Park And Pay Key West

Closing in on the end of the year and nothing much changes in the countryside of the lower Keys. No frost no smokey wintery mornings. Mangroves stay mostly green so foliage doesn't change color or fall off  the branches. Everything stays the same.

The city has drawn up a plan to raise parking rates by a dollar an hour which should go over a treat in a town where pretty soon breathing will become a restricted activity. I visit other cities and laugh when they charge 25 cents an hour and shut the meters up at 5  in the evening. 

In Key West the parking controls are in operation from 8 am to midnight 6 days a week and on Sundays its noon to midnight. No exceptions. Now at three bucks an hour seven days a week you'd think the message is loud and clear: don't park downtown. Last year's revenues amounted to 6 million bucks from parking machines which have replaced meters. That's where you insert a credit card and get a permit to park which you can can use in any paid spot on the street or in a parking garage or lot owned by the city. The system is very good and flexible but three bucks an hour seems quite a lot. The answer is to walk further or ride a motorcycle which still gets free parking in designated spots.

And parking is just one more reason to live the suburbs where you park under your stilt house with no problems. And you get easy access to the peace and quiet of the backwoods.

Rusty likes it out here...

I like it. Free parking...peace and quiet and a time to not have to deal with people.

Run Rusty run and then sleep.

Parking rates mean you have to keep out of the Duval corridor and trust that you will find free parking on Whitehead Street or Elizabeth Street. Don't come looking on my street- we're all full up in suburbia with no desire to turn into Old Town Key West...

Ybor City

The Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City since 1905 is an institution and for that reason I didn't expect much. I was surprised: service was good, by people dressed in formal black (see below!) offering food that was cooked properly and well presented in baroque surroundings. Go if you ever get the chance. 

The food is a mixture of Cuban and Spanish,  and they claim title to the original Cuban sandwich.  I loved their multi cultural explanation of the various ingredients, Spanish Cuban Jewish   and German all assembled in a loaf of bread. 

                                      

We had croquetas and empanadas and gazpacho and a stew of baked crab lobster and artichoke. We each got a half loaf of crusty bread and shared a huge plate of chopped vegetable garnishes. It was lavish and lovely. 

 

Then I took Rusty for a walk in the afternoon sun. East of Seventh Avenue Ybor City is a place filled with promise, gentrification yet to come among a bunch of homes loosely connected by empty lots and wide streets. Were I young and looking for a home I'd look here if I had a budding career in Tampa. 

                                       

The peculiarly dressed waiters are everywhere on break. The Columbia is an isolated phenomenon on the edge of town it feels like as you find staff testing and spacing out in privacy on the street. 

                                      

We crossed the railroad tracks and there was so little traffic in vehicles or humans I just let Rusty trpt ahead off the leash. All his years on the streets of Homestead seem to have equipped him to cope with traffic quite well.

                                      

He went off exploring the grassy empty lots while I admired the Old Florida architecture.                                                               

There is a lot about this corner of Tampa that is appealing at first glance. I lived in Tampa in the early 1990s and I have to say there wasn't much that I liked about it. The city was a rather grimy urban sprawl of wife boulevards and ex-industrial zones of dark brick surrounding a downtown of skyscrapers and streets that were void of people on the weekends. 

 

I think the city has been working to change over the past couple of decades which included the golden years of money and innovation at the end of the 20th century. I saw signs of renewal in this area but this was clearly not a part of the city that benefited much from the urban renewal efforts of the boom years.

And therein lies its charm. Made better yet by a glistening purring R100RS by BMW, a motorcycle much admired in my youth, and still looking good out for a sunny weekend ride.

Let me be clear: I am no architect nor am I a devoted do-it-yourselfer. Were I looking for a house I'd rather have the one in move-in condition rather than the deal ready to be fixed up. However een a philistine like myself can see the extraordinary charm of these tumbling old structures: 

 

Rusty had a good time poking around. I was astonished by the lack of visible life. I did pass two black men talking but they gave me the stink eye and went indoors before I could say good afternoon.

 

Then I passed another African American collecting his mail and I made momentary small talk which ended with him not enjoying his weekend with his feet up but preparing instead for his second job. Which gives you some idea of the hard work that goes into surviving around here.

 

Rusty has a lively curiosity that I try to foster, keeping him alert and involved:

 

There is an undeniable resemblance to some of Key West's 19th century architectural styles:

 

Though clearly the modern era is everywhere evident. A motorcycle here...

...a dive bar there. Or neighbor hood joint I suppose:

 

And the old brick roadways outlined by the rapidly setting sun:

Thus back in a wide circle to the Columbia Restaurant an hour later and there is still a line to get in:

And just for fun I snapped a picture inside the restaurant of Columbus landing on San Salvador in the Bahamas in a picture suggestive of some painter's fantasy and nothing like reality:

 

Yes, the Colombia Restaurant really is that ornate. As is the neighbor hood outside in its own way.

A Rainy Key West Day

I am not fond of gray skies but my Panasonic camera is sold as rain-proof and I wanted to see. However i am not a fan of muted gray skies and on these days I miss the bright colors and sharp shadows of sunshine over Key West.

The light was washed out, like a room with the blinds drawn. Movement became a blur in the long exposures required on such an afternoon.

Rusty didn't mind the rain and nor did the cat we saw on Grinnell Street:

The man pedaled along

 the edge of the cemetery

weaving slowly,

singing in Spanish,

waving and blowing kisses,

to everyone

as he passed by.

Mark Hedden

My walks allow me to think and be alone  with those thoughts and to see things that others don't seem to. Then I met  a cat who saw Rusty all right. And carried right on eating.

I saw this further along and I have no idea:

The other night at work Shannon asked for my help with a location in the police 911 mapping system. She wasn't even surprised when I knew the answer to a query about a nondescript building on Center Street. I was rather surprised I knew exactly what the place was and as she gave the address information to the officer over the radio she started laughing. "only you would know" she said. 

I like Key West and my camera helps me to observe what I might otherwise miss. I like history too and so I find myself sucked into the views and the unconsidered trifles that other people walk by everyday. People confuse me and I am not much goo at photographing them. So my Key West is not awkward (to me) social scenes which bring out my fear of social ineptitude but street scenes and odd  moments where things don't make sense or the daily order has somehow been disturbed. 

How this picture happened I'm not sure, perhaps an accidental swipe of the shutter control but it expressed my feelings about the incessant drizzle:

I saw lots of couples sharing umbrellas. Unlike most places rain in Key West isn't terrible, on hardly notices it as it rarely leads to hypothermia. Wet clothes dry and looking bedraggled isn't  a terminal social faux pas here.

I wondered why a man would laboriously polish his rather ratty scooter under the rain but Rusty had no time to stop and ask.

At home we rubbed off briskly with a towel and I made tea while Rusty tucked his nose under his tail and waited for dinner.

Conversations On A Beach

I don't get to this beach often enough and I find it quite pretty. Especially at an extra low  tide.

The tide was miles out and it looked like Rusty and I had this place to ourselves.

Not so! We spotted  a man with a spotted dog down the beach and after i reassured him that Rusty had no murderous intentions (what dog does?) Rusty got down to the business of getting to know the Dalmatian. It was from Connecticut and his owner travels down for three months in an RV before spending a  few weeks in Spring on Florida's East Coast. Then the big brown Labrador showed up and the three of them ran and ran ran. Until they could run no more:

The old men were pretty funny talking about their health, not always good, they motorcycles, not always appreciated, and the state of the country, not always appreciated by any of us. The guy in white from Kentucky told a fund of stories with deadpan delivery and a thick drawl that made the tales all the more enjoyable. He could put six syllables into one indignant "Fuck That!" when pondering the interfering nature of the universe.

They have been meeting every winter's day on the beach for the past six years. Rusty ingratiated himself. We talked politics after one of them talked about sea level rise and laughed at Trump's rejection of the science. I think they supported the President-elect but with a healthy dose of skepticism which I found realistic and refreshing. For my own part I blame Democrats for failing the people who supported Trump in the Midwest and I'm ready to wait and see what happens.

Rusty as always has to stake his ground with big dogs but his snarl is just his way of saying he's a force to be reckoned with even though he's small.  The other dogs chased him anyway and he had a blast. He is a very different dog from the scaredy cat I first met last February 27th in Homestead.

Eventually we started back, and I was ready for bed. On the way I got to thinking long and hard about my vote in the last Presidential election. I hear  a lot of gloom and doom about democracy in America, as though journalists want to imagine us hellbent on a path to Fascism but I don't see it that way. I think Trump will lead the Presidency of Unintended Consequences as he seems rather uninformed on the ways and means of the political process. Some of that will be dreadful, some of it may not. I think the next few years will be quite interesting. Part of still wishes Clinton had won, but I do rather view my vote as an act of expediency which is why I don't think she stood a chance of winning. Many of us voted for her, but without enthusiasm. I feared Trump and I still do, because I have seen revolutions and I have read about them in the history books and when I voted I feared what path we would take were we to choose revolution. I still fear it so perhaps  mine was a cowardly vote hoping for the best by continuing down the rather lackluster path we have been following. I see Trump as a product of thirty years of anti-government narcissism by the Republicans in government who have spent decades telling people government doesn't work. We now find ourselves in the absurd situation of hiring for President a man who has no clue how to govern. Not only that he seems somehow to have given free license to the worst elements in society in the US and elsewhere to go public with their racism and bigotry. What happens if Trump fails to deliver jobs and change to the underemployed Midwest as promised I don't want to think, but their disappointment could have long lasting repercussions for the ruling classes.

I couldn't see myself voting for Trump but part of me hopes he will get his shit together and become some sort of Teddy Roosevelt a cheerful eccentric full of independent hit or miss. On the other hand Trump seems so unprepared and uninvolved I wonder whose advice he will take. It seems as though his lack of convictions of any sort make him susceptible to the voice of the last person whispering in his ear. That's no way to govern and the fact he is busy hiring people with a Christian agenda to run schools and housing and social services, that he is hiring bankers and millionaires to run the economy all spells a lack of focus to me on the promises of the campaign. Maybe they are revolutionaries in three piece suits but I somehow doubt it. Campaign promises are tumbling like the breach of the Berlin Wall, fast and without waning.

At least I know whatever happens I live here. Cool.