Key West Bight

They call them, rather inaccurately "tall ships" but as you can see they don't sail themselves, and someone has to climb the rigging from time to time. Rather her than me.

When I have a hankering to get away from my desk during my lunch break the waterfront is one of the places I like to wander with my camera, to reset my internal voice that has been listening to unhappy people all morning.

When I bring Rusty to town for early morning walks the place he loves best is around Mallory Square and as much as I try to walk him in different parts of the city he always gravitates back to that end of Duval Street. I similarly gravitate to the fuel dock sticking out into the harbor.

This is where people who liver at anchor on their boats in the cheap housing known as the anchorage, come to park their dinghies and go to work or go shopping. It's where visitors get to meet their adventure boats for a day on the water, it's where you pay large sums of money to rent a dock for your boat whether you live in town or are just visiting. Once upon  a time it was a commercial harbor for shrimp boats. Imagine that.

A bight in nautical terms is an indentation on a coastline suitable for anchoring a boat. This little bay was one such place and part of the original waterfront of the city that grew up around maritime trade. Gentrification pushed the shrimping fleet to Stock Island and their place was taken by a  more genteel class of boater hat you see today.

In line with that gentrification they call it the Key West Historic Seaport, but to me it is still the Key West Bight. When I return from my retirement van travels I'd like to keep a boat here and live on it when not traveling in the van. I'd like to live in Key West and not have to earn a living. I will be old by then and a frail human so I should like a slow comfortable boat with an engine that would take me out to some swimming holes I know  with minimum fuss and no faffing about with rigging.

The fuel dock will be hallowed ground for the stink potter I plan to become and my sailor friends will repudiate me as they go sailing by. I have not planned my life around other people's opinions and I fear it may be too late to start. So I shall own a boat with an engine and no sails and I shall be happy.

Actually I must say that walking the docks these days I am happy to know I have a van with a comfortable bed and powerful air conditioning which is not susceptible to dragging it's anchor. For now  a van will do nicely.

On our retirement travels I promise I will poke around waterfronts and harbors and find out how it is to go sailing in distant parts. I look forward to seeing water where I have never sailed and have no desire to sail, like Alaska. 

I enjoy looking out at these familiar waters and they will be there when it's time to go back to them.

Walking The Waterfront

We were driving home and I pulled over to let some anxious cars get ahead, as I am not a fan of doing 60 in the Key Deer Zone in Big Pine Key. The fines are enormous so rather than hold them up as we drove into the heavily patrolled 45 mph slow zone, I let them by. And then I thought, I'll bet Rusty would like a walk here so down we went into the parking lot..

That there might a chance for some fun with my camera never entered my head, not for a minute.  Rusty realized there was life in those bushes and he set to exploring and pouncing on air. To no avail as he has rather lost his edge living the soft middle class life with me and even his imaginary prey gets away quite easily.  

I deployed the macro setting and admired some flowers in the bushes.

Hurricane Irma wrecked a bunch of formerly flourishing trees and I try to honor their memory by recording them as these rather stark impressive sculptures.

Quite aside from showing me the strength and noise generated by 140 mile per hour winds, an experience I could well have done without, Hurricane Irma also managed to destroy a lot of coastline I was very find of in the old days. No shade, no greenery and no likelihood of rebirth. Oh well.

Nothing daunted Rusty set to work. To my surprise he was in the mood to run up and down the narrow coastal path and sniff out the shrubbery. 

I got to watch boats.

It was a pleasant if rather sweat filled hour of standing around in sun and shade watching Rusty, watching the water, watching the passersby.

It was just a  small parking lot with a boat ramp but Cheyenne liked it too. She liked to hunt stuff dropped in the parking lot unlike Rusty the wild little street dog. The views, despite the ravages of weather remain the same. You can spend a cheerful time in almost any roadside pull out in the Keys if you have a mind to. 

Back home Rusty needed a nap so he got in his current favorite spot and left me to seek out air conditioning and ice for my glass. 

What he's going to do when we get the boat sold is an open question but he is nothing if not adaptable.

Put Out More Flags

Mallory Square in a fresh breeze and the flag, properly illuminated at five in the morning, over the memorial to the USS Maine, blown up in Havana in 1898.

Rusty, no devotee of history and thus ignorant of Key West's role in the Spanish American War, is nevertheless quite fond of the open space at the waterfront.

Remind me if I have ever noticed these masks over the door at the Waterfront Playhouse because I didn't remember them, Tragedy and Comedy. 

More flags visible from in front of the theater, these at the top of the Historum Tower. 

Not exactly a flag this one but a sort of flag for the changes being made downtown as a long time success story closes shop and goes up for rent on Front Street.

The Harbor House always looks good at night, all brick and wrought iron:

Front Street below, showing off a trio of flags at the Conch Train Depot. The red cross (saltire) of Florida, the blue Conch Republic flag and over them the stars and stripes.

I liked the little blue sign, new to me, pointing the way to Simonton Beach which now has a well established business where the public toilets used to be. In the wake of such innovation signs are springing up.

The first resort of them all from whose inspiration the other waterfront behemoths grew:

Put out more flags indeed as we find our way forward in a new economy and a new way of doing things in our little tourist town.

 

Turtle Kraals

The Cuban Coffee Queen shack near the waterfront has been a runaway success in a  town packed with coffee shops. This little spot is now the flagship take out place in a chain of three all across town. As usual I gave them no chance when they first opened years ago and I got it all wrong! They make a mean Cuban sandwich too.

Circling Schooner Wharf Bar is always an exercise in good hope for me. Like this guy on Lazy Way Lane one is likely to see people who find their own niche in a conformist world. There are fewer and fewer of them in this town but they tend to congregate around here during the day.

I see people who look happy and expectant though whether they are new to town and excited at the prospects or determined optimists who have met the bitter truth about life in paradise and are not set back by it, I wouldn't know.

These seem odd times to be out and about unprotected in crowds when walking is an effort.  I had my mask on to try to keep the stupid gene at bay and I ducked and weaved to keep my distance. 

If you get away from the tourist areas you will see people masking up as a matter of course when they head towards the entrance to a business, but among visitors the idea of being reminded of dreary daily living seems too much for most of them. 

On the waterfront, the views remain the same, the flags at the Schooner Wharf, the sunshine, it all looks the same as always. There is a certain reassurance in the view. If not now sooner or alter we will see normal again.

Turtle Kraals is gone and won't be back. They say the Boathouse is moving round here from the other side of the bight to occupy the space. Who knows how that will look.

I used to take breakfast here sometimes on my way to my job as a boat driver in the harbor. Sitting at an open window with a plate of eggs and the extraordinarily strong coffee they made was a memory that stuck. No digital photography in those days so I have no pictures.

They come and they go and the memories remain.

New Normal

Key West has always been the escape destination. This is where people come to live for a brief while south of reality. These days the escape from reality seems more important than ever for some, perhaps for most visitors. This is supposed to be the weekend of Fantasy Fest and supposedly there are people in town determined to pretend the canceled carnival is still happening. Most of from Tampa, a place where the word "superspreader" new to our collective vocabulary, may not yet have taken root. It will if enough of them have showed up.

I see two key Wests these days more starkly defined by clothing than ever, which is funny as the Key West I preferred was the one where outward signs of status or wealth were pretty much ignored. 

These days wear a mask as you go about your business and you are a local, travel with apparent impunity and you aren't.

Perhaps it takes local lungs to be immune to heat and small pieces of cloth combined. Perhaps it takes immunity to the news to travel for sheer fun these days. 

I find myself slightly astonished by the numbers of people prepared to eat in restaurants, gather in groups and act as though Covid 19 is a live or die proposition. I have no desire to imperil my helath at this late stage, and when you've been intubated once it isn't an experience you are anxious to repeat let me assure you. 

Yet when I went to pick up food to go the restaurant tables were crowded and the diners were mask free. I salute their escape from reality. At the supermarket on an early morning nearly deserted shop a few select items are as usual in short supply. In preparation for the second wave of coronavirus we stocked up on toilet paper. I wonder what we will miss this time around and nearly run out of?

This irritating state of affairs is the new normal.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9

White Street Gallery District

They call it  the White Street Gallery District, a formal name for a strip of stores along the north south road that more or less separates Old Town from the area now known as Mid Town. Sandy's Café has to be one of the best known stores on the strip. No longer open twenty four hours it does fire up at 5am which is early enough for most people. 

Not so long ago there was a divorce between the operator of the café and the owner of the property and they went their separate ways, and ended up a couple of blocks apart. Fernandy's hasn't survived coronavirus so now there is only one red and white Cuban coffee shop on the street.

Another well know name is Fausto's the locally owned grocery store with two outlets, one here on White Street and the other on Fleming.

They describe themselves as a neighborhood social center which I suppose is true. It always surprises me how many businesses have two successful outlets in Key West, a town with a great many people reluctant to travel more than a mile from home.

Elections rear their head everywhere and Lopez has been a  city commissioner for almost as long as I can remember but in fact he was elected in distant 2005 and he is running again. Yup, we know him.

As I recall Mo's was started by a French Canadian couple who sold to a new Haitian owner and the place has kept it's garlicky Gallic appeal ever since. Still going strong.

White on White. It has a certain ring to it. I may have been giddy when I saw the sign. Rusty woke me early and I was half an hour ahead of schedule when I got to town, hence the time in hand to walk White Street with the camera before driving up Virginia to the salt mines.

And as I was getting into the car to go to work I saw two people passing in the night across the street. I felt just a little less alone on the unlighted end of White Street, though  don't think they noticed me at all. 

A gratuitous Rusty picture (which Webb says can never be gratuitous of the perfect dog). He was at home relaxing while I was at work and my wife sent me the snapshot to make me jealous. It worked.