Birds, Mangroves, Deer

Snowbirds aren't just human in the Keys. Winter migration sees a ton more birds in the skies and among the leaves and roots of the salt flats.

I am not a bird photographer which is one massive specialization. I think of myself as a documentary photographer which is a catch all category useful for someone who writes a diary and illustrates it with pictures. The idea of spending ten grand to buy the equipment to photograph birds in flight and hovering honey bees seems slightly insane to me, who has no plans to make a career of this. A retirement plan that involves living in a 70 square foot van doesn't leave much room for photo printing. I am small picture digital nomad. 

I love the mangroves, pools of water, reflections, colors and silence. I do miss mountains and trees and valleys and stuff but I cannot hide the fact that the road life will present some challenges. It is said, with plenty of justification that staying in place makes it easier to go in depth, to learn a place, to know how to photograph what you want. I am going to be challenged by the road and I hope I can rise to the challenge.

Meanwhile these are pictures of places I know and places I like and I'd like you to like too.

 

Duval Street Normal

I took the van into town and even though it is high season in winter there was plenty of parking downtown. I was surprised to find a space easily one block from Duval. I had had chores to do followed by an evening shift at work so I figured I'd do better to take the van to town and spend the afternoon in relative comfort without trekking home to Cudjoe Key. It was a good plan.

I spent some time at Truman Waterfront on an uncharacteristically sunny day off but before I went to work for my four hour evening shift I decided to take a photo walk on Lower Duval to see how the pandemic winter is working out. Duval Street isn't really very appealing as a destination and in this Covid year it has been even less so, which I do find rather annoying.

Properly masked I set off. I am fully vaccinated at this point, a week after my second shot so the mask is more  away to reduce the spread than to protect myself  but having lived through all those months of mask controversy I think it is more important than ever to keep following the rules. And in Key West the rule is wear a mask. These chickens were ignoring the rules and thus setting a terrible example to their numerous offspring:

It was a pleasant afternoon to wander and perhaps to wonder, a warm day and as it turned out not too crowded. I have to say that being protected by the vaccine makes me feel a lot less stressed being even close to other people outdoors, even though I have not yet got any interest in sitting indoors around strangers. We buy restaurant food to go and will for a while I dare say.

The mask ordinance is a tough rule to enforce if people aren't much interested in compliance. Officers are posted up and down Duval Street gently reminding passersby of the rule to cover up but how do you get everyone everywhere to do what they don't want to do? My solution is to stay away.

I thought it was a warm afternoon but not everyone agreed apparently. I came across a study in plaid outside Wendy's at the corner of Eaton Street, properly masked to boot:

Social distancing, a term I keep hoping will disappear from our vocabularies before too long. I find it weird to imagine a future without all these precautions, so used I have become to them. I was reading in the paper today that we may be back to normal this summer and indeed my wife, also vaccinated, has bought airline tickets to California this September. It's her first vacation during the school year in 20 years as she will hit retirement this June.  September is a good month to be out of the Keys to avoid heat and hurricanes and a good month to be in Central California to avoid fog and damp.

I have been toying with making a  trip back to Europe to see my relatives one last time before we hit the road in retirement next year but Italy is having a hard time organizing vaccinations and I'm not sure how easy overseas travel will be this summer. I'm not going to have time to take extended quarantines should they be imposed.  I find it energizing that once again such plans can even be remotely considered. That feels a bit like normal.

Outdoor dining, watching the world go by from the balcony at the Whistle bar...

...riding a  motorcycle, helmetless for those that dare, Florida winter looking superficially back to normal. I took the great lumpen van back home and enjoyed the drive.

The Meadows

I took my little electric Jetson scooter on my lunch break and went to make some pictures. Not just any pictures: I was trying to carry our an experiment suggested in a book I was reading.

The book is "Perspectives on Place" by J.A.P. Alexander and I bought the e-text book version which as far as I am concerned is indistinguishable from a regular Kindle edition.

The idea was to set some limitations and take a series of pictures to illustrate a neighborhood. What strikes me as a bit odd is that I have been doing that for years in Key West  and apparently I was ahead of the curve. 

So I followed instructions and set myself a square format for the pictures in black and white and limited myself to not using the telephoto lens on my LX100ii. Usually I zoom up to 150mm but here I stuck rigidly to 24 mm, the widest possible angle.

 With about 40 minutes at my disposal I scooted up and down some of my favorite streets in Key West which were, in the middle of the day, devoid of humans except for one agitated terrier on a very long leash and a distracted human at the other end of it. I think the dog was surprised to see a circus bear come rolling silently by on a tiny scooter. 

Shadows and light is how I see Key West, especially in the bright white sunlight of winter so here it is:

The scooter started to run down after a while, I hadn't charged it since my last excursion earlier in the week so I aimed for the police station as the speed slowed down. I found myself walking the last 100 yards which was fine  especially as my Apple watch  liked the locomotion and gave me an "attaboy."

The book says one has to create a narrative which is pretty much what I do all the time...

At this point I was walking the scooter so I stopped to make a picture of the surfboards all up on end. And the apartment complex all up on end against the same dark sky. A commentary on the vapid nature of modern seaside vacations. Or something like that.

This last picture is out of sequence but I liked it quite a lot so I thought it was a good place to end this little photographic experiment. Next time I'll try to connect geography, autobiography and metaphor. That doesn't sound at all easy.

Unconsidered Trifles

Tropic Ocean Airways Cessna Grand Caravan flying overhead.  I thought it looked good but I know nothing about planes so I had to ask a friend for an identification of this strange bulbous looking plane. He said they are workhorses and fly people and stuff everywhere.  

And then I saw another plane overhead and I put it next to a tree for contrast. You can do that with a camera even if you can't sensibly afford a private plane to charter for yourself.

I like the contrast of shadows and light in the perennially sunny keys.

Gnarly mahogany. 

Gentle plaster cast at George Allen public housing:

Some days when I take a walk at lunch I want to go out and see the Key West not usually expressed in the millions of selfies and bright over saturated beach scenes.

Key West always has been a place of shadows and light and odd corners and funny little finds where people express their personalities or fail to follow the accepted paths of decoration and plant growing.

I would cover my house in bamboo (wife permitting) especially the type that doesn't walk everywhere and take over everything. I find the stuff fascinating.

There's a massive cement wall on Duncan Street just off  White Street. I drive by as often as I can. 

It's my kind of privacy fence. And offers some picture possibilities not found everywhere in a  town filled with wood and picket fences.  

Seek and ye shall find somewhere ion Key West. The pandemic gives me time to look. 

Simonton Beach

Walking down Greene Street thinking about looking at the water from Simonton Beach I tested the camera settings at the picturesque 90 miles to Cuba store, closed tight. Light and dark looked good, nothing of interest there...

...until there was.  A rooster popped up to check me out and I broke the bad news that officially feeding him would be unlawful. I was wearing my mask so I don't think he got the message. I couldn't be sure if he was defending his fence or asking for a hand out.

Officially the city manager is looking for work. While officially acknowledging the rumor he admitted he was looking for work elsewhere as he feels short changed by his $180,000 salary, second only in the city to the attorney who makes $215,000 according to the newspaper. Big numbers for those of us described by Senator Rick Scott as "little people with little jobs" but apparently the number two position at the Aqueduct pays $20,000 more according to the paper. The other rumor is that the city manager, who got the job by acclaim and no hiring process, is angling for a pay increase and when that urge is satisfied he will stay on and stay in charge of the city. What a weird way to ask for a raise I thought to myself, union member that I am. However it is a glimmer of non conformity in a  town where being normal is more highly prized than ever. Keep Key West Weird.

No dogs allowed. On Simonton Beach. I'm not sure who where when or what brought that sign into existence but I wonder what Captain Tony Tarracino the legendary non conformist would think of it. Especially as his daughter owns the beach bar that probably created the demand for it. 

Simonton Beach wasn't much of a place if you weren't residentially challenged and some people called it Bum Beach for that reason. Now there are beach facilities for rent, beer not out of paper bags and a menu of sandwiches to allow all day lounging on a rented chair under a rented umbrella. 

The sand boat ramp is still there offering free beach access to anyone that cares to swim in the ocean in February. I start swimming when the time changes in the Spring and I stop swimming when we revert to winter time in November. Broadly speaking because I like waters to be at least 80 degrees. Right now they are in the mid 70s which is too cold for my delicate extremities.

Activity, business, tourism. Jolly good. Luckily I have lots of other places to take Rusty but I expect them all to be shut down and restricted as time goes by. The trend seems unstoppable. Progress: I must learn to love it.

As Webb Chiles points out the southern hemisphere has far fewer people living on it than our overcrowded northern half.

 

Sloppy Seconds

Look carefully at the picture below, one I took before my Valentine's Day break and you can see a long standing and thus successful liquor outlet with trash piled high ready for pickup before the city's tourists wake from the night before. By the time they come out to frolic all this will be gone. For now the Garden of Eden high atop the Bull bar will be there and yes you can sit nekkid on a towel at the bar and be served by a naked employee. And no, I can assure you, if I've never bothered to have a drink at Sloppy Joe's or the Bull I have never gone north to the Whistle or to the titillating Garden of Eden. I've sent ambulances up there when it all got too much for a customer or two over the years. Luckily it's clothing optional so first responders retain their dignity.

The Porter House on the other side of Caroline Street has a couple of bars on the ground floor and I did visit that one at first until it got too youthful and filled with bitter craft beer for me but drinking in a  Victorian mansion is not always unpleasant. There's a theme here. Drinking on Duval is a popular pastime and now they tell us the summer of 2021 could be approaching normal in our first world country filled with vaccine and hope that the wretched virus will wander off to hurt poorer people around the world. 

So the question then becomes how much do you like Duval the way it is? Do you care that the city commission has hired KCI to spout platitudes about revitalization and public input while they figure out how to create a wildly exciting "experience" on the new Duval Street? Or do you prefer the current version, shabby down at heel smelling of beer and urine occupied by people shuffling up and down in the heat trying to figure where the famous non conformist Key West of legend has vanished to? Check out Mandy Miles' article in Keys Weekly if you haven't already:  Keys Weekly on Duval.

This sort of trendy developer-speak makes my toes curl:

“The goal of the project is to renovate and revitalize Duval Street,” the city’s RFQ states, “to increase opportunities for public use as an iconic civic space for leisure, commerce and tourism; address the infrastructure which will allow for reasonable maintenance frequency and reduce costs to businesses and taxpayers; improve safety for pedestrians and vehicles; and maintain mobility for desired transit operations for all users.”

But on the other hand their preliminary illustrations seem to indicate a move toward a pedestrian Duval with they say, shade and "hanging art" (the mind boggles slightly) and of course lots of lovely public input in a  town where five people gathered have six opinions on any subject. You can tell this is going to go well especially as Facebook already has naysayers attaching themselves to the notion of a redesign of Duval Street. I understand negativity for the sake of it but I doubt many people who will suddenly form opinions on the design process will actually spend any time voluntarily on the much derided Duval Street.

My own feeling is the time is long since overdue for Key West to lurch into modern urban planning and create a downtown attractive to residents with a flourishing local scene attractive to tourists and once again I will quote my favorite such example in Church Street of Burlington Vermont fame. The trouble is I don't see how that kind of third space (My "third space" explanation Here from 2008!) can develop in a town with massively high rents, out of control cost of housing which are two prime factors that kill off creativity and the artistic impulse. You can't be an artist on a  wing and a prayer when you can't pay rent on your rabbit hutch home or your sliver of street front for your selling space. You can beautify Duval all you want but at this rate all you will have is a shady walkway with hanging art surrounded by dreary chain stores of no interest to anyone not needing sugar or a t-shirt.

The mayor got a huge mandate to go ahead and clean up downtown Key West, to attract upscale tourism on a more modest scale and of higher net worth and I will be curious to come back and see how it went after I run the wheels off my van. Key West has the capacity to surprise the skeptical and there is a chance the beery droopy,  stupid t-shirt of present day Duval Street can be transformed into a vibrant attraction for a wide spectrum of people. I'd guess they need to draw in the vibrant people too but maybe there is a secret weapon the city will deploy to make Key West weird and quirky once again. I'd like that.

Imagine, Duval a pedestrian zone, sidewalk coffee shops and restaurants, one way streets with parking and bike lanes on Whitehead and Simonton and locals making plans to go downtown for a pleasant summer evening out, year round in the tropics. It will be nice if you can afford to live here.