Fantasizing Key West

I really quite liked this Automated Teller Machine when I strolled by. How perfect I thought: "Welcome To Key West; Get Cash." That about sums it up really.

Not true, there are bargains if you know where to look and knowing where to look depends in large measure on knowing who to point you to, in order to look in the right place. Luckily I am overloaded with spare pink Crocs at the moment. I'm not sure why they make them in men's sizes as they are so hard to sell they practically give them away, lucky me.

An incautious scooter renter managed to get park and get a ticket, $25 or even $35 depending on the mistake...This in a town where free parking for motorcycles and scooters is everywhere. Welcome to Key West, get cash. Pay off the little white slip of paper wedged into the speedometer.

I missed the Fantasy Fest party last weekend when I was working. Had I not been working I'd probably have missed it anyway. The idea is to raise money for assorted events leading up to Fantasy Fest week and whichever people get the most money become King and Queen. Monies raised go to AIDS Help which gives the whole Nudity Fest a veneer of respectability. Fantasy Fest is another of those bones of contention in a town that loves a drag down debate from time to time. The problem for Fantasy Fest opponents is that the grotesque dress down show brings in tons of money and in Key West money always talks. Besides which, looking at the pictures in the paper Fantasy Fest remains firmly in the hands and for the entertainment of a mostly older crowd. Which leads the ageists in our midst to assume that older people shouldn't strip however as usual the older people have the money and the buff young things don't. This means there is a natural, progressive and apparently unstoppable drive to see older participants in the Fantasy Fest week at the end of October.

This year the Fantasy Fest Grand Parade falls directly on Halloween and the city wants families to take trick or treating outings to the night of All Saints, November 1st. That suggestion has raised the predictably combative opponents and once again crass nude commercialism butts heads with the families of Key West. I am no great fan of Fantasy Fest but to me it's just another messed up week(end) similar to but more intense than Lobster Fest, Bike Week,Mini Season, and whatever other money spinning events they have conspired to create. For a town that used to die, economically, every summer, Key West has got the money flow figured out these days.

Now it is September and the seven weeks between now and Fantasy Fest will fly by before people start to pour in, in droves. Everything now starts to take on the calendar divide of "before" and "after" the Grand Event. And the last week of October will be a week when not much gets done in Key West when the city pretty much gives up trying to function. In a way its a rather nice evocation of big local holidays in the medieval past when cities would shut up shop to celebrate a patron saint or some such local festivity. The fact that Key West in the Age of Internet is willing to shut down for a few days, totally ignoring the outside world, is rather quaint I find. I wish it wasn't to honor people getting shit faced, taking their clothes off and acting stupid, but there it is. We must make the most of it and commiserate the end of Daylight time and the start of short winter days and no more swimming. Winter comes after Fantasy Fest.

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Tomorrow's essay will explain in detail my business project which is supposed to come to market, fingers crossed, by Thanksgiving. I apologize for the delay and the toll it has taken on my ability to devote the full measure of my attention to this page. There has been a reason for that and I believe it will prove to have been worthwhile. Fingers crossed, as always.

Posted with Blogsy

Summer Sunday

I like this picture I took in the Spring. I was hunting for a geocache (not found) on Washington Street, so I figured I would re-post it to remind myself of the beauty of summer shadows and light.

Cheyenne On Niles Road

Weather watching, fresh southerly breezes, no mosquitoes, no humidity, perfect morning to play with the camera while the dog walked.

 A thick gray rainstorm blowing over Cudjoe, hanging like a curtain over mangroves and water.

616 Eaton Street

I took this picture a while back of a nice old tumbledown house on a large patch of land half a block off Simonton Street. I actually have a  number of images of this picturesque heap in my archives, one notably from several years ago announcing the building for sale for the low, low price of four million dollars. A price that was not entirely realistic apparently, even in this crazy town, as a new owner has surfaced and remarked in the paper that they paid a mere $1,850,000 - did I mention this town has some crazy real estate prices?

The reason the new owners are in the paper is not because they paid a preposterous sum of money for an uninhabitable wreck- that happens all the time in Key West- rather because they have plans to get the full measure of their money's worth for this place. Their plans for the new structure to occupy the lot as so expansive as to be ludicrous in the real world, but the theme of this essay is becoming, accidentally I might add, the mad mad mad world of housing in Key West. Check out this side view of what is purportedly the future of this lot. 

Neighbors in this corner of architecturally sensitive Old Town Key West are somewhat taken aback by a plan that calls for a home that appears to be styled in the manner of a guest house or exclusive hotel, as some of the less charitably minded neighbors suspect is the ultimate goal of this monument to bad taste. the old 5,000 square foot wreck is supposed to be the frontispiece for a 6,000 square foot addition in the rear - no really- that will include a walkway between the two homes, with two swimming pools and 1200 square feet of covered porches. The mind boggles. But what makes it even more boggling is the fact that the Historic Architecture Review Commission, the guardians of preserving Old Town's character, bent right over and gave this thing their seal of approval. Which has really annoyed some people who can't get storm windows or white roofs approved for their Old Town homes. They do sort of have a point, don't you think?

The proud new owners didn't help their case along with a rather tart comment in the paper to the effect that they didn't pay that much money for all that land to grow vegetables. Which may very well be true but a large house, a nice swimming pool and some superb tropical shrubbery could have done the job were one less ambitious, with perhaps a modest guest house and garden shed to round out the compound. The thing is I rather imagine the city will yield - it usually does- and make some mumbling noises and get a couple of minor concessions and one more nail will be planted in the coffin of Key West's urban character. Might as well build it and hang a CVS sign on the front I suppose.

It's not impossible to buy an old structure and redo it with dignity, and no doubt a lot of money. Check Bonnie Albury's old place on Southard Street. The former school teacher died and her beloved home was  put up for sale, not surprisingly really as it is a giant structure on Southard Street:

 This place was restored to look like this:

Is that an impossible example to follow?

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And this week's podcast on Travel and Safety we feature a rather fun interview with a young enthusiastic Australian comedian. Take none of it too seriously but enjoy his take on the crazy world he has come to enjoy in America, for the first time. A very confusing place it turns out!

Blimp Road On Fire

Cheyenne is patiently waiting out summer heat and humidity, refusing to spend much time outdoors between sunrise and sunset. So when I offered her an early evening walk I wasn't surprised when she refused to follow me out of the door. However a couple  of hours later she came to me on the deck and stuck her snout between me and the Smithsonian (Preserving Pompeii) and told me in no uncertain terms she was ready to face the outside world, despite the persistent humidity and lingering heat. Just as well she wanted to go. I planned to take her to the ramp at the end of Blimp Road, one of her current favorite walks, but I stopped halfway at a break in the mangroves and watched the spectacle until my unpredictable dog got bored and steered me back to the car. All pictures using the hand held iPhone with Camera+ app, unretouched and taken more or  less in a 360 degree circle.

Taco Hell

There are certain things, after all these years that escape me about this town. Some people tell me the shabby chic is part of the charm of Key West but  I disagree. I think maintaining the infrastructure is never a bad idea  and if that involves filling the cracks and applying a lick of paint so much the better. Personally I'm not bothered but it surprises me that visitors aren't much bothered either. They come in droves. I suspect there is the New Orleans factor at work here, the slightly seedy, not really dangerous, down-at-heel charm of an eccentric town that is unlike where you came from. I get it.  

That aesthetic is getting a  work over as more and more uninteresting chain stores move in and eccentric local stores move out. The entire retail experience is changing anyway as Amazon and package delivery is replacing store fronts. Life in Key West revolves around Internet access and online life. Yet some physical shopping will still be required I suppose. I hope. Shopping as either life saving intervention or as recreation perhaps. Bigger brighter more comprehensive big box stores coming soon!

And yet life down here is honestly made so much better by the Web...I love my daily access to the world's newspapers, my ability to store and read numerous books on my phone, the connection of cheap telephones, Skype and instant photo sharing and messaging. It's a huge paradox to me that I like the isolation of life nestled in small islands surrounded by warm water, yet I crave the electronic connection that keeps me in touch, from a safe distance, with the world around. My sister sent me an email describing an outdoor dinner her village organized in Italy last week. I found a picture on Facebook, not a very good picture, and sent it to her: this one? I asked. Yet for all the connectivity my life here is as alien to her as it would have been in the age of the telegraph and steam engine. Connection is made by contact, not electronically.

My start up company is starting up without direct contact with the engineering company that is building the widget in Los Angeles. VezTek, who I have never met, says the completion date should be early to mid-October. The sales manager is in San Francisco, the marketing company is in Brooklyn and my Technology partner is in Southwest Florida. How the hell do you start a company scattered like that? Easy it turns out with modern technology. And yet I wake up on a small island on a distant dead end street as far removed from the hustle and bustle as it is possible to be without actually cutting off the road connection. 

I cannot explain it but Key West has been in a total uproar over the opening of Taco Bell. It seems the last franchise actually managed to go bust in 2009,but so far this lot could only go bust by running out of food which they managed to do this last weekend. And yet the line to eat at Taco Bell keeps spilling over into the main road day and night. Speaking to those who have braved the impatient crowds lined up for cheap fast food the inside of the restaurant only has one operating cashier so the lines in the drive through can be as long as the lines inside. It's as though some form of collective madness has rained down on Key West. I understand the cheap food dilemma in a town where everything is expensive but this peculiar form of worship heaped upon a fast food joint is decidedly odd. Next week they promise to open for breakfast and I cannot imagine the chaos that will ensue. In other countries people scuffle to make a political point or to fend off starvation. Here they have come to blows to prevent their neighbors taking cuts to get ahead in the line for dollar tacos.

This is the year of Taco Bell, next year it will be Walmart's turn to upend shopping in the Lower Keys. We too deserve cheap is the Conch mantra, which leads those of us who came here to escape bland uniformity to wonder what happens next. At least they can't buy and bottle the weather which remains perfect no matter what we do down here.