Stormy Weather

Cheyenne was ready to get out of the house and I took her to the beach which was lovely as I hadn't been here in ages, ever since she started to get weaker in her old age.  I snapped this picture on Niles Channel Bridge.

Cheyenne loved sitting out after she had tottered around a bit. A puddle splash was de rigeur of course.
This next week is promising a blistering cold front with cold nights and cool days once again. Rain and then cold, we are having a real winter once again and the Conchs I work with are excited about the coming cold. 

Then the ibis moved in, the quiet locally grown chickens of the Florida Keys.
Some forecasts are promising lows below 50 degrees (10 Canadian degrees) this week and the old is supposed to last all week. Cheyenne will be delighted, and my wife will be pleased too at the reduction in air conditioning use.

 The weather rolled in when we were at the beach...

 ...but my dog ignored it.

I took refuge in the car during rain squalls but Cheyenne just gave me the stink eye when I tried to move her into the car. 

A brisk rub down with a towel just as the heavy rain set in and we were off home. Very successful day at the beach and there is a good chance we will have a whole lot more to come this week. 

Adult Night Out In Key West

I am proud to say that Mexican food was my suggestion when herself asked where should we have dinner, and because herself grew up on California-Mexican food the answer was of course Lupita's on Bertha Street.

There are Mexican choices in Key West, starting with Chico's on Stock Island and Old Town Mexican Cafe on Duval as well as Amigos on Green Street, but Lupita's in New Town hits the spot for Mexican food of a certain genre. I like the decor, Mexican/ American diner style, and the menu with dinner items under twenty bucks and fresh fish on offer as you would expect in an island town. 

The Negra Modelo beer was on offer at two for six bucks so we shared them and each had a plate of spicy blackened fish tacos. They hit the spot even though I don't think of blackened as Mexican they were spicy and the salsa was fresh and the tacos were thick unyielding corn tortillas just as they should be.

The winter weather has settled down and Key West has been lovely lately, sunshine breezes and cool nights, exactly what you want when you are driving your wife's convertible Fiat 500. Bertha Street connects Flagler to South Roosevelt and the beach and its probably overdue for resurfacing but it will have to wait it's turn. The traffic light at Flagler is notoriously short too so Bertha is not recommended unless you like sitting in traffic or bouncing on the pavement. Lupita's is recommended though.

The night was pleasant enough we decided to take a walk at White Street pier where the wind was whipping up waves large enough to burst over the sea wall. It was refreshing.

The plan was to fulfill our promise to spend one day each week doing something fun otherwise 911buddy and work suck up all our time if we aren't careful. It's winter so it's live theater season and we do our best to catch stage performances. This one was easy- free teacher night so we essentially got two-for-one tickets. 

The play was a tough subject discussing the AIDS epidemic decades on as the various survivors detail their struggle to refashion their lives. Joy Hawkins plays Katherine the bereaved mother who confronts her dead son's partner and  in so doing reopens old wounds and questions about surviving death and moving on. Hawkins gives an outstanding performance as an uptight withdrawn angry resentful mother still unable to come to turns with her son's death, still looking around to cast blame. Hawkins is well known in Key West as a vital alive and charismatic performer and it was shocking and hard to watch her play this character so perfectly, with never a false note.   

The cast included eight year old Jake Ferguson who performed flawlessly, completely unintimidated by the high powered cast he was working with and gave the story the depth it deserved. Cal and Will played by professionals Matt McGrath and Trey Gerrald weren't going to miss a beat either. The ensemble was terrific enough that sitting in the audience one got the uncomfortable feeling of being a peeping tom in a private family drama. It was 90 minutes of spellbinding intimate revelations. Happily there was no intermission and thus the spell was not broken from beginning to end. We reeled from the theater.

Pictures Courtesy Waterfront Playhouse web

I loved this review from the Chicago Tribune (LINK) from which I excerpted this discussion of Tyne Daly's performance as Katherine.

"My eyes were moist through a good amount of "Mothers and Sons," frankly, even in its more manipulative sections (especially those, really, McNally being so adept at making us feel the weight of age and experience). The show works not least because of the creative team's enormous sympathy for his anti-gay, fictional mother, a character whose pain has ennobled. In the play's most eloquent section, Daly's Katharine gets to argue that partners move on, find other lovers, marry, adopt, gain a life pockmarked with slowly fading grief but a life, nonetheless.

Bereaved mothers, though, are not so lucky, especially if they refused to really know their sons when they were alive."

It was of course a lovely wander back to the car. Thoughtful but lovely.

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.