Apocalypse Weekend

Start the week with Coronavirus! Happy Day! I took these pictures Saturday morning on my usual Rusty walk around Old Town. In an effort to reduce crowds and the possibility of gathering and spreading the virus more spaces are now closed. Including Simonton Beach. A couple of days earlier Rusty rolled in the sand and I took a picture across the water...Now it's all closed off.

I fear the next apparently inevitable step in the process which is a total lockdown, stay at home order. My buddy Giovanni in Italy, a cardiologist in Terni, sent me an e-mail describing his life at home and he is not a fan of sitting still and enjoying inner contemplation. His private practice has dried up to almost nothing, and aside from making less money he has nothing to do all day...and that freaks him out. Of an evening after a day of listening to hearts at the public hospital and an afternoon of doing it in his private office next to his home he likes to take a walk around downtown, looking in the shop windows, admiring passersby and chatting aimlessly with friends.  All we can do now he writes is take a walk around the block. The despair in his tone is palpable after three weeks of lockdown.

In terms of my daily life my routines have hardly changed this despite my wife's self imposed quarantine for the last couple of weeks. Of course I am fed up taking a bleach spray to work, I've largely given up dodging people at the market and we are relaying on our supplies at home of which we have plenty, and socializing is done by electron. As long as Rusty and I can keep walking, as long as my camera doesn't break, I'm fine thanks. Not hard to be in this perfect summery climate, daily swims in the canal and miles of empty mangrove trails all to myself! I don't go to bars but I share these sentiments:

So far, somehow, Florida isn't in the headlines for rate of infection. In the headlines I see Detroit New Orleans growing in numbers alongside Washington California and the New York area. At the same time Florida's Republican governor has come under all sorts of fire. I don't really feel like he deserves it, even though mine seems to be the minority view. He has been attacked for not shutting down beaches soon enough which is a fair criticism but it was early days for most Americans who hardly seem to have noticed what's going on ahead in the development of this pandemic. With the beaches shut down at last Governor DeSantis was stuck with a flow of New Yorkers understandably fleeing the epicenter of sickness and coming back to their winter homes in Florida. And the bystanders laid into him for that. This is the second time I've seen this group of cyclists riding around the city ignoring social distancing guidelines.

It's this kind of thoughtlessness that pushes governments into draconian measures to protect us from ourselves.  In Britain where the Prime Minister has come down with the disease social distancing was going so broadly ignored by everybody that have had to institute an official lock down. When I walk Rusty I touch nothing, I avoid people and I avoid anything that could put me close to anyone. My sunset walks are alone on trails I've been walking for decades and to have this time with my dog and my camera taken away would really start to piss me off.

Bit of a first world problem when faced with drowning from the worst 'flu epidemic seen in the past century. I just feel that some restraint and thoughtfulness will help us get through this without having ti worry too much about government intervention. If you understand the need for social distancing and how it works you don't need to be nagged to do as you are told by the cops. People have been gathering in groups to watch the sunset through this crisis. They closed Mallory Square to prevent people from bunching. So what did they do? They bunched on the White Street Pier and Higgs Beach. Guess what?

Like so many of us I wonder how we are going to ever get out of this situation. They call it an "exit plan," which no one has a clue about. As usual I watch our friends in Europe who  are deeper into this than us. In Italy one town at the center of the epidemic tried to ease restrictions and the damned virus sprang up again. In Hong Kong they called back government office workers from working at home and as soon as they did the virus came back. I do not envy our leaders struggling to deal with this new problem. I understand the President facing re-election wants to get back to normal but I don't see Easter as a target date. More like the height of infection maybe. I caught a poor quality photo of this guy speeding back to Stock Island with his loot. Paper towels! Yay!

I see people Up North hunkering down in heavy coats and woolen beanies social distancing between snowdrifts and my issue is what time do I want to take a dip in the canal to refresh myself. I talk to people abandoned by their wealthy bosses to fend for themselves and I have a job with the most supportive organization in Key West. Small businesses are struggling to keep their people working, facing the possibility of falling between the cracks and not getting any support from the Feds. So I figured what the hell. I am going to post a few unrelated pictures of things I saw on Duval, colors shapes and unconsidered trifles I had time and peace and quiet t look for on our walk yesterday morning. Nothing to do with the virus directly.

I hope the pictures make up for my coronavirus grumblings.

Sugarloaf Dusk

Spending an hour with Rusty watching the darkness close in around us is a meditation.

 Me with my camera, he with his nose.

I love walking Rusty through these mangrove trails.

Youngsters apparently come by these dead ends to enjoy their cars.

I have learned that sometimes on his walks he likes to pause and listen and look.

The Chair Man

It started with me enjoying the texture of the trunk, and then I noticed the rocking chair in the background. Hmm I thought. I do that sometimes as Rusty drags me along trailing his nose. I think hmmm...

What if I see a few more chairs around town. Remember this was before the coronavirus lock down and I wasn't sure if I could find empty seats. Actually I'm joking, as I rarely see people sitting on their porches in this age of cheap air conditioning.

I have saved up a bunch of pictures to keep this page going and digging back through my files I remembered my planned chair essay. Including a hammock.  Key West was founded in 1828 and in those early years many people slept outdoors on their porches and balconies where there was a chance of a breeze and of course an encounter with a yellow fever bearing mosquito.

 In the next picture you'll see the pale blue ceiling which by tradition discourages insects and ghosts if you feel so inclined. The tin bird I'm not sure about.

Traditional deck seating. I actually like proper chairs as rockers inflict a fatal need to rock back and forth and with my obsessive nature the rocking tends to get away from me.

I was delighted as we sniffed our way down Angela Street and I spotted a bench in the cemetery.  I have an affinity for the Key West cemetery as it's above ground and the traditions of sharing the grave with the family is familiar to me from my Italian childhood. Sitting out with your dead relatives may look odd to some people but I find it very endearing. 

 One thing I don't do is sit in coffee shops with my MacBook Air and type.  I'd rather sit in the cemetery than sit elbow to elbow in a. coffee shop, but I accept I am in a minority. I posted this picture to show people in Key West weren't quarantining themselves. My wife and I were but I had a hotline to the Italian mess and I was worried about what was to come. All this has long since ended:

Walking Duval that early I peered into the sales booths and saw just how rough some people have it at work! 

In the 911 center we get to sit for pretty much the whole twelve hours on shift and we get to sit on expensive 24 hour chairs and I am very grateful! 

Looking back at these photos comparing Key West then, less than two weeks ago, to the city's tourism face now it's suddenly very apparent how much we have lost.  Everybody could hear an argument that tourism is over sold but I don't think living with no visitors at all is going to be tenable for long.

The low wall isn't technically a seat at Mallory Square but that's what it's used for! Not now though, the parking lot is open for cars if any, but the square itself and the money making celebrations are all closed for the time being. It's awful seeing a barrier across the square.

And of course you can still find the occasional abandoned chair which always warms my heart in Key West. I am finding the city is achieving a level of cleanliness and order that I had always hoped for and to my surprise with that Disneyfication comes a loss of quirkiness. I feel idiotic really as I can't seem to find the non conformity and be satisfied with newly tarted up Old Town. It's one or the other obviously, and not both. This town is becoming a millionaires' playground and they don't pay to live in quirky disorder. And yet we can slip a little through the net:

And at the end of all that walking around I should have taken over the green recliner.  

But I had to go home.

Idiocy Overheard

Let me be quite clear: I was just sitting there minding my own business with my dog rolling in the grass nearby,  my book open on my iPhone, my camera set down next to me, and they came along. I wasn't listening to them but short of a Navy jet passing directly overhead I couldn't help but overhear them. Boy, they were worth listening to though, especially if you are sick and tired of being talked down to about the dangers of the virus and refusing to social distance yourself.

One starts off by saying, as they line up at the bus stop that she's thinking about joining her daughter in New York (please yes I'm thinking). Besides her friend said this panic is all excessive. 5,000 people die every year of the 'flu and this thing hasn't killed anything like that. (Bloody hell, I'm thinking, they really don't get it.) The conversation went on like that apparently endlessly, my toes curling, thinking about all the stuff going on around us, across the world, the people unknown to us dying and these two were annoyed they were being inconvenienced. One told the other to go to Canada, she could continue on anywhere from there. (Wow, I thought, Canada is closed as tight as the US is- you can't get there from here.) I loaded Rusty and the camera into the car and was about ready to load myself when another car pulled up and a woman popped her head out.

Is the Greyhound office open? she asked.  I guess I was feeling a bit pissed off because I wanted to say do I look like a coronavirus information center? But I said yes, it sure looks open doesn't it? I think Beni Hana is open up the street too if you need lunch. She looked a bit taken aback at my sarcasm. I was about to snap at her get out of the car walk across the lot and read  the paper taped to the door. I bit my tongue and got in the car. She waited for me to leave before she did just that. I'd have checked Google before asking a stranger about something of which he knew nothing. Leave me isolated please and figure stuff out by paying attention.

I have to say the area in front of the airport and around Pines Park and the old Boys and Girls Club looks bizarre. It is packed with rental cars in storage, all makes and models and colors waiting for tourists to return to the Keys. I'm guessing there will be some astonishing deals to drive them back to the mainland if the pandemic ever moves on. It really does start to resemble a zombie apocalypse some days in some small ways.

I drove round Dead Man's Curve (where people used to drive or ride off South Roosevelt and die before they built up the corner with signs and barriers) and doubled back on Flagler driving into Key Plaza (not Keys Plaza please) and wandered in to Publix, the one known to people in Key West as the new Publix, as opposed to the old one up the road at Searstown. In the general panic of reassuring themselves by overdosing on shopping people seemed to scatter all the carts thus our local supermarkets were having trouble stocking the damned  carts. The kind lady out there sanitizing them told me they brought in a hundred extra. I believe it: never seen the lobby so full of carts!

 Dried beans were in short supply as was branded milk and a lot of meats but things were very quiet with all the dreaded Spring Breakers gone, and with them their money...Toilet paper is apparently the first thing people buy but there were some paper towels on the shelves. The latest issue I've heard about is how the macerators in our new sewage system are being asked to chew up all sorts of towels, paper and sanitizing towels and other substitutes for missing toilet paper. I see a sewage problem looming. Great stuff isn't it? Unintended consequences. Luckily we bought some bog roll a couple of weeks ago on our last trip to Miami so we are set, which makes watching the great Bog Roll Disappearing Magic Act look pretty funny from our thrones.

Aside from all the coronavirus madness, Rusty and I did walk around Old Town a bit and I got some of my pre-pandemic black and white pictures taken to make me feel more like old times.

I love having the time to peer down empty alleyways and lanes, but I am not a huge fan of putting people in the pictures anyway.

I'm finding it hard to find quirk on the streets of Key West, gentrification doesn't hold hands very well with nonconformity and weirdness so I have to hunt around for colors and shapes and public artwork where I can.

 At the end of the vacation I have I admit it, been getting up late and enjoying the morning sunrise on the buildings, lots of shadows and shapes on the houses.

Southard Street at 8:30 yesterday morning, a few cars a few bicycles a few scooters but not much.

Pleasant enough for now but how this ends who knows? I'm very glad my wife and I are working.