Mall on Duval

Mallory Square upon my return from a trip round the bars (not into them for heaven's sake! I had my poor innocent dog with me.) I saw "two couples enjoying the moment." I thought it was a funny caption but the pigeons looked at me balefully as pigeons do, while the humans kept walking. 

Joking aside I read in the newspaper recently that the City Commission barely managed to muster the votes to have another season of Mall on Duval  It's taken a  fair bit of discussion and debate to test drive the program which closes  down a couple of blocks of Duval Street to traffic and allows pedestrians to mingle and sit at tables outdoors on the street. It was an implementation of the not very radical notion that pedestrian zones boost downtown businesses.

Of course Key West manages to buck every trend ever  and the newspaper says many of the previously supportive Duval Street businesses now want the program to end. They say the pedestrian zone is hurting business not helping and they put their case to the city commission which had to authorize the pedestrian program once again.

Three of the four members of the commission voted against it but Mall on Duval will take place every other Friday and Saturday until February 17th when the program will close and be evaluated. Shutting down an open air street event in the middle of winter at the height of tourist season only makes sense to commissioners of the Southernmost City. Last year the program ran from February to July and was considered a massive success. Now suddenly it is on life support.

There was an issue with cost as the city was paying $5000 each weekend for police off duty to patrol the event until somebody figured out this isn't a high risk gathering requiring a police presence and that expense was cut, allowing the Mall on Duval to press ahead.

Now the plan is to take away a program once seen as a great way to encourage locals downtown, to keep people in the area and to support the image of a street that really might be at the heart of the city.  One has to wonder what could save it and keep it going after February 17th next year. 

Colors Of The Keys

I have posted a few pictures of the colors i see daily on my walks around the Lower Keys. I haven't much to say about them except that I accumulate pictures like these over time as i am out twice a day usually and always with my camera. I decided not to clean them up or filter them or process them as they are a reasonable representation of what I see or as close as a camera can get to what the human eye sees. This is the time of year downtown Key West is crowded which pushes me away from Duval Street and helps me find my best walks away from the crowds.

 

My wife took this one of me walking the neighbor's dog with Rusty who was none too pleased to be sharing me.

 Rusty and Roxie at West Summerland key.

Petronia Street

I'm not sure this sort of new construction is in the Key West style lacking as it does balconies and so forth but at least they kept some off street parking. 

I saw a row of books on the wall of the fire station downtown. No idea who or why.

On Instagram I titled this one "Open Invitation."

I was hoping the pigeon would come into the middle of the rainbow colored crosswalk but It stayed away from Rusty and I.

Bliss Deferred, a sign I saw a couple of weeks ago. I admit that even as jaded as I am I was still surprised to see the open ended vacation on the sign. It seems South American agriculture was the reason for the vacation and agriculture is notoriously unscheduled:
"We are back from picking coffee beans in Colombia. Open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday from 6 PM to 9 PM. Online reservations available."

Limin'

The temptation in Key West when you see people sitting around is to ascribe to them impure motives. In a world driven by the urge to succeed and create and make more, lounging is anything but a virtue.

So if you are seen lounging with a drink in hand chatting, or studying the horse racing form or communicating with your family it is only to easy to view you as lazy or a bum or some other form of idler. You may just be relaxing after a long day of manual labor. Or office labor. 

But this is Key West, the town renowned for lounging and vacationing and drinking and partying. Everything as hard as possible.

Years ago my wife and I went sailing in the Caribbean during the low tourist season and we spent two weeks between Grenada, St Lucia and the Grenadines. It was my cunning plan to assure my wife a sail boat trip would be fun and it worked splendidly as we had a great time making leisurely passages swimming and ignoring the fact it was the height of hurricane season. We were from California and knew nothing of such things. We knew nothing of limin' either but soon learned.

Not sure if buzzing around on a boat counts as limin' but I'm pretty sure the seagull on the pole was relaxing...and catching the cool easterly breeze. Because that is what limin's actually is, a Caribbean phrase reflected a laid back form of relaxation. The Internet has a formal explanation:
The word is associated with sitting under a lime tree,or having nothing more demanding to do than squeezing limes. It is also thought to originate from "limey", a slang term meaning a British serviceman during World War II (noted for hanging around bars and drinking).

No lime trees need be in sight when you decide to act all tropical and do nothing. Read the warning signs though as a visitor dived head first into shallow water a few years ago and ended up paralyzed. That ended up in a massive lawsuit so now all hotels have to warn guests not to be stupid, even when drunk. Being reckless isn't limin' so before you dive check the water depth you plan to plunge into or risk death...

Had I had the time I might have settled myself down under the  arbor  at  First State Bank to do a little limin' myself, but duty called and I had to get back to work. I suck at living on island time!

The irony of course is that you have to have a lot of money or a private income to live  a laid back life in the Keys these days. Working people don't get to hang out as much as visitors or retirees who come to live here and naively assume laid back is the cultural norm. Limin' isn't for everybody in Paradise.

Lazy Way Lane

A brisk cold front finally has broken the back of summer though of course that doesn't mean snowdrifts and permanent cold temperatures until Spring. Cold is a relative term though I was wearing a  wind breaker to take this picture near the waterfront in the strong north wind. Mine is the large shadow to the left, the other one was a woman reading her phone who turned up her nose, literally, when I sat next to her. I wanted to ask her how she did that but she didn't look friendly.

Lazy Way Lane is  an odd street in the city that starts behind Schooner Wharf Bar and for vehicles is a one way meander to Elizabeth Street opposite Kermit's Key Lime Store.

In the afternoon sun of my lunch break yesterday the shadows were long and crisp as my neighbors went about their very important business.

 I was dodging motorized vehicles and meandering with a camera around my neck enjoying the heat out of the wind. The National Weather Service says Key West has been above 80 degrees every day since March, often far above that, so a temperature in the mid 70s with a wind chill is a change. Bye bye humidity for a few days.

The bare arms and Capri pants belong to hardier types. If you want to look like a local in these near blizzard conditions you need to cover up and take precautions. 

 These two have the right idea:

This guy reminded me of an old Key West joke, the city where dressing up never happens unless it's a tutu or an outrageous costume. "What do you call the guy in the suit?" Answer: "Defendant." Ba da bing. The two guys talking in the background are dressed in Key West "suits." Notice their covered up arms...and they probably don't own long pants or else they would have been pulled out of some musty locker and pressed into service.

 I switched to color photography to illustrate tropical death in this picture. Frozen vegetation:

And this avid photographer was using a real camera checking the status of a chicken hunkering in the gravel out of the wind. The translucent dress tells the focused observer she is probably a visitor. Also I am the only local who photographs wild chickens from time to time.

A crowd of people hunkering here buying heat to stimulate their extremities back to life with powerful Cuban coffee. 

And as the sun got closer to the horizon (it gets properly dark around here near six pm) I retreated to my job and my 911 calls and the benefits of an air conditioned office.

Well, air conditioning is very beneficial in the height of summer  which amounts to 8 or more months of the year.