People On The Streets

The chamber of commerce told the paper that the return of people to the Keys amounted to a trickle.

When I drove home around 6 o'clock the first day of the re-opening I saw  large groups of cars on the highway driving toward Key West and each had more than one person inside, which is the usual sign of a visitors. Single occupant travel is the norm in the Keys for commuters. Not many people commute with kayaks on the roof either.

It may I suppose have been a trickle but after two months of empty streets it felt like a flood.

The official statistics are good too with only one person hospitalized at the moment and 110 cases reported throughout the Keys. 

I haven't been to check out the open bars but I plan to stay on the sidelines for as long as I can before  returning to normal. I find the level of certainty among amateur epidemiologists to be rather disturbing but I am keeping my fingers crossed for a vaccine. Then of course the anti vaccination mob will descend with fury I am sure. I cannot understand why anyone would run for public office. 

The van shop called and said the van is finished and should be tested detailed and ready for pick up sometime next week, We haven't got the final bill yet so the details are being polished I expect as we said we would be able to pick it up the last week of the month. They are a fussy lot at Custom Coach Creations as they don't like to hand over the vehicle until they are sure all details are correct and they won't send me pictures because they like a big reveal. 

We did get one picture as they wanted to make sure we are okay with the placement of the faucet...Looks okay to me as the idea is it will also work as outside sprayer for Rusty and so forth. 

I have a vacation planned for mid July when we want to test this mad retirement plan out. Suddenly traveling like this becomes an exercise in social distancing and self reliance in a way I had never imagined. Life really is becoming interesting.

Marathon

My wife has been locked down at home since the Ides of March and she hasn't minded at all much to her surprise. Teaching Adult Ed from home has caused some loud frustrations from the corner "office" at home from time to time as the computer system spat back predictably as the district gurus worked to redefine its purpose and use as a home schooling system. Apparently they have succeeded beautifully as she surprised me earlier this week while swimming when she remarked how very useful some particular Google school app is proving to be. For my wife at least it works smoothly and is integrated into her system. The future of teaching may be at home especially for teachers like her with immune issues. And only one more year to go till retirement.

So the news that she had to go to her classroom in Marathon to do some obscure paperwork surprised me but nothing loathe I agreed that getting an oil change for the Fiat would be a good idea. A former student works at a shop and she likes to stop by and see him from time to time. In the era of coronavirus I am  the one who shows up masked and goes face to face with an adult former student who cares not one jot to see me. Nevertheless an oil change is a Good Thing so Rusty and I dumped my adult ed teacher and headed over to meet the grumpy owner of the most grumpy oil change shop in the Western World - and his mechanic the cheerful former English language student who now speaks English but never does when Mr Grumpy is around.

After we had exchanged grunts, myself with Mr Grumpy, he being unmasked as you might expect from a man who makes my social ineptitude look positively gregarious, Rusty and I abandoned the car and went for a walk. It was as you can see, a gray Tuesday in Marathon. I think the only reason it didn't rain was because I was actually working my scheduled weird four hour evening shift and was not therefore a day off technically. The weather made up for the mistake by sending the mother of all thunderstorms Wednesday and quite putting Rusty off his food.

Walking along the sidewalk on the frontage road next to the Overseas Highway I could have tossed a pebble into tidal water as illustrated above. The north ("gulf" side as it's known to locals) is similarly close give or take a couple of blocks depending on the shape of the island. For a city of ten thousand there's a reason why Marathon is miles long as it is only yards wide and it's a collection of narrow islands not a wide short lump like Key West.

Compared to Key West Marathon lacks a "there, there" to quote Gertrude Stein speaking about her childhood home that vanished from Oakland. And like the second city in Northern California Marathon tends to end up playing second fiddle to Key West despite the fact that perception tends to cause annoyance. As though to prove the point we came across a block of wilderness a small spot of eccentricity in a town built to conform..

Rusty sniffed while I stood and looked, pondering my chances of getting wet...

The gray threatening sky contrasted with the bright primary colors on the ground and as we strolled back on the other side of the Highway I saw more colors and shapes to attract the eye. There is no doubt Key West has architecture and many more restaurants than Marathon, more theaters and movies and more offshore destinations among sandbars and islands, but Marathon, in a time of staying put offers its own retreat from the world. Not having a commercial airline at the airport suddenly seems like an advantage where travel seems to pose certain risks. I wonder indeed if movie theaters will even exist after all this with AMC going bankrupt.

They did a good job as usual at a reasonable price for synthetic oil and the ex-student gave me a secret smile to show he remembered to whom the car really belongs. Mr Grumpy avoided me while Mrs Grumpy took my credit card with her usual graceless fierceness, as though I had asked her on a  date rather than offering to pay what I owe. After 90 plastic dollars changed hands she glared at me like a lioness protecting her young and wished me a "blessed day." A reminder if I needed one that being blessed does not always lead to a sunny disposition.

I wore my new mask throughout the transaction of course and even though instructions on the door said to wear one neither Mrs Grumpy nor a bored dude on the couch, possibly a customer or family friend, were wearing one but as usual we have to fall back on the bromide that we live in awkward times and we do what we feel is right. I enjoy taking the car to a place where fake corporate customer service is nowhere to be seen and these unhappy people prefer to wear their grumpy hearts on the their sleeves and very much in your face. This isn't a namby pamby tourist joint but a hard core hard work oily working class shop. Take it or leave it. I love it and I find them refreshing though I am glad I don't actually have to live with them. Trust your car to them that's all the transaction is about and they will do you proud.

With the bars and theaters reopening today in Key West I fear the notion is now running rampant that the crisis is over and my wife and I still distancing ourselves will be considered to be living on the eccentric fringe, not alone but in a minority. I hope we really have seen the last of this blood clotting virus but history indicates it will probably be back. I can hardly wait.

Duval Re-Opened

Irish Kevin's sells food and thus has re-opened where other bars derive less money from food than drinks and therefore may not open until Friday. The idea is to allow less crowded activities as the city and county allow visitors to return after two months closed to outsiders.

On a first visit downtown I could see a complete change in atmosphere obviously with actual live people walking riding and driving but the sidewalks aren't yet crowded.

Masks, social distancing and trying to follow the rules is evident. My drive in to work has shown tons of traffic on the highway, a bit of a shock really after two months of no traffic at all. Fogarty's separated dining scene:

Some names didn't survive the shut down though whether they were thriving and simply ground to a  halt or whether they were on their way who knows...and who cares because the sense of normal life slipping away is only reinforced by the sight of empty store fronts.

Answering phones at the police department has been unusual to put it mildly. Mostly we have been getting administrative calls from people out of town wanting me, a police dispatcher, to tell them about the re-opening. Suggesting they call the chamber of commerce or gasp- try google! - is not a satisfactory answer so we have been telling people about the fifty percent occupancy rule, the masks and the distancing and on and on.

Most people are cool but you would be amazed by the occasional caller who goes off on the subject of being required to wear a mask inside. I'm not sure why they feel a need to berate us as far as we are from the centers of decision making but more than that I'm not sure why one would plan a vacation to a place that has, before you get here, made you annoyed. People are not always at their best in a  time of difficulty it turns out. Suffering does not ennoble.

Need a job? Apparently some people are hiring. I feel as though we are in a holding pattern at the moment caught between the shut down that was clearly delineated and the re-opening has all kinds of nuance and uncertainty. One has to wonder how much coronavirus has come into town but that won't be clear for weeks. We can hope summer will drive the virus underground but the future as Doris Day put it so  memorably is not ours to see. One day at a time.

Then Tuesday evening there was a peaceful march to protest the George Floyd killing. The police, Sheriff's department and Fish and Wildlife all marched with the protesters and yet the afternoon was filled with rumors and alarums about riots and and mayhem planned for the evening. Then people call the police to demand to know whats going on. No amount of reassurance that the chief and the sheriff are walking in the parade would calm the callers down. Facebook rumors ruled the city.

The march was entirely peaceful of course and went off without a hitch I am told. But the frisson of fear animated Key West for a few hours. And made my ear bleed with all the fear filled demands for information of which of course we had none. 

I look at my own pictures of key West coming back to normal and part of me rejoices and part of me sucks in my breath afraid for our own future. 105,000 dead and cases increasing in number, nationwide riots and an active hurricane season on the horizon. These are times that are sent to try us.

On top of all that parking rules are back and the parking control is out there ticketing and towing. Masks and parking meters! What a  town!

Duval Street has been repaved which is excellent but Simonton Street isn't  quite covered back up and some gravel was showing at the Caroline Street intersection.

The triangle at the entrance to the city may become a traffic slow down as the bridge into the city is operating on only three lanes at least into November so we shall see how that works out too as traffic builds. My wife and I will continue to order food to go to support our restaurants and now that we have people from distant places in the islands our own social distancing will have to be vigilant toi protect her own impaired immune system. 

I never felt able to encourage the highway to stay closed as my wife and I both have government jobs and too many people were hurting for money to be able to say keep the road closed with an easy mind. Now that things are going back to normal we have to hope that visitors will respect the rules and help keep the keys peaceful and as infection free as possible. I wonder how that will work out.

Sunday Morning

I took these pictures last week but they are emblematic of a Key West closed for business. 

I spoke with the van builders last week and they said they were working through this weekend to finish it so they can test it next week. There is no certainty but my wife and I may be driving up next week to pick it up. That is a journey fraught with complications but my wife has decided we can rent a  car, spend one night at the Hilton in DeLand  and once they hand over the van to us we have our own self contained space for the return trip. 

It's decisions like these that make post Covid life so complicated. I was going to go on my own but neither of us felt good about only me being on hand to check out the result of two years of scheming and planning, a van that holds the keys to our futures. 

Custom Coach assured us they will wear masks for the walk through and the explanation of systems and we felt it necessary to pint out that masks are required for my wife because we live in a  world where mask wearing is a political statement as absurd as that sounds. The Hilton has got the highest marks according to my wife for sanitary rooms and I have noticed new guidelines form the CDC discussing viral contamination where objects are unlikely to transmit the coronavirus. It always struck me as odd how the worst outbreaks centered on crowded cities to the exclusion almost of rural backwaters. Apparently now they think the best way to catch the disease is to sit indoors with someone for fifteen minutes or more preferably unmasked to enjoy the easiest transmission of the virus.

It feels ridiculous to plan a 350 mile trip across Florida like a military campaign but we have no choice. Once we get the van home our horizons will expand even in a world dominated by virus talk. Riot talk is another subject which hasn't touched the Keys. 

Repairs repaving and a gradual reopening.  Now we are told hurricane season will be "active" with two storms already logged. However what they don't point out this early is where all these putative extra active hurricanes may appear from and go to. I am a lot more knowledgeable about hurricane preparedness than I am about virus awareness. There is plenty of time to test the van out before it has to stand by as a self contained evacuation vehicle. By September, peak month for hurricane season, storm shutters in use here, below, to protect windows from maintenance chores, could be up to keep out flying debris.

It has been odd to see the gradual littering by Nature in corners of the city where people aren't walking.

There are quite a few empty storefronts and how soon they get filled will be a measure of the confidence people have in Key West's ability to draw vacationers.This is a resilient town nearly wiped out by the Great Depression and saved ironically by government intervention. 

It seems as though we must save ourselves this time and I have no doubt Key West will be up to the challenge. I hope visitors will get in the spirit of the thing and recognize that being different deamnds different behavior. 

I wonder what I will see here next week, I wonder if traffic crashes and drunk driving will come back on the books like before? 

Key West has had a dreadful reputation for bicycle accidents, the worst per capita in the State of Florida. Since the lock down  car crashes and drunk driving reports have vanished. As much as people like to say the side effects of the lock down have been bad, some of them have actually been good. Obviously this situation can't go on but a return to a more mindful normal would be nice.

Rusty found clean cigarette butt free water in the bowl at the entrance to Casa 325, the first time in memory he has been able to drink from that spot on Duval Street. 

"Online" is the default now showing experience of our lives. I enjoyed the radio broadcast of the 39 Steps on US 1 Radio, a substitute for a proper playhouse version of the play but I do look forward to sitting in a  theater once more I have to admit.

Fingers crossed, its all we can do. 

Interesting Times

The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. Words to live by according to our President. I guess I am a bad Democrat then, at least for now, though given enough time and perhaps not too much of that the way things are going I shall surely mature into a good Democrat. Not, though, by ingesting bleach.

My brother-in-law sent me an article discussing the ways in which artificial intelligence can be used to create videos and images of people of importance doing things they never did. Soon, if not now, they will be indistinguishable from reality. A presidential tweet of immeasurable bad taste may indeed be produced to denigrate him and not to praise him and no one will know if it is true or not. Madness lies down this path. Shakespeare wrote plays about this lunacy five hundred years ago. Internet your name is Iago.

Truth is malleable, facts are becoming less stubborn, reality is a chimera suited to the point of view of the observer. And so today we will start to see the influx of visitors we dread and desire. The big issue is whether or to wear a mask.  The President of the United States has made wearing a mask a symbol of sheepish submission and the refusal to wear a mask the representation of rebellion against the tyranny of the government he leads. How this makes any sense only Shakespeare or Orwell could unravel: I can't.  I just watch and wonder at the state of collective madness our nation has sunk into. 

I once welcomed the Internet as a way to provide education, information and facts at the touch of a button without the interpretation of third parties. That view seems more and more naive as time goes by and every fact, every truth that is not convenient gets discarded on the pile of history marked fake news or deep state or dark web or some other such nonsense. Conspiracies replace benchmarks at will. Masks aren't a medical recommendation, they are the first step in Bill Gates owning the world by inserting chips into the vaccine we will be offered next year to inoculate ourselves against Covid-19. 

I quit being a journalist years ago when I realized that my world of what was known as news was being replaced by entertainment and "tips." At this stage in my life I find myself swept aside by a younger generation that displays the attention span of a firefly, flitting from blade to leaf to branch faster than I can keep up. I probably looked that way once to my elders and betters and I am reaping the inattention the elderly merit. Now that I live with a wife with no immune system the medical certainties of Facebook epidemiologists make me nervous. I have no certainties in this vast sea of confusion but I do know that keeping six feet away and wearing a mask when I can't are simple steps to preserve my family that I must take in the hope they will do some good. 

I see people present themselves at anti-mask rallies with guns on display, and where they then announce that they aren't afraid and to my jaundiced eye they look and sound ludicrous. They exude fear and resentment and poverty of ideas. Conflating rights without obligations, self without community makes no sense. I have lived an adventurous life and I have taken risks but I have always calculated the size of the risk, I am not a world record breaker or a pioneer, not a  leader in risk taking. I have assumed risks on the backs of those who went before. Therefore not to wear a mask when medical experts, who themselves struggle to understand a new disease, suggest wearing masks and maintaining one's distance I don't understand why wearing a mask is an abdication of personal responsibility.

The City of Key West has issued an order to the effect that public buildings and businesses must require people coming inside to wear masks. Fines and jail time are possible for offenders. Businesses that don't comply can expect a visit from Code Compliance, the people who render life not worth living with rules and permits and minute inspections. I'm sure its a coincidence but the re-opening order came a few days after a protest organized by Ed Swift, who is a man of influence, gained a lot of publicity. It was noticeable masks were in a tiny minority in photographs of the event. Presumably not photoshopped...

I don't live in the Key West of the 1980s but some days, the good days, feel like this community has been a reasonable facsimile set in modern times. People here don't protest coronavirus by parading with guns, food pantries step up where the state falls down, and I see a majority wearing masks without drama to try to do the right thing by their neighbors.  I have found a new slogan from my youth, think locally, act locally and stay home as much as possible. Everything else is out of our tiny marginalized no account hands. We are all peons in the post Covid era, heaven help us.

Duval Night

So there I was at 5:30 in the morning enjoying my lockdown solitude...

They've paved Duval by now as you read this which was a brilliant move causing dust and mess and minimal disruption. Some people got annoyed anyway but there will be naysayers till the end of time in this town.

I don't think we will see these kinds of construction machines parked on Duval Street again for a while. Parked on the yellow too. They were lucky parking enforcement has been suspended.

A sign of life. Surprised me, all blue and everything:

The Grand Cafe in unusual garb, closed for business yesterday today and tomorrow.  Undoubtedly later.

The colors of the old theater still fill numerous phone photo albums and you can see why. The Strand opens for business at six am.  I watched them opening up but I wasn't there when they closed at midnight. 

We face the great unknown, reopening and people and crowds. This has been a time worth remembering. I wonder how we shall look back on it, an interlude, the end of normal times, the beginning of a period of change or some other thing?