Parking Garages

Greene Street dead ends into what used to be known as Key West Bight which is now officially known as the Ancient-Historic-Seaport-and-Tourist-Attraction-at-what-used-to-be-the-Key-West-Bight or some such nonsense. They studied the matter deeply and it seems calling something historic makes it more palatable. However having made the bight seem more attractive the city commission is now working to make it look more ugly. Weird.

There is this open space that has sat here like his forever and a little umbrella at the entrance covers a man who sits and takes money to park. Not good enough said the people in charge who were going to pave the parking lot. However shoot first aim last was the decision making process and the city commission voted to pave the parking lot until they discovered, later, that paving would produce a mere fifteen spaces, as reported in the Key West Citizen.

So, back to the drawing board they went and came up with a plan to spend several millions of dollars to build a parking garage on the site and create 300 spaces. It won't be ugly they said, it will be a work of art. And don't forget these new homes which are going to cost their new owners almost two million dollars, right next to the new parking garage it turns out...bet they like that. Sparks may well fly when the city commission meets to consider this plan.

There is also talk of creating a garage at the Simonton Street fire station, shown here in a an old picture I took right after it was built and Cheyenne wanted to inspect  it:

There was talk about building a multi story parking lot here but that plan faded away without anything being said. Now the talk is back. All in all this location seems like it would be much less controversial even though it is much further from the bars of Duval Street and in a world where walking is frowned upon I'm not sure visitors will be ready to walk six blocks to get a drink...

Meanwhile back at Greene Street the plans also call for taking down businesses currently living on the edges of the lot. Apparently storage for Conch Republic Seafood would be impacted as would refrigeration for commercial fishing operations and the long lived Reef Relief non profit. Squawks of protest naturally.

 Its not terribly scenic but they do valuable work here, all of them.

In the end this whole thing boils down to philosophy. No one wants a parking garage because they are ugly and take up space and are to a certain extent an admission of failure especially in a  town like Key West where walking and cycling and even scooter riding are viable alternatives. But the outcry or parking is an annual event, a winter sport when the town floods with people and their cars and everyone wants to park within half a block of their homes. 

 Parking lots, and the Conch Republic lot seen below is better than many, add very little to the urban landscape. call them a necessary evil sometimes masked by trees and flower beds. On the other hand if these garages aren't built... what happens to parking?

Key West does not have any kind of plan for the future. Parking is one issue that could use some 21st century vision involving say bike lanes, one way streets, public transit or something. It's the same mindset that nothing needs to change that is revealed by the total absence of solar energy in one of the sunniest spots in the nation. The new panels at city hall are saving the city substantial amounts of money each month but that news only brought more grumbling about putting them in the parking lot and not on the roof... 

I frankly don't see any way around accommodating more cars.  I'd like to see more transit and I applaud the new free bus loop running up and down Southard and Fleming around Lower Duval which could be a great start. On the other hand I'd like to see Duval Street be a pedestrian zone with Whitehead and Simonton one way streets in opposite directions with bike lanes and urban beautification on all three streets. I saw Church Street in Burlington last summer and I have been annoying everyone with my envy of Vermont's forward looking politicians ever since...

Compare Green Street above with Church Street below:

Rusty liked it too:

Never going to happen in Key West I predict.

Boca Chica Birds

With summer starting to make itself felt there are fewer cars and no people if you get to the beach at dawn.

 The warning about nudity is still there, but Rusty and I both went clothed.

 He rooted around in the bushes and i enjoyed a few minutes of messing with my camera.

 Another Rock Another Tree...

 There were tons of waders that ignored Rusty and I.

 I saw a face in this pile of rocks like the so-called Green Man, craggy eyebrows, a big white nose and a black triangular mouth...

 Like this:

But when I reverted to color the face disappeared...Make of that what you will!

 On a more mundane note some poor deluded soul left behind an empty can of "Limited Edition" Budweiser, a bit of an oxymoron I thought as this isn't exactly craft beer.

 Someone is putting in a fair bit of work building rock piles in the water and walls on land:

 Just a few pictures from a  banal beach walk.

Higgs Park

I am developing a tic: every time the word development comes up I start getting totally pissed off. So the converse occurs when I read there is a hiccough in the process and some new planned development has to be postponed. As is the case with road re-structuring now being planned for Higgs Park, the area behind Higgs Beach in Key West. The photo below I took from the parking lot at the Bocce Courts looking north up Atlantic Drive where the new road currently planned will cut inland. Except the county cannot start work for reasons I shall explain further down...

This next photo is 180 degrees now looking west  towards Higgs Park across White Street. Under the county's new plan the road would flow along this line of sight, well away from the waterfront.

The entrance as currently designed to Higgs Park, the grassy area inland from Higgs beach itself which is approximately where the new road would meander through a whole new set of landscaping. 

The plan as published in the Key West Citizen looks as shown below. The idea is that by moving the road inland they open up the beach area no longer broken up by the road or the parking lots that currently face the beach.

 I found this picture from 2015  with Cheyenne looking toward the Casa Marina Resort from Salute:

There is a tennis practice wall that presumably would have to go, but there will be a nature center built in the middle of the newly configured park. 

 I'm sure the homeless hanging out would not be part of the plan either:

And where there is open space there will be organization and parking and all that stuff.

Astro City, the very popular kids playground will be moved to the beach side of the road in the new improved plan.

The old aircraft radio beacon will also be removed I suppose which seems overdue if we're being honest. No great loss though the ibis like hunting for food in the pond that forms around it in rainy season...

Then there is what happens to the dog parks as they seem sure to shrink under the terms of the new plan. Building the park took a lot of effort when it was proposed and they raised $16,000 from citizens in a fund drive to pay for it. I hope it won't get shrunk when it is moved inland. 

Looking around at the county park I know it''s a bit chaotic but I rather like it that way. I like the grass and the random groves of palms and the feeling of not being in a "proper" city park. Actually the city of Key West has rejected all efforts by Monroe County to hand them the park and this little plot of land on the south shore of the island is firmly county property and their headache.

Apparently in 1983 the county took $80,000 in Federal grant money for the park and thereto came attached conditions including the requirement for a Federal Environmental Assessment if any changes were made to the land. It seems the county only just noticed that requirement and now the assessment must be made. They hope it will be done in "one to three " years then let the construction proceed and  at an estimated cost of six and a half million dollars.

Change is good. And I know this is probably a sensible change long overdue. But everywhere you turn everything is getting modified and cleaned up and stream lined. I wish it weren't. Maybe it will be quite a few more years before the Feds are satisfied...one can only hope.

Zen and Death

Robert M. Pirsig, who inspired generations to road trip across America with his "novelistic autobigraphy," Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died Monday April 24th 2017 at the age of 88.

His publisher William Morrow & Company said in a statement that Pirsig died at his home in South Berwick, Maine, "after a period of failing health."

Pirsig wrote just two books: Zen (subtitled "An Inquiry Into Values") and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals.

Author Robert Pirsig works on a motorcycle in 1975.

William Morrow/HarperCollins

Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing houses. "The book is brilliant beyond belief," wrote Morrow editor James Landis before publication. "It is probably a work of genius and will, I'll wager, attain classic status."

Indeed, the book quickly became a best-seller, and has proved enduring as a work of popular philosophy. A 1968 motorcycle trip across the West with his son Christopher was his inspiration.

An excerpt from the first chapter of the novel:


"What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.

Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important. What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.

The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks.

In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. ``What's new?'' is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.

I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question ``What is best?,'' a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of 8 thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and ``best'' was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now.

Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for."

My buddy Jack Riepe, a scribe himself of no mean repute grumbles that after ten pages of this classic hippy tripe he got bored, put he book down and gave up on his first plan when he was given a copy of the book. He wanted to imitate the  novel's bestseller style in order to make himself a fortune just like Pirsig. Unlike Riepe I liked Zen and found it to be a revelation for my young self. In those days there was no internet so what I gleaned from the book about the author was all I knew and the story was the story with no access offered to explain further details about Pirsig and his tortured psyche.

I pretty much ignored the stuff about how to lose your mind and gain it back but the discussion about Quality and coping with mechanical failure I took to heart and found great relief in discovering that I was not the only amateur motorcycle traveler who had ever got hung up on and stripped on recalcitrant fastener while trying to accomplish a roadside repair. Pirsig gave me a new appreciation for how to overcome roadblocks be they ever so small, and to take  the time to study the problem before trying to tackle the solution.

The effect of this philosophical tome might be described as being rather lightweight in my life but it didn't feel that way and in many respects I still feel comforted by Pirsig's vision of life metaphors expressed in terms of motorcycle repairs. For the past 40 years motorcyclists everywhere have discussed and quoted and critiqued Pirsig's discussion of Quality as though the background of a motorcycle trip to Montana makes the points raised purely a motorcycling issue. It really isn't as Quality or lack of it is what flustered Pirsig into writing the book. His descent into madness, in the third person, is part of his pursuit of Quality, much derided by his haters.

"The mechanic's feel comes from a deep inner kinesthetic feeling for the elasticity of materials. Some materials, like ceramics, have very little, so that when you thread a porcelain fitting you're very careful not to apply great pressures. Other materials, like steel, have tremendous elasticity, more than rubber, but in a range in which, unless you're working with large mechanical forces, the elasticity isn't apparent. 

With nuts and bolts you're in the range of large mechanical forces and you should understand that within these ranges metals are elastic. When you take up a nut there's a point called ``finger-tight'' where there's contact but no takeup of elasticity. Then there's ``snug,'' in which the easy surface elasticity is taken up. Then there's a range called ``tight,'' in which all the elasticity is taken up. The force required to reach these three points is different for each size of nut and bolt, and different for lubricated bolts and for locknuts. The forces are different for steel and cast iron and brass and aluminum and plastics and ceramics. 

But a person with mechanic's feel knows when something's tight and stops. A person without it goes right on past and strips the threads or breaks the assembly. A ``mechanic's feel'' implies not only an understanding for the elasticity of metal but for its softness. The insides of a motorcycle contain surfaces that are precise in some cases to as little as one ten-thousandth of an inch. If you drop them or get dirt on them or scratch them or bang them with a hammer they'll lose that precision. It's important to understand that the metal behind the surfaces can normally take great shock and stress but that the surfaces themselves cannot. 

When handling precision parts that are stuck or difficult to manipulate, a person with mechanic's feel will avoid damaging the surfaces and work with his tools on the nonprecision surfaces of the same part whenever possible. If he must work on the surfaces themselves, he'll always use softer surfaces to work them with. Brass hammers, plastic hammers, wood hammers, rubber hammers and lead hammers are all available for this work. Use them. Vise jaws can be fitted with plastic and copper and lead faces. Use these too. Handle precision parts gently. You'll never be sorry. 

If you have a tendency to bang things around, take more time and try to develop a little more respect for the accomplishment that a precision part represents."

I suspect some of my fondness for this book and its mixture of motorcycle travel and philosophy stems from the fact that I read it and had my mind expanded when I was young and to re-read Zen is to travel back in time in a more perfect way than it was at that time... And I also believe that the issues he raised back the n about Quality in our society are more relevant than ever in the Internet Age. I wonder if the youngsters I work with could ever be persuaded to read and ponder this weighty subject. I expect they are too busy with their phones.