Flagler Beach

 Kelly said...

Come over to Flagler Beach dogs are welcome and you can park the van on the beach.

Friday, January 22, 2021 at 12:21:00 PM EST

I don't know Kelly but that was some good advice. I have discovered I like Flagler beach. Naturally when we were there on Valentine's Day it was overcast with intermittent drizzle and rain and strong winds. Not really beach weather unless you were a surfer looking for excitement in muddy brown waters stirred up by strong winds. 

I took an umbrella but forgot my vest so I was exhibiting the sort of toughness you expect from a Keys resident where 70 degrees is as cold as you want. My wife chose to record my stupidity for posterity.

It takes courage of a particular sort to live in a house painted Pepto Bismol pink but this town has the rather sturdy attribute of encouraging non conformity. 

Beach towns on the east coast of Florida have their own character and they only faintly resemble the beach communities on the west coast. Florida's Atlantic coast is straight and relatively featureless though the sand beaches stretch the entire length they are pounded by actual ocean waves driven by southeast winds that land unobstructed along the coast. Florida's Gulf coast is much gentler, with heavy summer rains and profound humidity along a coastline broken up by sandbars and islands and natural inlets. Take your pick.

Any town with a law office decorated in the Jimmy Buffett style can't be all bad, can it?

"Private property" is a sign common to the streets of Key West where tourists have trouble learning boundaries, mostly because residents don't make it easy except for the few smart ones who defend themselves in print.

I have no idea what turtles have to do with ice cream but I suddenly wanted one (an ice cream not a turtle) so I suppose the vehicle was doing its job.

Burger Bob indefatigably holding up a double while Rusty the indefatigable ploughed on by pressed forward by a  strong humid southerly breeze.

Flagler beach has a central attraction in the pier that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. The beach apparently is good for shell collectors but as I am a nomad and not much given to collecting I can only judge by the actions of others. They seemed to be collecting stuff from the sand, either that or they were doing some form of walking yoga unknown to me.

Check out these ridiculously simple and effective garbage cans placed the sand dune "overwalks" which are foot bridges designed to get people on the beach without disturbing the dunes and sea oats. 

The unusually broad public beach access and lack of waterfront development is attributable to one Betty Steflik who spent the last 25 years of a long life bound and determined to preserve what she saw and liked in this town. She served as a city commissioner and according to her family and friends she was someone who never took no for an answer.  That Flagler Beach is so eccentric is directly attributable to her activism, which ended when she died in 2004.

Indeed dogs are allowed on the beach at each end of town, prohibited only between 10th Avenues North and South. Very civilized except that it was so windy and wet and gross we limited ourselves to wandering city surface streets. it is the law that when I am off and most especially when I am being hip in a van it must rain copiously and endlessly. Naturally we left our van life ponchos safely locked up in the van. So we took refuge in the lobby of the pier located right there with all convenient conveniences. Use CAUTION though as death and dismemberment lurks everywhere, as do lawsuits:

Rusty watched the squall blow through and we did likewise. This town has public benches and trashcans as well as handy toilets.  The sign said "If you are lucky enough to live close to Flagler Beach then you are lucky enough." Some truth in that. If you have a buck fifty you can go for a walk on the pier (No Dogs). You have to pay more to walk on the pier and kill fish but the fees are modest and the facilities are clean and organized.

And in case you thought Flagler Beach were perfect check out this Stalinist cube across from the pier. This is what Flagler Beach might have been had Betty Steflik not spent the last 25 years of her life objecting to.

Pay the man a buck fifty and the pier is yours, all day if you want.

There were quite a lot of vans parked around town. I tried to hide mine behind a palm and failed. I could have parked at the beach but it was extra windy and rainy there, just my luck. We walked.

The fine print below says North of 10th Avenue North and South of 10th Avenue South dogs are welcome; it's just the strip in the middle is reserved for boring people without dogs.

Notice the total absence of waterfront development on the ocean side and the absence of condo high rises on the inland side.  

Not your average outdoor beach chair.

There shall be festivities Valentine's Day no matter what!

A pretty little town. 

Pahokee

The fields of agriculture of South Florida:

We drive through here when we leave the Keys on a road trip, and in the grand scheme of quick and easy tourism no one pays much attention to these fields. This is where people who tire of their dogs dump them; just ask Rusty who spent months surviving out here in the Redlands where the dirt is red.

This is where we stop to pick up a fruit smoothie for lunch, soursop this time, a thick expensive ($9) a white creamy mixture of tropical sugar apple which I love and will eat any way its available. I discovered them in the market in St George's Grenada on a sailing trip thirty years ago and the fact that Robert offers them as a smoothie is another reason to live in the (sub) tropics. That big white cup on the counter is my custard apple lunch.

I saw an open space after riding Highway 27 from Homestead to Pahokee so we pulled over and Rusty went for a walk.  Sugar cane trucks were rumbling up the highway as it's that time of year. Your tax dollars at work, four billion dollars in Federal support each year. I read that the sugar in each candy bar costs you five cents in taxpayer support. The weird part to me is that instead of paying Caribbean islands to grow sugar the US imports islanders to work here in this horrendously tough work environment, pays for the sugar and stands by while the land is wrecked by agricultural runoff. Sugar cane depletes the soil and it takes tons of fertilizer to restore the soil and that fertilizer runs into the gulf and feeds algae that kill coral. If you get four billion dollars in subsidies you argue the narrative, but then you would wouldn't you?

And the sugar industry doesn't turn manual laborers into wealthy families. Drive through Pahokee and check it out. This is the other palm Beach, the one you don't hear about.

Sugar cane:

Picturesque Pahokee:

Rusty said it was time to move on and we don't argue with Rusty.

Wrecking The Courthouse

Historians tell us the courthouse was completed in 1890 and this spot, 100 feet below the rooftop clock, the steps were where the authorities auctioned off ships' cargoes from what was known as the business of wrecking. Wrecking was a legal trade when Key West was chartered by the new American owners. Wrecking emphatically was not piracy and you shouldn't confuse the two. Pirates had no interest in Key West as there was no decent harbor, no fresh water, no trees to make lumber for repairs, and besides the island lay in the wrong place in terms of winds and currents to intercept Spanish treasure ships under sail from the Caribbean to Spain. Finally the US Navy arrived and did use this island as a base to hunt down the pirates. Do as I do and when you hear people extoll the pirate element in historic Key West zip your lips and let them natter on. It's a living making up stories in a tourist town.

Wrecking was a licensed trade though some people did break the law while doing it...can you imagine?  Think of a time when ships sailed down the Straits of Florida at night and weren't exactly sure where the rocks and shallow water lay. If they turned north too soon to run into Key West harbor they ran aground. Wreckers were the tow trucks of the 19th century. As soon as someone saw a ship canted on the rocks they jumped into their rowboats and raced out to claim the wreck. At that point they were responsible for the cargo and they would row it ashore and store it in the warehouses around Mallory Square until an Admiralty magistrate could organize an auction. Not a bad way to make a living.

However some people would have liked to make even more money and they were the ones that broke the law, Instead of just letting ships run aground at random they tried to encourage them into trouble by shining lights in the wrong places. Nowadays the key West lighthouse is a monument drowned out by city electric lights but 150 years ago the light was a real beacon. Unless some asshole placed a conflicting light to confuse the ships' crews and when they missed the pass and hit the rocks the pirate-wrecker (!) was perfectly placed to hustle out and claim his prize. Which explains the modern confession between piracy and wrecking.

The net result of all the sea trade was that Key West was a first rate city to live in during the 19th century if you were wealthy of course. The climate was decent with sea breezes and warm winters. There were frequent outbreaks of yellow fever and no one knew to blame mosquitoes so you'll see a lot of young deaths in the cemetery. People slept on their decks and porches to enjoy cooler air but the wealthy had slaves to cook over a burning fire in tropical heat. The ships brought ice for ice houses and the latest fashions from New York London and Paris. Furniture arrived on ships too and you'll see beautiful examples in the Audubon House for example of how people lived in this trading town.

In the house below you can see modern shades on the porches just as residents would have used them to shade the house in the day and create cooler bedrooms at night. 

I suppose that had we lived back then we'd have considered ourselves lucky for the good times and the good things of the era, considering you could send letters, get supplies shipped and hold down a job just like today.

I think the pandemic has been easier for me for a couple of reasons, one being my stay in the hospital two years ago. I had my fill of the hospital bed and slow recovery so I have no temptation at all to risk contagion now. I was ventilated for a day and as little as I remember of it, that was the worst day of all waking up with a garden hose down my throat. I'm not risking that again if I can help it.  But the other thing that helps me deal with my emotions  is remembering how common pandemics have been through human history. I am not subject to conspiracy theories and the pointless pursuit of blame for this mess because illness is part of life. Equally I don't question vaccinations because I grew up in a time when I knew exactly what whooping cough sounded like, how ghastly polio and measles were and how easy it was to die of cholera, yellow fever and smallpox in countries I visited. I don't waste energy trying to outthink people who have spent their careers protecting us from common killers of the 19th century.

Jesse James is a thrilling romantic figure of 19th century crime, and he isn't alone in the popular imagination. Our histories are filled with wild romantic absurd deaths and lives lived on the edge of constant peril. Reality was very different with pandemics a constant dull fear permeating our ancestors' lives. Yellow fever was a perennial companion and you don't even know about that disease these days. When I rode my motorcycle around Africa in the 1970s a yellow paper vaccination card was a critical travel document, issued by the World Health Organization and stamped by the doctor who verified your travel vaccinations. I read about modern Americans outraged by the notion of a Covid vaccination card! There's no point telling them credit cards alone tell Big Brother everything they need to know about you to sell you more stuff. A credit card and bar code and you are more exposed to tracking than any number of paper vaccination cards. 

It's a bit of a simplification to say the more things change the more they stay the same but still...the next time you block a driveway with your car and the tow company wants $150 to release your impounded vehicle to you, think as I do about wrecking, piracy and your own choices which lead to your consequences. No whining!  That's a tough requirement for me, not to whine, much tougher than making the choice to get vaccinated which was always a no brainer.

Thank you Dr Jenner.

On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of Jenner's gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of the St. George's Medical School library (now in Tooting). Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner's first paper on vaccination.

Jenner inoculated Phipps in both arms that day, subsequently producing in Phipps a fever and some uneasiness, but no full-blown infection. Later, he injected Phipps with variolous material, the routine method of immunization at that time. No disease followed. The boy was later challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection.

Donald Hopkins has written, "Jenner's unique contribution was not that he inoculated a few persons with cowpox, but that he then proved [by subsequent challenges] that they were immune to smallpox. Moreover, he demonstrated that the protective cowpox pus could be effectively inoculated from person to person, not just directly from cattle."^[36] Jenner successfully tested his hypothesis on 23 additional subjects.

Black And White Trees

Winter sunlight in Key West, mid town on my lunch break.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day! We are off vanning to Mark the day. 

Pictures I Like

I wonder if I would ever have found these pictures in a year without pandemic restrictions? I've always taken pleasure in the colors of mangrove country, odd red and yellow leaves, sunsets that I share with no one and the clouds like castles overhead. As much as I read about other peoples' pandemic misery my wife and I both feel very lucky. I get to walk my camera, I am protected in my office at work, my wife teaches adult ed from home for her last three months before retirement and we choose not to socialize. We have even both had our first vaccine shots. We still take all precautions. We are looking forward to normal life.

I read about other photographers who feel shut down in their various countries and assorted lockdowns, putting their cameras away and staring at the wall wondering when their families will get together, wondering what happened to their dead relatives who died alone in the hospital. Its grim stuff. It may have happened to you, and I think about that every day.

Some people love snow and fog and dark days and seasons and all that stuff, but anyone who reads this page knows that's not me. So to me the area we are stuck in, as it were, is perfect for us. But more than just mild weather Florida has been as usual a bizarre place in which to ride out a pandemic. The governor has been unflinching in opposing lockdowns and has left it up to people to manage their lives. This has led to many infections and a few critical weeks for hospitals and health care organizations but we seem to have reached a stage of endless exhaustion and infections at a low constant hum. I have no desire to stand in crowd or be around maskless people even as I complete my vaccination protocols but other people don't seem to mind. Good luck to them and their medical staff.

I get to wander, I choose places with few if any people, I play with my camera settings, trying to force myself to move away from my preferred pedestrian documentary style of pictures. I over exposed Rusty under a buttonwood and got an island of detail in a sea of light. I rather liked it and would never have tried it if I hadn't been bored! True confession.....

Usually there used to be people standing at the top of the bridge watching it crumble but most of the time I'm alone here these days and if there is someone there I walk a long way round. I never thought much good came of the lockdown process as it seems people go nuts once released from lockdown and act as though all restrictions are done. I'd rather see the usual mask wearing hand washing and distancing enforced steadily until the end. This constant yo-yoing of restrictions and rules and fears abut variants and double masks and all that stuff wears me out. My freedom to walk Rusty with my camera gets me past all that.

Winter traffic has been much reduced this winter, not that Key West is empty but for those that are used to the winter cramming you'd be amazed to see how much empty space there is in town. My views are all empirical I cannot back them up with numbers but my perspective is my life. I don't go to the sunset celebrations for obvious reasons but maybe after my second shot I'll take a swing by to check but so far it just hasn't seemed worth it.

I read about the slow vaccine roll out in the rest of the world, the lockdowns, and the word I hear is all about the tedium of life and I drive home at sunset to this: a world bathed in gold.

Just another day in the Florida Keys. As good a place for a pandemic hide out as any I dare say.