Boca Chica

Last week it was cold, tide was low and it seemed a good day to see the beach without hordes of accompanying mosquitoes.

 I got a bunch of pictures, the same place a different mood.

 One human family is Key West's motto and the free bumper stickers crop up everywhere. The concept of One Human Family has been stretched all over the place and anytime someone feels excluded, or their parrot or a tree or something the motto crops up angrily. 

The thing about Boca Chica is that it attracts builders. People come and go and leave their mark. What wasn't here this month may be there next month.

I have no idea what point it has if any. I didn't  go too close because given a summer storm it'll be gone to make way for some other creative soul.

 This lot hangs out all winter it seems like on the reef:

 Low low tide, looking toward the Naval Air Station.

 Out to sea:

 Remains of the old State Road 4A pilings with yet more stone construction in the background.

And Rusty couldn't be excluded. He wanted to run:

 All the shoes on the fence have been removed and someone appears to have started a fresh collection. Weird:

I was there last January.

Daylight Savings Time

If I'm going to be honest, and I'd better be, I think this collection of pictures is distinguished by the way they illustrate so clearly my inability to catch humans in sensible poses. I need to work on it. Studying his cellphone though you'd never know it naturally as I took the picture:

The scooter riders are hauling on Duval Street, but honestly I'm not at all sure what I was photographing...Spring Break is ruining my concentration.

Somehow Robert and I connected at the Tropic Cinema in the middle of the downtown chaos. I rode my scooter, Robert parked his car in the middle of town and rode to the theater on his bicycle. I got there first which is a testament to the availability of the free two wheeled parking spaces. Everyone should ride.

 It was cold so I had a coffee while I waited for Robert to catch up. The Tropic has a pleasant seating area to hang out in so I was okay. The movie we planned to see was Paterson by Jim Jarmusch a man who has a history of offbeat independent movies. Maybe I am maturing or possibly he is, but I found this (one of) his best.  A meditation on words and routine and perception the story is simple enough, that of a bus driver in the New Jersey City of Paterson who writes poetry on the side, lives with a clingy rather irritating dreamer of a woman with a dog of no great talent. Nothing much happens in the course of the movie, though there are a few incidents of note and the story ends much as it began. Very satisfying all round actually and I had no idea there were so many poets associated with Paterson, or anarchists and assassins either. Robert slept through much of it. I liked it.

One nice thing about daylight savings time is that when we came out of the four o'clock show it was till sunny outside. Continuing my path of photographing people badly (this has to get better with practice) the homeless beggar below seems to be putting off the tourist on the right. Actually they were having a  cheerful conversation so I got that completely wrong. When the guy approached me and asked where Key West was I got lost for a reply- uncharacteristic I know but my head was in Paterson.

Usually when approached by lunatics I adopt a tactic I learned from the village idiot where I grew up in Italy. She had an obsession with underwear and would cock her head and get inside your space and ask right up close what color underwear you were wearing because everyone wears underwear don't they? I ask the same question when some street conspiracy theorist comes up and starts talking contrails or surveillance or some other thing and they back off terrified. Works every time. Thank you Carlotta for the inspiration. This lot were a bunch of tourists from Quebec. Enough said I still haven';t got over last summer's hospital stay in Quebec City so the hell with them all.

This one backed off before I could pose the underwear question out as I waited (again!) for Robert to show up at his choice of dinner place. Big John's pizza place at Key Plaza. People always ask where do locals eat and now you can add this place to the list.

And they've painted out the designated scooter parking so I took a whole space. The trick when parking a scooter or motorcycle in a car spot is to park at the entrance to the space so you avoid having a  car swing in, thinking its empty, and thus crushing your ride. This way the space is clearly occupied though I hate using a  car space for a two wheeler.

 Robert deserves a better portrait than this. Mind you the other pictures made him look positively demented, flinging his arms around as though attacked by swarms of insects. This picture is the best of a bad lot. Oh well. 

The pizza was good. And that's what matters.

Breaking Key West

Consensus in my neck of the woods is that Spring Break is busy this year. Which is surprising considering you'll be hard pressed to find a room for less than $400 in town. But students are resourceful of course and they tend to pack the over priced rooms the way previous generations packed Volkswagens for a stunt.

 Everywhere you go in and around Key West are packs of young people, and the local bums spot them coming. This guy got a cup of coffee and a cigarette from the kind or fearful young woman he cornered in the passenger seat of the car:

Friday was St Patrick's Day which combined with Florida itself being on break meant Key West was extra busy. I am not a great fan of this weird New England holiday but there agian Hallmark holidays as a whole tend to leave me cold. Especially as I was answering 911 calls Friday night.

Like I said Spring Breakers are everywhere, where you least expect them. At least this one knew how to ride her bike and avoided killing me or my dog.

Daily life plugs on, boaters included, seen here at the dinghy docks getting ready for the chilly ride out to their boat in the windswept anchorage:

Locals have been wearing jackets boots and scarves this past week thanks to strong north winds and temperatures near 60 degrees. Visitors remark on the pleasant weather and show off their short sleeves, not otherwise put to use since Thanksgiving in the unforgiving climates they inhabit.

Schooner Wharf Bar only looked desolate as it was breakfast time and not yet fully populated by people not used to eating breakfast in a bar. The temperatures left me slightly surprised the vegetation hadn't withered.

 Local subject in jacket:

 And another one.

 Visitors in shirt sleeves:

 Cool it may have been but the rain was long gone and the sun was shining on Lazy Way Lane:

 Breakfast al fresco for the future leaders of America:

 And they have another generation already breathing down their necks:

 Rusty is learning to read. I think:

He is a very smart dog. I know because he didn't put his butt in the hammock.

Vespa Tag

After I traded the old 1979 Vespa away a sense of relief came over me. Because with that deal I also took the time and money to get my wife's ET4 Vespa 150 fixed up.

It's 13 years old and has about 30,000 miles on it and the exhaust and suspension were worn out, the speedometer needed a new cable (hence the approximate mileage) and after all that and a tune up it is purring like an almost new Vespa again.

 Unlike the 200cc 1979 Vespa the 2004 ET4 150cc Vespa runs fast and reliably. It'll do 60 miles an hour on level ground, a little more with the wind behind us a little less with a headwind.  

It is unmodified except for a lower seat to make it easier for my wfe to reach the ground. 

The nice thing about having a scooter agin is that I can run around town with the excuse that I am playing scooter tag on the Advenure Rider website.

I grabbed a government building with the Monroe County Courthouse and I set a tag of an ethnic grocery using the Polish Deli on White Street.

It's possible anyone anywhere in the world could join in because Adventure Rider, based in Canada is a world wide motorcycle traveler site, but in point of fact most people who post on the scooter tag are in North America. Actually I think all of them are.

 This time of year those of us in the South dominate, simply because it's not freezing and icy here.

 A library (above) a church and so forth...

Sometimes I check the tag game before I leave home and I'll take a picture (below "Your scooter next to a body of water") during my break or after my overtime shift ends in the middle of the night.

There is no requirement to make a tag ("Your scooter by a ball field") in daylight. The one below is at Horace O'Bryant middle school at two in the morning.

 You just have to have a scooter ("Your scooter at a burger joint") or a small motorcycle. There is one guy with a Honda 125cc Grom minibike that particpates occasonally.

An excuse to ride. Much better with a reliable modern Vespa even if it is thirteen years old. And now the old P200 has given way to a rather brightly colored 2009 S150:

Traded for the 1979 with only 326 miles and it starts runs and stops very nicely- so far!

Sugarloaf Walk

I've got to be honest...really I do....but Spring Break this year is making Key West unbearable. It's like the bad old days with people clogging the streets mostly drunk, driving badlym, stumbling when they walk, being rowdy and young and cheerful. Me? I am sticking to the backwoods with my dog for the moment. Especially this weekm as Florida universities are on break and that puts Key West within range of their badly driven cars. Heaven help us.

 We hadn't been tp Sugarloaf Key in a whil;e and it was  lovely morning. Rusty had a grand time and I trailed long behind him checking out awhatever there was to see.

I've photogrpahed these places before but each time I see things in a slightly different light thanks to the camera's all seeing eye.

In the distance typical Keys stilt houses. 

W stood on the shore of the lagoon in the middle of the island and Rusty wasn't much impressed. 

He was even less impressed when a stornger gust of wind than usual picked up a piece of briny foam and slapped him in the face with it:

 I took a quick picture in black and white to check the effect...

...by which time my dog had ducked back into the safety of the undergrowth:

 A seagrpae throwing up some new growth which comes out in this Fall style of color, highlighted by the early morning sun:

And yes a couple of spring breakers made their way here on bicycles with a radio strapped to the handlebars making loud noises to shatter the peace of the morning in the woods. Sigh, nice kids but noisy.