Duval At Virginia

Everything looks normal downtown were you to take a walk on upper Duval Street on your lunch break.

Bright sunshine, green banana palm waving gently in the cooling breeze, people striding up and down the street as they always have, seeking I'm not sure what. Bargains?

Cooler to ride by scooter if you have the nerve. 

Walking with determination toward my preferred ice cream shop on the corner of Virginia Street, Flamingo Crossing.

Without cruise ship passengers the Conch Train riders are much fewer in number, even though this is generally low tourist season.

The inevitable golf cart which got a big thumbs up from Bruce in Arizona after I made some mildly disparaging remarks about them. Like is aid lots of people love them. Witness:

Find the shade as you ride. I rather liked the shadows cast on Duval Street by the funky roofline above:

Not too many masks in sight for young or old infirm or sound. I kept my distance yesterday.

Cemetery

No need for more words on the subject of the cemetery, just a few Sunday pictures of things that struck me about the graveyard on my most recent visit. Nicknames are everywhere on tombstones, an important part of island living.

A porch with a view of the graves.

The most serene neighbors:

Middle Duval

In a normal year we would be seeing the city preparing for Fantasy Fest, the annual carnival in the last week of October, a street party linked to lots of private parties notable for their adult themes. Nudity and money.

This year all jollity is canceled and austerity is the flavor of the month. However it seems local hotels have not been offering refunds for Fantasy Fest reservations...which sounds unlikely to me but who can combat the social media rumor mill? Anyway with that excuse in their back pockets revelers are also insisting they will be in town for an informal Fantasy Fest. Lucky us.

Fantasy Fest was conceived as a money maker decades ago when summer doldrums drove people mad and made for lean months when summer tourist traffic was nil, or close to it. So the October carnival was a way to bring in some money and it started out innocently enough as a costume parade for grown ups in an era of psychedelic liberation.

The tendency to take all things to exaggerated heights led to the deterioration of Fantasy Fest as a time and place where visitors from more repressed communities could come and lose their inhibitions, much to the irritation of people who lived here and wanted the money. Now we find ourselves living an interesting paradox. An unofficial Fantasy Fest could replicate those very informal beginnings long ago before pandemics were dreamed of among our first world problems.

I like the break in the routine created by Fantasy Fest in a normal year. I am not a fan of the crudity some participants bring to town but increasingly the city has been pushing for more carnival and costumes and less flesh on display.  Last year there was a decided change and I was hoping for more of the same this year under the new management. 

I'm not going to be downtown for crowds as my goal is to retire in reasonable health as far from coronavirus as I can be and hanging around drunken revelers seems like an invitation for the spread of the virus so visitors can conveniently take it home with them.

As you can see, on a  lightly traveled afternoon a couple of weeks ago Duval Street was populated by lots of people intent on not covering up. However many ro few people do show up most will I am sure be drunk and mask free.

I expect pandemic exhaustion will contribute to a holiday in Key West around the end of the month whatever you want to call it.  Especially among those prepared to believe the virus is a hoax I could only imagine what the prospects of a week of public drinking will do for them in these solitary times. There will be no Fantasy Zone, no undressing, no drinking in the street but I doubt that will be enough to keep people away at this time of year. They will bring money and that seems to be all that counts in these difficult times.

Yes Yes Yes Or No No No

You'd think there are plenty of things to occupy the mind this Fall, but Key West has come up with one more thing to ponder, at least for city voters. I live in the county on Cudjoe Key, so even though I work for the city I don't vote here (nor by the way do I get to buy residential parking permits incase you were wondering). But I am curious to see how the cruise ship referenda go down.

City voters have three extra boxes to check next month, lucky them. It's an issue referred to as one issue but it is a three parter. 1) Should there be no more than 1500 cruise ship passengers at a time in the city? 2)Should the city limit ships to 1300 occupants (passengers and  crew)? 3) Should the city give priority to environmentally friendly cruise ships?  The thinking is that it will be a straight vote on all three, all one way or the other as individual voters tackle this thorny subject in the voting booth. But in Key West you can never be quite sure..! Below we see the former Starbucks at Front and Duval, gone and soon to be forgotten no doubt.

As you might imagine there are business forces aligned in favor of stomping these ballots to death in November and they have made themselves heard in court already where a judge ruled the voters get to vote. The city's four bar pilots who make a tidy living guiding the cruise ships into Key West filed suit claiming navigation is a federal matter and can't be banned by a municipality.  And so forth. I have no doubt we will hear more from them if the vote gets approved by residents. An Italian boutique on the 500 block of Duval has gone the way of all flesh, see below:

Lower Duval, the area around the bars like Sloppy Joe's Captain Tony's and the Bull and Irish Kevin's to be clear, lives and dies by cruise ships. Other parts of the main drag have long complained that cruise ship passengers are funneled into that area to spend what money they will leave behind in Key West. That position got a great big shrug from Lower Duval businesses who it now seems might have done better to spread the wealth.

The Trump Administration has given the green light to cruise ship sailings to celebrate my birthday on Halloween so voters on November Third should have a clear reminder of what continued cruise ships in town will mean. Crowds yes, but crowds spending money. In a town that faces a rather severe test of future choices. The virus has put Key West at a crossroads and now we see which way voters want to go, more of the same or more upscale?

Businesses are closing all over the place. You can argue the virus only speeded some of them up and other businesses don't amount to much for locals as they were cruise ship focussed. The argument has long been that locals don't shop Duval as there isn't anything of interest to people not on vacation looking for souvenirs or alcoholic oblivion. The problem now its in filling storefronts where rents are in the $30,000 a mont range, or have been. While business turn over is a fact of life in Key West where the cost of living is absurd, I can't quite see how small local businesses meet extraodinary rent demands. And landlords are quite used to charging preposterous rent and getting it! Not so preposterous, eh?

The opponents of cruise ship limits have been very vocal online opposing the votes and their crude and rather overbearing tone has drawn the attention of the newspaper. The Citizen has recently made a subscription more worthwhile than ever with what you might call some good old fashioned digging. Worth a read and here is a brief excerpt fro what hey found out about the rather shadowy sources of funding for the no vote.

 As to who is behind the mailers and an identical campaign currently running on Facebook, that has an interesting answer. The three different mailers identify two companies that are separately paying for the ads: Protect Our Jobs PC, a political action committee, or PAC; and Protect Our Jobs, Inc., a non-profit 401(c)(4), which under Internal Revenue Service regulations is an organization that must be a non-profit operated exclusively to “promote social welfare.” The PAC joined the Key West Chamber this summer, according to Chamber Executive Vice President Scott Atwell. Calling the PAC a grassroots, “more positive” campaign group, Atwell said he didn’t know anything about the Protect Our Jobs social welfare organization but was aware they were two different organizations.

“The one that joined us is different from the one that is sending out scare tactic [mailers]. They’re different legal entities,” he told The Key West Citizen.

SHARED MESSAGING

However, The Citizen has learned that the two organizations are chaired by the same person, Maria Isabel Garcia Del Rio, according to Alex Miranda, who works for Garcia Del Rio and who is heading up the “Vote No” campaign in Key West. While the PAC is registered at a trailer park in Dade City, Florida, and the social welfare non-profit at the UPS store in Key Plaza in Key West, the two organizations share a postal permit, were both created in August and, according to Miranda, have media messaging that is aligned.

As for who or what entity has donated the $23,754 that Protect Our Jobs PC reported to the state elections division as “contributions,” Miranda wouldn’t comment on from where that funding came. However, Citizen research turned up another political marketing campaign sponsored by Protect Our Jobs, Inc., the social welfare group. That campaign is for a petition drive aimed at ending the no-sail cruise ship ban in Florida, possibly indicating a funding connection between the Key West “Vote No” campaign and national cruise line industry.

The thing is that the lockdown and subsequent reduced tourist traffic has opened a window on a key West that had been suppressed for decades. Less traffic, noise and pollution has a way of becoming addictive. On the water fishing guides say the waters have been this clean and clear in decades. Apocryphal say cruise ship supporters but it's hard to argue that giant hips don't stir up harbor silt. And all those passengers shitting and opening packages end up creating garbage that needs to be dumped. Supposedly not at sea but opponents argue not everyone is conscientious, hence the third question.

On the surface this issue comes down to money. Can the city do without the money that flows from the ships? Yes supporters sa tech city makes surprisingly little from cruise ship fees and passenger spending supporters crappy souvenirs and t-shorts more than art and high class tourism. These visitors come back say ship supporters and stay in hotels and on and on it goes. 

In the end I have no idea where the truth lies nor where in the courts a solid "yes" vote will end up. It's obvious lots of money is being spent to scare voters into maintaining the status quo and to me that's a pretty clear red flag, but on the other hand the gentrification that will follow an end to mass tourism may have some severe unintended consequence on a small tourist town that likes to tout itself as exceptional and quirky and unique. So far I have seen no interest on the part of the monied business classes and wealthy leaders to involve themselves in supporting the workers whose salaries fail to support a decent quality of life in this town. To expect these workers to kill off jobs and money that trickles down to them at all, may be asking a lot of them by the well heeled retired citizens with outside money and lots of it to support their island lifestyle. The devil you know or the devil you don't. This could be the start of some major changes in Key West. Or not.

Frances Street

I have never driven a golf cart for any distance, outside a parking area nor I do nurture any ambition to do so. The thing is for people not keen on bicycles or scooters but who want some alternative to their cars a golf cart can seem quite fun. I suppose. Tourists love them. I don't.

Some people keep them as town cars and their small size helps in Old Town but on the main roads across New town they are a menace as they are limited to 25 mph on 35 mph streets. At least one has to concede the electric models are silent and environmentally clean

Bicycles make more sense as they are well able to slide around town not getting tangled in traffic but I found my brush with an electric bicycle only worked in urban settings. In suburbia where I live the electric bike was heavy and slow and not as useful living as I do along a stretch of highway. 

I like walking as it keeps me out of the traffic flow and encourages me to stop and ponder and look around and amble without too much purpose. I look up and I see tree limbs stitching patterns.

I am a small minority when it comes to golf carts and bicycles. Ignore me; everyone else loves them.

Cemetery

Were you to type the word "cemetery" in the search box at the top left hand corner of this page many efforts of mine to record the cemetery would pop up. 

I love the Key West cemetery for its ambiance, a park like space that invites meditation in the middle of a town frequently filled with frantic party goers with no interest in the history represented by these graves.

I don't suppose the docents are giving tours in these pandemic times but when they open up again the historical society docents are well worth the tip. Beyond the handful of memorable or even famous graves the entire plot is filled with the history of what is, beyond the bars and the tourist advertising a particular small town. 

"US Navy. Spanish American War"  In those days Key West was a frontier town on an open border. With Cuba largely closed off to garner the political support of Miami' exile community Key West feels more like a cul de sac than a jumping off point. The reverse is also true, so the absorption of foreign influences drops as well. 

The Albury family name is well known in the Bahamas, as the Abaco Islands have exchanged residents with Key West all through the 19th century.

The above ground nature of the cemetery is required by high water table levels under the limestone rock. Nevertheless the view across the above ground cemetery reminds a viewer of the more famous graveyard in New Orleans and similar styles of burial across certain European countries.

Kemp. You may have heard of Kemp's Ridley Turtles. Discovered by Richard Kemp who is also buried in this cemetery they got their name (derived obviously from his) to differentiate them from the Olive Ridley turtle.

Like I said it is a pleasant place to stroll and you can even use it as a short cut from Margaret Street to Frances Street  across the middle of Key West. 

Scooters have been banned for a long time thanks as usual to inconsiderate behavior. Cars and bicycles are permitted.  

I see the grave yard as a place of history and a pleasant place to walk and think, but it is very much a working cemetery. Family members visit, funerals happen, new memories are buried here. Act appropriately.