Miami

Miami seen from the freeway flyover. Lovely isn't it?

My wife got really mad with Doubletree as their accessible room patently was not. It was a very long way from the elevators. AS she said it was lucky she goes to the gym regularly as anyone less fit would never have been able to push me past the roughly 40 rooms to get to ours. Which, when we arrived had a lovely view of the waterfront which prompted this essay. However I couldn't get out there in my chair and had to transfer to my walker. Had I not had a walker I'd have got no view:

The thing about Miami is that it is a lovely city, full of different and interesting cultures set in  lush  tropical surroundings except the city itself is unapproachable. I don't know why but almost nobody likes Miami. 

For some haters its the fact that Spanish carries equal weight if not greater weight in some neighborhoods. It can be annoying I know but the compensation for that is the incredible array of foods from all over Latin America in funky first rate hole-in-the-wall eateries.

Naturally I was exhausted by the time we arrived at our hotel so we ordered in room service, a mixture of food from Uruguay, Dominican Republic and of course Cuba in various appetizers. 

There are museums and performances and everyone loves to call South Florida home in the winter so world class performers show up here when the snow is thick Up North. 

None of it compensates somehow for a city that lacks some essential element that I cannot identify.  Cities all over the world are  full of hustle and aggression and bad manners but somehow much of Miami is the poster child for unpleasant urban living. 

I watched Anthony Bourdain dissect Miami Beach and he made me want to hang there, but he had that knack obviously. Yet when I go to Miami i can't stand the place. I crave Key West.

The staff at my rehab were delightful, my landlord is  great guy, compassionate and caring and they all live in the least caring city I know,  a place that makes Los Angeles look like the home of the warm fuzzies.

If Miami were a cool town to visit it would elevate life in the Keys too, because this mess of competing corruption and temporary residence is the city that blocks access to the islands. This is where you come for world class medical care, and if you desire, plastic surgery because Miami is the world capital of tacky.

And on a related note I have developed a healthy fear of motorcycling in Miami traffic. They have  a European approach to ignoring the rules which works in Rome but in the US they freak each other out and accidents clog arteries all over the place all the time. My retirement plan is to start all road trips at 2am to get past Miami while the city sleeps.

I just stood there and played with my camera and pondered the injustice of such a crappy city occupying such a lovely spot and making itself home to spivs frauds con men and retired Latin power brokers right alongside legitimate  business people from all over the Caribbean basin.

I went to the surgeon's office to get the job done that I came to do, and  got approved for increased locomotion as I continue my path to recovery.

All those broken bones....

And this useful reminder:

Lost Food

We took Chuck and Wayne to brunch by way of thank you. My wife said Lost Kitchen so who were we to disagree? Chuck photographed me stumping down the boardwalk with Layne, and Wayne watching our progress: 

The Lodt Kitchen used to be a pop up, one of those fashionable millennial concepts of top class low cost impermanence in public eating. Now they have a fixed location and oddly enough it’s in a low rent marina in Stock Island.

Safe Harbor is another of those low cost water living situations but it gives off the feeling of being a community. Not necessarily of sailors but of artists and artisans seeking relief from gentrification and expense and development that is creeping into Stock Island from Key West. 

The boardwalk used to be home to carpenters and metalworkers and painters. It’s behind Hogfish which ably markets itself as old Keys style for tourists seeking the authentic. It gives the impression of hanging on barely as Stock Island starts to find itself home to large developments of modern marinas and hotel resort complexes. 

Ironically I have long been predicting Safe Harbor’s demise yet here they still are, hanging on. 

I made a small kerfuffle as I came in with my walker but at least I am more mobile these days and can usually use a walker. I took a seat with my back to the wall to give the chair greater stability so Chuck took my picture under a sign hanging on the wall from a former sports bar on Caroline Street. Change is the rule in Key West. 

Brunch was a mystery. They served drinks, fruit juices and champagne or strong sweet coffee which I much enjoyed. And brought dishes with no warning or choice which was pleasant inasmuch as there was no pondering menus, a much over rated first world activity I find,  however with no printed menu we had no clue what was going on. 

Poached eggs over spaghetti squash, I ended up with two as Layne didn’t like the cold egg. Could have used stronger seasoning I thought. It was billed as a New Orleans brunch so the spicy remoulade with the fried green tomatoes hit the spot:

In addition to no clues what was coming we were sat at a table with three strangers, a French Swiss man who instantly found connection with Chuck the Francophone and his wife an environmental lawyer who connected with my wife the former public defender and a Cuban woman who connected with Wayne in some level I didn’t catch. I looked around. 

It’s a good thing I suppose to have a local watery displaying art upstairs and thus not accessible but it felt like well meaning gentrification. 

The restaurant is warm and inviting so while it seemed the service was mysterious it worked. Food came and coffee was refilled and conversation flowed. 

Then we had gumbo. I have to say I am not a fan of okra. I have tried but tontjose of you who say fried okra is good I say you can fry anything and if you eat it before it cools it will be good.  However okra cooked in gumbo lends the sauce a peculiar and rather goey consistency which reminded me of bodily fluids. Lots of shrimp and sausage but that okra...

I could have eaten lots of dates with the stewed pear, our last course. Or a crisp sugar cookie. 

It was an enjoyable outing and everything about brunch spoke of attention to detail. 

It is clearly much appreciated and dare I say fashionable. 

And the whole operation is right there squeezed into a small space. 

They have quite the following, reservations required where you have to allow yourself to be led, rather than making the choices. I just can’t make up my mind which side of the gentrification line they lie. I hope they will be allowed to continue this strange personal restaurant format no matter how mainstream Stock Island becomes.

Cormorant

I see ducks. Honestly I don’t know what they are. I first published this blog in June 2007 and since then I have received all kinds of guff for my deplorable lack of knowledge in the fields of botany and bird watching.

So if you see me make a gross error in taxonomy for heaven’s sake call me out on it. Recently I posted a picture of a cormorant and an eager bird watcher and photographer, a true expert Mark Hedden wrote on my Instagram account that it was a green heron.

I’m sure he’s right but to me it was a dark shadow perched on a branch overlooking water.  Ergo it was a cormorant. Simple no? Incorrect it turns out but if it has a certain profile and it’s near water it’s a cormorant until proved otherwise.

And I hope I have made it clear you are very free to call bullshit if I get it wrong. I shan’t challenge you, nor shall I ever waste my precious time left on planet Earth trying to learn the names and distinguishing features of animal bird and plant life.

I know a few names in each category and that’s good enough for me. If this exposition leaves you feeling let down allow me to apologize, but take heart at least that I’m not pulling the wool over your eyes. If these aren’t cormorants they ought to be:

No, wait! Even I know these are pelicans. If they are white I think they are juveniles but these are adults I'm pretty sure.

A  broad view from a refurbished Rest Beach west  toward the White Street Pier. 

Poinciana Housing

As part of my incorporation of exploration into my trips by electric mobility scooter I was checking out the tidal canal off Donald Avenue hoping to see I wasn't sure what. I ended up noticing no wildlife but a bunch of dead mangroves, burned by Hurricane Irma. So I took a couple of pictures, one with a filter:

 The other without. Hurricanes suck up seawater and rain salt water on the just and unjust alike as they sweep across land. Gardeners are advised to soak their gardens with fresh water before a storm to limit the damage of the salty breezes from these storms but Irma was so bad it wrecked plants normally immune to the salt environment. 140 mph winds can do a lot of damage.

Rounding the corner onto 20th Street I saw the black fence at the corner house which prompted me to take a picture of it. How often do you see a homeowner so bold as to paint their outer perimeter such a color? Exactly.

Poinciana Housing used to be Navy quarters in the 1950s. Then the 154 units were deactivated by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission which gave the buildings and land to the city which promptly set the property aside for low income housing.

 Weirdly enough it is still surrounded by fencing as though to secure the residents from predators outside the former base but in light of the fact the two entrances are wide open the fence seems to serve no real purpose. It just makes you work to get inside.

 The odd thing about Poinciana is that in a town where space is at a premium there is surely some more efficient way to use the green acres located inside the rusting boundary fence. I think of Meridian West on Stock Island, high density low income housing with shaded parking on the ground and two floors of housing above, all stacked and not at all unpleasant. The trick would be to rebuild Poinciana without displacing people right and left. 

The city is always wringing its hands about worker housing but like anything else you have to build it to create it and so far...nothing.

I gave up rolling to the other entrance on Duck Avenue at 5 mph and turned around shooting some pictures through the irritating fence. 

 And across the street a sign of Christmas. Smile! You and your red teeth are on camera!