness. There is so much awareness-raising going on I figure we need a guide to increase awareness of awareness. Besides I am quite well aware of breast cancer and all that stuff.

That was the fun Key West moment, a "run" from nowhere to nowhere in costume if you preferred. Last week the law in this county and in this country took a beating and I did too. Judge Audlin ruled that Peary Court was Navy property when patently it's not, and by so ruling he deprived Monroe County of a Eleven million dollars in Back Taxes. Let me explain: Peary Court has always been Navy property though for a while it was abandoned and became an impromptu city park with trees, grass and a softball field.

                              

I liked the movie and I liked the brief night softball scene not least because a friend of mine was one of the crowd during filming, but I remember using Peary Court as a shortcut from my informal dinghy landing at Garrison Bight to get to Southard or Fleming for my walk downtown. When the Navy decided to turn it into housing activists got pissed saying the Navy had in need of the housing and protests followed. To no avail, the housing was built and has now been abandoned as predicted. New Navy homes are being built on the Fleming Key Navy Base well away from civilians. The homes on Peary Court were opened to civilians and the guards opened the gates to all. But the operator of the housing Balfour-Beatty paid zero taxes to Monroe County which find not fit well with the Tax Collector who sued.

Fat lot of good that did. The judge decided that because the Navy built the facility and directed the rental program the housing was "military" even after civilians like me were invited to rent homes at Peary Court. To me that spells a change of status and I hope the County Tax Collector dues to get the property taxes owing. The issue covers only the past few years because now there is no doubt this is civilian property as a whole new housing project is planned for the land. However those eleven million dollars are burning local officials and thru want them rightfully.

Judge Audlin find me no favors this past week. I had embarked on a rather quixotic civil suit to prove that the recent mortgage fiasco across the country was the fault of the too big to fail. I was inspired by this video of Senator Elizabeth Warren EMBARRASSES Bank Regulators At First Hearing! - YouTube . I lost, Judge Audlin decided I was wrong and I lost. Buggered if I know if I will appeal. Judge Audlin isn't my favorite local just at the minute. Oh well, I doubt he cares.

Civilian occupied Peary Court

On a rather more important note the US Supreme Court has ruled that anyone can give as much as they want to elect legislators. The reality is that the financing of elections has been corrupted since the beginning of time and every law that is designed to prevent corruption gets circumvented. But now the corruption by and power of the wealthy is in your face. We are peasants and like me versus Wells Fargo life without money in the US today is now officially life without justice. In this YouTube Clip Marlon Brando plays a South African lawyer during the apartheid ("apartness") years of sanctioned racial discrimination and his comment on the relationship between The Law and Justice in the movie A Dry White Season sums up for me the relationship today in the US between the rich and powerful and The Rest of Us:

http://youtu.be/-QSmtrx50oo

Brando's character says The Law and Justice are merely distant cousins in most legal systems but in apartheid South Africa they "aren't even on speaking terms." Its a movie worth seeing in its own right but I don't much like what this US Supreme Court is doing to the conversation between the Law and Justice in the US. And when I say "United States" I include unfortunately my beloved Conch Republic.

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From The Archives: Tropic Cinema

The newspaper notes this weekend is the tenth anniversary of the Tropic Cinema on Eaton Street. I wrote this essay five years ago. Changes were coming to the Tropic and and the future looked more mainstream and less experimental, as seen from the outside. I've been through enough radio non-profits to know how groups are born then mature, and change and go through middle age before they tend to wither and fade. Currently the Tropic is in middle age, doing well, and while they don't allow pets anymore (revolution!) they do continue to make money selling wine and beer. Some few things have changed over the past five years, of course but the Tropic stands and seems to be doing well enough, now with four screens, to have a secure future. At least until the lease runs out in a couple of decades! Long enough for me. Especially when I look back to the tentative beginnings of an Art Movie scene in Key West with screenings in a coffee shop on Caroline and at the San Carlos on Duval. I enjoyed the ornate former Cuban Consulate as a movie theater and was slightly sad when we attended the last screening before the brand new purpose built theater opened all three screens. Now of course the Tropic is my refuge. Like this, more or less given the passage of time since 2009 when I first published this essay:

                                                      

To me the Tropic Cinema is one of the defining characteristics that make Key West civilized. I am a fan of Voltaire Books a few blocks up the street, and I don't mind at all that Key West has it's own symphony orchestra, but the Tropic makes this a civilized town in which to live.

                                                   

The communal experience of being in a large room, in the dark watching a greater-than-life-sized story unfold is in danger of extinction. I understand the seductive value of DVDs and movies seen in the comfort of home, but to be swept up into the plot one needs the sense of immersion that only a large screen can offer...

                                                   

The Tropic Cinema is on the four hundred block of Eaton Street, between Whitehead and Duval, more or less equidistant from St Paul's Cathedral and the main Post Office, symbolic perhaps of the Art house theater's role part way between commercial enterprise and spiritual retreat.

                                                

The theater is a not-for-profit organization founded at the end of the last century to bring classic movies to Key West. It started out using borrowed space in art galleries and the splendid San Carlos theater whose Cuban managers seemed to be rather bemused sometimes by the films they showed in their baroque building. I loved going to the movies at the San Carlos, they breathed life into the former Cuban consulate on Duval Street, at least for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night shows of the nascent Key West Film Society.

                                                          

The society got a 35-year lease on the Eaton street property and started building a modern three screen theater for $1.2 million dollars in 2003. Jean Carper an anti-aging nutrition author has apparently made a fortune peddling her diet advice and put up $200,000 of the cash and got to name the main screening room in honor of her late mother:

                                                

Natella Carper had a penchant for the flickers apparently and now she has her name in red neon like a marquee. But the Tropic is growing despite the parlous financial times we live in and there are plans to open a fourth, 48 seat screening room as an addition to the current theater:

                                                       

The Tropic is a membership organization and members get discount rates ($6 versus $9 to see a movie) and various invitations to special events. My wife and I have been members since early on but we decided a while back to upgrade our membership to $600 a year which gives us both free access to the movies year round. I guess the idea that we might watch a movie a week for an entire year seems a lot and it probably is, but the real idea is to support the society.We've always viewed the Tropic not only as a source of decent quality films but as a downtown refuge, a place to hangout in, and that got difficult over the past year when the Board hired staff members who viewed the Tropic as purely a business. We dropped out. New management, a more focused Board and we are back and happy to be in the theater again. Lori a dear friend has been promoted to manager and she has restored the theater to a convivial place to gather:

The theater boasts lots of movie memorabilia in the lobby, which these days is a bit truncated by the new screening room construction:

                                           

The society offers the usual lines of clothing......DVDs

                                            

They also show DVDs in the lobby to keep up the ambiance

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And the place is ankle deep in posters and the like:

They have left up one sign from the Commissars of the Ancien Regime, but it's not as draconian as it might first appear. The Regal in Searstown used to have a policy of not allowing bags, to avoid bombs going off in the theater, they said, but the tropic is a different kind of theater:

                                          

I like to spend money at the concession stand, for two reasons. One is I am supporting my preferred cultural outlet and the other is that they have an astonishing variety of food, with candies priced at a buck and a medium soda for just three dollars, so it's no great hardship to spend a little money here.

                                          

Zabar's Coffee is, I am reliably informed, a well know coffee in New York, and i like it well enough. Some times one needs something a little stronger at the movies:

New Yorkers have their coffee at the Tropic, Mid-Westerners get their beef:

                                          

The rest of us get dollar Snickers and Key Lime Pie on a stick for a few dollars more:

                                          

Not forgetting popcorn for all:

And now dogs are allowed back into the Tropic. The problem of dog ownership and going to the movies can get onerous in South Florida. It's hard to find a cool spot to park the car, cool enough to leave a dog inside in the summer if you live out of town. Plus it tends to rain without warning and leaving the windows open in summer guarantees a soaked interior. Much better to be able to bring the dog with you to the movies:

                                           

From the early days of the film society with Michael Shields, the future has always been one of making enough money to keep going and building on what he started the Tropic seems to be doing well. There are dozens of creative ways to raise money and named plaques are everywhere in the theater. I'd have happily paid $250 to get my name here had I thought of it and had my wife not thought me mad to want to stick my name above a urinal

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there are theater seats still available for plaques I believe. Management is also getting to show more mainstream films, movies that draw in patrons not devoted to movies with subtitles. The new Star Trek movie showed at the Tropic and the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard religious thriller Angels and Demons is also getting an airing at the Tropic.

Unlike the Regal this is an adult theater where using cell phones and talking in the movies really is frowned on. All that and a glass of wine too.

A great place to hang out. I'm glad the Tropic Cinema is going from strength to strength.

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Tourist Town

Key West Bight one fine Spring Morning.

Key West the picture postcard, sun reflecting off still waters.

Tourists negotiating a ride on those waters...

They say owners end up looking like their dogs...

...and I know I do.

 

I saw this woman cleaning a life ring off a charter boat:

I wanted to enquire whether drowning patrons would prefer to be flinging to a nicely polished flotation device? The question sounded flippant even in my head, so I refrained.

One more new luxury resort is making progress on the waterfront next to Schooner Wharf Bar. I wonder how the guests will like the music from across the lane all day and late at night. I see lawsuits and bitter recriminations in the future. Tourists like their towns just so.

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