Winn Dixie And Trees

Big Pine's Key Deer Shopping Plaza as photographed by me in 2007.

They say a Floridian defines a good parking spot by the amount of shade available.  Not much of that in the Key Deer Plaza in Big Pine anymore.

They came, they saw, and they tore them up by their roots. Why? Some say its to discourage free range chickens in the lot. I'm no great fan of wild chickens but all this to get rid of them? It doesn't make sense to me and the chickens weren't hurting anyone. There has to be a reason I'd like to think, but I have no idea what these idiots are thinking.

Key Deer shopping center is no great aesthetic success from an architectural point of view but with trees it wasn't totally gross. I got this picture off the Web as I never really thought it worth while photographing this place. Who knew they would tear it up and make it as ugly as sin? The Winn Dixie Plaza in Key West, more properly known as Overseas Market has lost some trees. This is as it was:

And they've done the same tree slashing in Key West to loud noises of irritation from the shopping public. I hate cutting stuff down and honestly I've avoided going to Overseas Market to see the destruction but here it is. It's not as awful as I feared though the middle of the lot has lost all shade:

One likes to think there is a reason for this sort of behavior especially in a  town with a tree commission and all that, but  I figure its all in pursuit of something as base as commerce and money. I hope they are made to re-plant proper shade trees but who knows.

Women's Clothing

The thing about the Overseas Highway is that it rapidly becomes a way in and  a way out of the Keys, and like so many attractions around here one tends to overlook a  lot of stuff in the rush to get home or to get away... I think in many respects I have been mindful of this daily problem for all of us and I have gone out of my way to hunt down attractions in my own back yard and check them out.

 This isn't an attraction in any meaningful sense but it just strikes me as odd every time I drive by. It reminds me of that restaurant with the weird name : Ruth's Chris Steak House.  That apparently came into being when Ruth bought a Louisiana steak house called Chris's. Here I guess Anthony wanted to sell women's clothing and here it is, the Key Largo store of 13 across the state. Who knew?

Check out the building, which to my untutored eye looks like a 1950's motel lobby or something catches my eye every time I drive by.

I stopped at the next door gas station where they have cheap gas and spicy empanadas so I always stop there for gas. And  this time I wandered off with my camera and I said to myself I need to record this delightful building before someone tears it down for some impenetrable reason.

 Isn't it delightful?

 The swimsuits even match the decor.

There are tons of odd shaped buildings along the 120 mile highway in the Keys and I really need to do a better job of catching them. 

Anthonys website is worth a look if these things with a 30% discount works for you. I just like the building.

Farmer's Market, Big Pine Key

It happens every Saturday and this weekend was cool, in the 60s  but sunny and lovely.

St Peter's Catholic Church in Big Pine is at the north end of the village where the Key Deer land bridge starts.

 The walk through started with breakfast of Thai kebabs and spring rolls, washed down with con leche purchased on the way at Five Brothers on Ramrod Key. As breakfasts go it was a bit odd but quite pleasant. I could have used more spices on the food, which is odd as I am not in the hotter-the-better camp.

 My wife tried to whisk me past the rum cake display but I managed to get a sample of orange and liqueur flavored cake and it was every bit as good as you might imagine. I have a fondness for sponge cakes which I attribute to my upbringing. Or something.

I was not alone in thinking the temperature could have been turned up a bit...

We've seen the Pickle Baron before in Key West at Farmer's Markets there. He was embarrassed by his weird pickle shirt. I quite liked it. Not as much as his pickles though. 

This next guy is a saint. Well he may be but he is really a good cook. He used to run the kitchen at Finnegan's Wake and was set to do the same at he idiotic Backspace Fiasco which has since left town (good riddance). However they left behind a very disillusioned Wayne who now wants to work for himself and rapidly sold out here. Not before we got some excellent chowder and two chicken pot pies. I wish we could have another decent Irish pub once again in Key West. Oh well, this will have to do for now.

 Music was on tap and very refreshing it was too. Uplifeted an already bright day.

This guy advertises bringing "joy to the kitchen" and his pasta sauces do that. They have no paste or added sugar and as a result they are tart fresh light and utterly delicious. He had some garlic cream paste I tasted and I bullied my wife into buying a jar as I had left my money in the car. She yielded. 

 This dude was selling ham and cheese and my wife had him cut a few slices of Serrano ham which wasn't bad but not as salty and tangy in my (biased) opinion as prosciutto...

We took some Italian sheep's cheese and some tart cheddar as well because I love cheese in any shape or form. They had a wide selection too. Lovely.

 My wife heard him doing his sums in Italian so naturally she busted me and we chatted for a bit. His family emigrated to Brazil from Trento in Northern Italy.  I like his stuff.

Dogs are allowed by the way but Cheynne, never one for crowds was at home sunning herself. None of this stuff for her.

And there was this dude selling bread, good for the table, good for the freezer. Not that I get to eat much bread of course. Before industrial foods were invented they called this stuff the staff of life. 

 It really was quite pleasant at Big Pine. Check it out:

I had a good morning shopping. That's a first.

Monday Light

It's been a real winter in Key West but we still get our bursts of sunshine. Margaret Street looking brilliant:

It wasn't even 80 degrees but it looked lovely:

Lovely except for the cretin from Maryland who has apparently no clue what a yellow stripe means. Parking problems drive residents mad in a town where garages are always converted into spare bedrooms and driveways become gardens. It rates as gross bad manners to flaunt local parking laws. The newspaper burns up with the flames of parking of wars in it's pages. Plus this dolt is overhanging the scooter parking.

Pay the Earth for a house and get a tree growing into your roof:

Wot? No parking on a corner. Really? Bloody fascists. I told you finding parking space is a problem, and people do crazy things in order to dump their vehicles somewhere, anywhere.

Splendid Key West architecture:

A person owned bya  cat with a sense of humor. That or an excessive sense of itself, even for a cat:

All shadows and light in Key West. Not to be taken too seriously.

Classic Motorcycles

I make no secret of the fact that whenever we visit friends in Birmingham Alabama I make the 20 mile trek east to Leeds (Alabama) and check out what's on display at the Barber Museum. If you put "barber" in the search function at the top left hand corner of the page you will see all the bikes I have photographed there, like the 1964 Triumph TR6 single carburetor version of the famed Bonneville, which in my head was the better bike. Or the Ducati 750 I was recently reading about in a magazine:

Barber owns something like 1600 machines half of which are displayed at a time. He also likes Lotus cars and he has a shop where they are restored as well as a racetrack where they are...driven? For me the joy is to wander round and see the bikes of my youth, and all the other elderly machines on show for me to peer at to my heart's content.

I read Motorcycle Classics every two months and I have been a subscriber for years. It's not necessarily that I want to ride an elderly motorcycle every day and I acknowledge my only vaguely classic bike is my 1979 Vespa currently awaiting a new auto advance mechanism when 911buddy isn't absorbing all my attention and money. It's just that I like reading about the history of motorcycles, and where our sport came from and how it has grown, and in some respects stayed the same over the decades. Maybe one day I'll have the time and money to buy and ride a 1970's superbike but for now I am content to read about them and ride my modern imitation daily.

My serene world of sideline riding and reading of classic bikes got shaken up a little while ago when I found out I could get a subscription, or even individual copies of another magazine direct to my iPhone and iPad...from this page:Real Classics. Oh dear. So far I have downloaded half a dozen copies and I have tons of back issues to read before I even think about subscribing, which doesn't actually save much money on the annual cost of a dozen copies of this fascinating read.

I downloaded the teaser free issue and was amazed how easy this new digital version is to read. I tried this format elsewhere a while back and it was horrible. Here you can store the magazine on your phone on it's own page and you can pull down the magazine at will.

You can enlarge the page to make it easy to read for elderly eyes and you can slide page to page easily without interrupting your pleasure. Or, in the illustration above you can slide the whole magazine page by page at the bottom of the screen. Very very user friendly.

Let me say it: there is no technical obstruction to enjoying Real Classics anywhere in the world. The question is: why would you want to? Especially if you live in North America and get the aforementioned Classic Motorcycle subscription (every two months only, unfortunately). And this is where I have to get culturally sidetracked a bit I fear.

Real Classics does not put classic historic motorcycles on a pedestal. These bikes exist to be ridden, a sentiment shared by the American magazine but not put into action the way these British enthusiasts do it. In the photo above notice the luggage; these bikes get ridden and written about. You will often see little parcels bungee'd to the back of these bikes because the weather in Britain is as fickle as you like and going anywhere without waterproofs almost guarantees you a chance to get drenched. So these elderly bikes get ridden in the wet too! And photographed with mud on them. Check this out:

Real Classics celebrates British idiosyncrasy, a dry sense of humor and the ability to not take oneself too seriously while doing serious riding and serious wrenching (spannering). Yes you will have to get used to British spelling and quirky British use of the language which will make some references unintelligible. Hey, most of it can be understood by anyone who speaks some form of English. The humor may escape you if you think motorcycles are Serious Stuff but at heart these people are Very Serious about their bikes.

The best part is that the man pictured above in his "Shed" (the sacrosanct motorcycle space for men and wrenches, not wenches) edits the publication with no corporate pretensions whatsoever. He is more like your capable friend ready to offer unbiased advice with a dollop of tart wit than a snarky condescending journalist's journalist. He does this with a woman who may or may not be his wife. The English can be coy about these things and you can draw your own conclusions as I have drawn mine. FW as the Editor likes to style himself goes out and actually rides motorbikes and when he does so he has no hesitation being photographed looking like the Lion from the Wizard of Oz. Tell me with his whiskers, his weird lined visor and the shadow on his nose he doesn't look like the Lion:

Am I wrong?

I have been having a quiet love affar with Real Classics so I shouldn't be rude about the man who puts it all together. It reminds me in part of my lost youth, it reminds me I am not alone when I enjoy riding in the rain, even if it is only the warm South Florida version. It reminds me you don't need to ride around the world to have a two wheeled adventure. The editor's favorite motorcycle is a weird and not well known Norton Rotary which he considers his go-to ride and it's not spared England's liquid sunshine:

Not only that but FW is not terribly fond of classic Triumph Bonnevilles which have attained cult status on this side of the Atlantic (though he does express some deep fondness for Triumph's Trident). In Real Classics you will read about people buying selling, keeping and never selling, touring commuting and breaking down on their elderly machines. If your idea of classics is to put them on a pedestal and keep them secure in a museum this magazine will make your hair stand on end.

A lovely old BSA absurdly overburdened by sloppy luggage or what may be voluminous riding gear tossed into the photo. This would be a crime in the US:

By this stage you are either salivating to read this magazine or shaking your head at the way people like to waste their money. I hope you are curious enough to download the free issue and have a few giggles. These people are crazy and well worth your time.

Posted with Blogsy