Margaret and Angela

The new sexton's  building at the cemetery is coming along in spanking style. Doric Columns support a roof projecting over an impressive entrance. Never did the cemetery known such elegance in years past.

Across the street Carolyn Gorton Fuller's house is still protected by her mirror wall.  The Citizen still has her particular obituary available for those who want to know more about that home on Angela:

Carolyn Gorton Fuller, aka "the Bottle Wall Lady," passed away peacefully in her home at 905 Angela St. on Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010. She was born on Dec. 31, 1921, in Utica, N.Y., and grew up in Miami, Fla. Carolyn traveled extensively as a child, spending six months traveling with her family in Europe when she was a teenager. As an adult, she led multiple group tours to Europe, lecturing on art history, and spent a year in India just before settling in 1967 in Key West, where she became a long-standing member of the arts community.

Carolyn graduated from Syracuse University in 1944 with a BFA in painting and earned her MFA in painting and sculpture from the University of Oregon in 1949. Her works are included in collections and museums across the country.

 Bottle wall made artist a Key West icon

BY MANDY MILES Citizen Staff
mmiles@keysnews.com

Carolyn Fuller dismantled her legendary bottle wall on Angela Street more than 15 years ago, and replaced the colored jars with small mirrors, yet the "Bottle Wall Lady" moniker persisted until Fuller's death on Saturday at the age of 88.

The corner house at 905 Angela St., across from the Key West Cemetery, and the handmade wall that surrounds it is one of the most photographed properties in Key West, while the woman who lived inside the plain-looking structure remained somewhat of a mystery to peering passersby.

"She was a recluse, but she was a wonderfully creative person," said Wendy Coles, who spent a great deal of time with Fuller over the past five years.

Fuller, one of the first women to earn a master's degree from Syracuse University, bought her house in 1964 and spent summers in it until her daughter, Becca, graduated from high school in 1969. At that point, Fuller made Key West her permanent island home.

The home's location next to the cemetery was prone to flooding, and Fuller's property became an island itself after heavy rains, prompting pedestrians to trudge across her porch and peer inside her windows while trying to avoid the floodwaters.

"I planted a hedge that they knocked down, so I decided to build something they couldn't knock down," Fuller told The Citizen in 2005.

A painter and sculptor by trade and education, Fuller found inspiration in an old mustard jar.

"I thought I could clean the jars and seal them, and here was the making of a wall," she said, recalling how the neighborhood children became eager collectors of bottles they brought to an appreciative Fuller.

She used mortar mix to cement the colorful bottles together, creating a 5-foot-tall wall around the corner of her property.

The tight corner off Windsor Lane was tough on the bottle wall, and errant vehicles regularly damaged parts of it until 1992, when Fuller, tired of mending the fence and cleaning up broken glass, decided to dismantle it.

It did not take long for pedestrians to once again cross her porch, so Fuller found a use for the small, round mirrors that are scraps from Monroe Glass. The reflective circles are the result of holes cut in mirrors for bathroom fixtures.

She embedded the mirrors into the mortar and added delicate arches on top until the mirror wall was born.

Fuller, with a floppy sun hat, was a familiar sight in her neighborhood, and at the bar at Pepe's Cafe, where she enjoyed a frequent martini, her daughter said.

She was a regular at the Key West branch library on Fleming Street, and a skilled bridge player, Becca Fuller said.

"But everything was black and white with my mom, so she'd get mad at one bridge group and say she was never going back," Becca Fuller said. "But then she'd eventually go back."

There was no television in Fuller's house, and Becca remembers clearly when her mother dismissed it.

" 'I've never liked TV,' she'd say," Becca recalled. "'I've never liked it since they just kept showing that JFK assassination.' "

Nevertheless, world events fascinated Fuller, who realized after 9/11 that she knew nothing about Islam.

"So she read the whole Quran and then read the whole Bible, and then decided it was all poppycock," Becca Fuller said.

The family plans to keep the property -- and the wall -- intact, though they likely will move some of the sculptures that fill the hedge-shrouded yard, Becca Fuller said, thanking her mother's Key West friends, who became a life-support network in her final months.

Coles remembers swimming with Fuller every morning at 6 a.m., while local artist Rick Worth would play his guitar with Fuller, whose eyesight was failing.

She drove her white car around the island until a year ago, told her pastor when she hated his sermons, and filled her home with colorful works made from glass, paint or any other material.

"This woman was crazy, but in a really beautiful way," Coles said.

It's a lovely spot in the silence of the middle of the night.

The view north on Margaret Street, go far enough and you'd reach Key West Bight.

Being Cheyenne

A  few random pictures of Cheyenne being Cheyenne.

Panhandling As Riposte

Somebody other than me saw this proposal in the paper. I saw this anonymous comment in the Key West Citizen and the wheels in my head started turning. "Right across from the beautiful green property..."

Sure enough the hotel is lovely, an oasis barely a block from Duval Street, with a piano, a self-service wine bar a swimming pool surrounded by the lush greenery that makes Key West a tropical dreamer's stereotype...

And for years the neighbor across the street was the older city hall and cranky broken down fire station. The building leaked badly in Hurricane Wilma and the mold rendered the building outdated for civilian use.

The firefighters at the Simonton Street end of the building toughed it out for a few more years...a decade actually. Plans were drawn up to ... have a protracted public debate about what to do here. Build a new city hall? A multi-story parking lot? A new fire station? It was anybody's guess and everybody had a guess to throw in the pot.

The owner of the hotel had a loud opinion and boy she was pissed. She started a campaign to defend her hotel against the possibility of dust, construction crews, road closures, all part of a city plot to drive away customers from a small local business etc...etc... The nuclear threat from North Korea was as nothing compared to the construction threat on this block of Angela Street.

In the event the Mayor spoke quietly and carried a large stick and the city fell in line behind his idea to put city hall on White Street and build a proper fire station with a refreshed parking lot. And so it came to pass. Nice eh? And yes there was some construction work but I don't think it was unbearable for neighbors. Maybe it was, who can say, it's all done and peaceful now. The dust, actual and metaphorical has settled.

So why on earth would the city even remotely consider putting a panhandling zone here? No one knows, no one has a clue. Me? I don't know but in life I do know payback is a bitch. And the City of Key West has bigger nuclear warheads than any pissed off local business.

The lesson here is one any incomer to "The Island" would do well to take to heart... It doesn't matter how long you've lived here or who you think you know. You aren't local enough or important enough to take on the real power structure in town. Come on down, be happy and don't rock the boat. I mean who wants these guys, currently defacing city property, for neighbors?

Sure you have First Amendment rights in the Conch Republic but the people in charge have a first amendment bigger and longer than yours.

Posted with Blogsy

Public Peary Court

What was a few years ago Navy Housing may soon become sort-of-affordable housing is the city commission agrees to put their latest plan up for public vote. The commission meets tonight and considers adding a two part referendum to the March elections. Happily I live in the county so I shan't have to vote but I wonder about this plan.

This was what the place used to look like when it was actual Navy Housing, guard hut and all. The Navy decided a few years ago they would rather have housing completely on base and declared Peary Court surplus to requirements. Then  a funny thing happened, the housing was taken over by a civilian contractor who also rented to civilians at $2,000 a house. The city decided they owed property taxes but lost that argument in court so what was effectively not-Navy-housing was still treated as tax exempt by a court ruling worthy of Alice in Wonderland judgement. The city lost about eleven million dollars in back taxes no longer owed...

Peary Court has always been controversial. I remember walking across it as seen below in this historical picture I found on the web. It was a rather scruff park and a useful short cut to Duval Street from Garrison Bight where I landed my dinghy (I lived on a boat anchored out). You can see one entrance at Eisenhower at the left, a loop road around the baseball diamond and a straight shot to Southard Street and the tall armory building on the right. 

When the Navy declared it wanted the land back from the city's informal use of the property there was an outcry and a former city commissioner locked himself in a trailer with some explosives and demanded the decision be reviewed. He ended up in jail and the transformation of what had been a rather pleasant open space...

...became rather drab but useful housing with proper streets, car ports and all modern conveniences. 

A developer bought the property a couple of years ago for thirty five million dollars and offered to turn the property into a sort of gated community "in the Key West style." That plan went over like a lead balloon with neighbors who protested long enough and loud enough the developers threw up their hands and now the city wants to get a mortgage and buy the exact same property from them for twenty million dollars more! Nice work if you can get it...

The idea would be to use Peary Court as affordable housing which is not a bad idea, depending on how you define "affordable" in this crazy city. In any event the plan requires two votes of approval from city voters to support the plan and then the financing as well.  Honestly I don't know what to think. The price seems outrageous but the outcome could be helpful in a city with no decent housing at a decent price for working stiffs. If this helps who will feel like opposing this fifty five million dollar plan? We shall see no doubt because everyone in Key West has an opinion and has no fear of expressing it if they have a private income and nothing to lose.

And yes, some residents will no doubt not be displaced...

Waterfront Amphiteater

Sometimes the gods curse you by giving you a gift and I think Truman Waterfront has become the cursed gift that keeps on giving. There are small countries around the world that decide they need more space so they reclaim land to make themselves bigger. Monaco has piled up rubble to extend its waterfront land and Dubai has piled up sand to create fantasies of buildings in the Persian Gulf. Key West got 34 acres of prime waterfront land free gratis and for nothing from the US Navy, who swept it clean, dismantled their installations and told the city: have at it! I took this picture in 2008 and were you to go back today you'd not see much different. Truman Waterfront is the gift, like I say, that keeps on giving...headaches.

Don't get me wrong, there have been plans, suggestions hopes and dreams as you might expect from a community in ferment like Key West where every fly-by-night wants to claim residence in the town where every visitor leaves their heart etc...etc...They want a park, a farmer's market, an old folks' home, a marina, tennis courts, parking, a restaurant and an amphitheater! Sound luscious doesn't it? Music under the stars whose silver light is reflected off the waters of Key West harbor. I remember the Christmas concerts at Fort Zachary back when winter meant cold fronts and it was quite pleasant huddled under a blanket in the accidental amphitheater of the fort's parade ground. Jimmy Buffett likes the idea.

There have been some rather tart comments in the Citizen's Voice that if Buffett wants a four million dollar music venue could write a check for the city so I looked him up. Gossips who specialize in this sort of thing suggest he is sitting on four hundred million dollars putting him in the top five wealthiest singers in the US. Considering Key West gave him his start and it's the city that nurtures his image you'd think it would be easy. But I suspect my ideal of a community that generates a sense of community is out of the grasp of people who attribute their success to themselves alone. I expect if there is a stage built at Truman Waterfront it will be named for a soft drink or an airline or some other banality. Perhaps the Spottswoods will step in and take a share of the ticket prices and name it for one more illustrious family ancestor the plebs in Key West must learn to love, perforce.

When Cheyenne was more active I enjoyed walking her here, untrammeled open space that I feared would soon disappear under a tidal wave of cement and asphalt. I need not have worried. She I suspect will be long gone before these scenes of open space, here photographed last week, will disappear and be transformed into usefulness and income producing busyness. Right now the power boats are in town churning up the harbor waters in a gladiatorial contest that makes no sense to me. They buzz up and down the waterfront in straight lines making noise like a thousand badly tuned motorcycles and burning enough fuel to keep me in Bonneville commutes for years and despite the apparent simplicity of the concept they do manage to kill themselves from time to time. If I die on my bike don't for pity's sake mourn me, I died enjoying myself, perhaps in a way you don't understand, but that I do very much. When the last couple of power racers died on the water there was talk of lawsuits and revenge and anger and sadness in a very public way. Which I find odd. But Key West attracts odd people who do odd things to no public acclaim at all and that's what I like. If every oddly attired believer in oddities needed a parade Duval Street would be clogged year round with odd parades...Oh it is, you say?

In my capacity as a 911 operator I get peculiar phone calls from time to time and I don't mean run-of-the-mill gruesome stuff about violence and stupidity, but truly weird calls from people who somehow reach adulthood without all their cards in the deck. But when a call starts with the words: "I know this may sound crazy..." I usually sigh and want to tell them I've heard it all. And I suppose it points to my hubris after a decade of listening to the gross side of human nature that I think I have. But last week I really did hear something new and it wasn't the call from the guy who thinks he has goldfish swimming in his stomach. She was earnest and sincere and lived far away and admitted she had never been to Key West and knew no one in this town and...she knew I'd think she was crazy, so I sighed. But for all she sounded reasonable she was as mad as the proverbial hatter, driven insane by who knows what. She had had a dream that something terrible was going to happen in Key West and the voices took over and told her to warn us. Do you think I'm crazy? She asked. Well I said I'm a police dispatcher and I deal with facts not dreams and voices. She had no specifics at all, no place to look, no idea of what who where when etc...My litany of well rehearsed questions produced nothing. Yup she was right, I thought she was nuts and as she severed the connection I knew not what to think. And I tell you we send officers out on the slimmest of evidence. I read about failed dispatchers who argue with callers and read the law to callers. Me? Give me an address and a possible violation and I put in a call: Cover Your Ass we call it.

In a town where chickens run loose and the dress code requires only the merest hint of decency, it's hard to argue who is crazy. But I hung up the phone and I wondered about the collective madness of a society where we make no provision for the least among us. I wondered about the rest of her life and the fortitude it took to find our number from Missouri and go call me and warn me about her dreams of disaster that focused on the rather abstract fact that the voices and dreams told her Key West was fucked six different ways from Sunday. She said fuck over and over again like she was exorcising herself. I hope to god she has someone to look after her and change her clothes and feed her and ease her mental strait jacket. But I kind of doubt it. Not my problem, right?

Then the woman called who had persuaded her friend to go to the ER with her because of his suppurating leg. Now he won't see the doctor she said, he's walking away down College Road. Is he an adult I asked? Because adults have a right to refuse medical care. Assisted suicide is illegal but refusing medical care gets the state's seal of approval, don't you know. Did she want to meet a police officer I asked? Oh no she said she didn't want to get involved. I love that reply when people call the Big Deal Agency That Arrests People. They don't want to make a big deal of it they say recoiling in horror, or they don't want to get involved, or they are too busy to spend more time with me on the phone or to direct the officer etc... I just agree and put in a call for service. I Cover My Ass, the act that keeps me out of the bad press. The suppurating leg was nowhere to be found according to the officer I sent to look for him. I hoped he hadn't gone into the mangroves to lick his wound and die like an abandoned cat. But in a country where a doctor visit can sic a collections agency on you sometimes people choose to rely on hope and prayer for a cure.

I don't suppose the future of Truman Waterfront will come easily. We all have our self interests to nurture, our own problems to cure, our legacies to ensure. We have no public money for lunatic asylums, free internet service, living wages or health care. But for a sports stadium or an amphitheater perhaps we do. Indeed I'll bet we do, and the justification will be there large as life and for the collective good of course. We shall trip over the dispossessed to get there, worry about bums taking over the new park, argue over who gets the money from the marina, but progress will not be denied. Eventually.

Posted with Blogsy

Small Motorcycles

I bought my first motorcycle in the Fall of 1975 when I was weeks away from turning 18. I was in Italy and I had previously passed my British motorcycle test which allowed me to ride a full sized motorcycle at 17 so when a  friend told me this fire engine red MV Agusta was for sale I was ready to buy and ride. Looking back I wonder at myself, because I added some plastic saddle bags and  backpack and took off across Europe on it to see my family in England. Just like that. The bike did fine, and remarkably enough so did my 18 year old spine riding long days on the cafe racer.

So when I read about what  bike do you need to travel I am firmly in the camp that whatever you have will do. Naturally there are some that carry more stuff or have more comfortable seats and as always cost a lot more. But Modern motorcycles are amazing, reliable and requiring little maintenance, well built and well equipped compared to the tractors we rode  40 years ago. And as if to cheer me up a whole bunch of new small motorcycles are coming onto the market to cheer American riders up. BMW  has shocked everyone with this 310 to be shown off at the big motorbike show EICMA in Milan this week:

The BMW is supposedly part of a drive by European and US manufacturers to penetrate the Indian market, which is huge with a burgeoning middle class and a population moving from scooters to motorcycles. They have tons of models as do other south east Asian and Latin American countries that we never see. However in order to generate brand loyalty and create exciting new models foreigners have to get over a massive import tax on foreign machines levied by the Indian Government. So they build their Indian market bikes in India. Triumph had plans to do the same and scrapped their proposed 350 single. KTM from Austria has a joint venture in India building a 200cc single and a 390cc version has made it to the States:

In order to seduce Indian youth the bikes are modern looking with all modern conveniences but for the US market some people think old fashioned looking small bikes will tug at heart strings, like Genuine's new 400 which looks like small Triumph Bonneville single with twin exhausts. I like the looks of it though spoked wheels and tires with tubes are a drag in this day and age when you repair a flat roadside if it's tubeless.

I owned Yamaha's SR500 in 1979 and riode it around West Africa for half a year and had a grand old time. They still make it in Japan where it's restricted to 400cc capacity to allow younger riders to buy it and it is apparently popular. They've sold a few since they re-introduced it last year in the US despite the lack of electric start and a price tag of fully  six thousand dollars.  I want one tubed tires and all!

Goodness there are a lot of smaller motorcycles appearing in the US and now Sym , known for it's scooters is going to be offering a rather attractive 300cc motorcycle. They haven't given any detials but it's supposed to be a more capable motorcycle than their 150cc Wolf. With 300 cc engines motorcycles should be able to get up to around 80 miles per hour and thus make them able to ride comfortably with traffic on freeways. The Sym looks good too with solid wheels and tubeless tires. Extra points for that!

Suzuki brought a well built 250 single to the US market a few years ago, rather ahead of the popularity curve and it is still offered for sale here. I liked it a lot when it first appeared as it enjoys all the usual benefits of economy and simplicity but it never generated much after market accessories, not even a luggage rack which I think is a shame.

Suzuki also brought this 250 to the US to not very glowing reviews. Its a water cooled twin with not terribly exciting performance though it does enjoy the robotic looks that are supposedly popular in this day and age. Personally I think its a look only its mother could love but I am old and form another era.

Honda has been having success with a 300cc scooter but their new range of motorcycles between 300cc and 500cc offered as standards like this 300 and as boy racer bikes too are proving popular as well. I look back at my early motorcycles and it seems a shame to me that these bikes will be reserved for short hops and Sunday rides and maybe the odd commute when they could do so much more for so little money. Scooter riders argue that scooters are more practical but  luggage and a windshield can make these motorcycles just as capable of hauling home the groceries. Plus you get a machine that will take you anywhere and offer spirited riding with a gearbox and excellent fuel economy.

If you want a really old bike the modernized Royal Enfield from India is as close as it gets alongside the more reliable Yamaha SR400. I think the Enfields are cute but they suffer from poor reliability and high maintenance requirements. I looked at how long it takes to do an oil change on these beats and they have multiple steps opening various parts of the engine for what should be a simple operation. The old foges that buy these tend to tinker more than ride. But they look and sound pretty for more than six grand.

Last among the new small bikes is the one that has been there forever. The Ninja 300 twin was sold for years and years as  a 250, capable of racing on the track or traveling to Alaska, and commuting at speeds close to a hundred miles an hour. The new 300cc is better than ever they say and still winning converts. Just another splendid choice in a whole new array of motor y les in the US. IT's a good time to be riding.

After I sold the MV Agusta I bought a Moto Morini 350 in 1977 and that year I rode it across North Africa and Spain to England with adapted luggage, no spare parts, no proper riding clothing, tubed tires and not a lot of money. No internet either for advice or to hear from people advising against my hare brained plans. I had a blast camping as I went on my little v-twin cafe racer. It didn't seem so little at the time and I rode it at similar speeds to those I ride today on my 900cc Bonneville.

I can't say I wish I were young again because I like myself at my age. But I hope youngsters will take advantage of these great bikes in this modern age to have adventures and do what they can with what they have and not worry  about size; it really doesn't matter.