Barricades

The Florida Keys by their nature offer limited opportunities to spread out on land. When you live near the end of a 120 mile chain of narrow flat islands you aren't going to have many wilderness hang outs. I have my favorite on West Summerland Key in sight of the Old Bahia Honda Bridge, a location that shows up frequently on this page. I was there yesterday thoroughly enjoying the sun and a cool breeze and I was not alone.

I have spent the night along the seawall and enjoyed the relative quiet even though I slept just below the highway, pretty much out of sight and at peace with the world. The track became viable after Hurricane Irma tore down the trees and the state decided to build up the wall with rip rap and gravel which anglers drove out on and flattened into a bumpy but viable trail.  Some enterprising folk then drove all the way out to the point and left some rather ostentatious campsites with fire rings and the usual trash...

I knew it wouldn't last...it couldn't last and this small privilege has come to an end of course. You won't see pictures of Gannet 2 here again:

I wasn't therefore shocked when I came back and found these cement barricades, a stock item used by county and state governments in the Keys to close off the few dirt trails to all terrain vehicles seeking some off road fun.

For someone like me (and Rusty) who like to walk the barriers will actually work to our advantage as most people seem to find locomotion too arduous and now that motors are effectively banned we will be alone out on the point. In fact a fisherman did just that yesterday, parking his truck here and venturing no further on foot with his rod.

I would also like to think we will walk trash-free. I take pictures and leave footprints and I carry a bag for those occasions Rusty feels moved to extrude an egg or two. Like the half-wild dingo he is, he likes to dump on the edge of the trail, unobtrusively, and leave little trace which I have to find and remove, not always easy. 

I confess I was surprised to see tracks coming straight down off the highway here a couple of weeks ago. I guess I wasn't alone in my astonishment because they aren't doing that again!

It seems as though the state had barricades to spare as they put them everywhere, carefully butted up to impenetrable tree trunks where possible. 

This one surprised me, carefully placed between two trees to avoid end runs by determined drivers, on a trail that didn't exist last year. Somone checked it out, someone else followed and then the trail was marked and became, as you can see, established.

I used to walk out here picking my way through the grasses until this freeway was trampled through the grass.  I also found some graffiti, high flown sentiments written in indelible marker on a plank. I took the picture and moved it back up out of the way where I found it. 

The great thing about this spot is that there is no beach, no sand, no attraction for people to come and feel like they are in a postcard. To me that makes it doubly attractive as people stop their cars, take a look, walk a bit maybe and then take off again. 

Rusty enjoyed his walks and then took a philosophical approach to change in the Keys. Change is inevitable he said and its rarely for the better when too many people want to jostle in too little space. He has a point.

Overseas Market

I wondered if Rusty might enjoy walking the back alleys behind the shopping centers of New Town. Usually I take him downtown to walk the smells of Lower Duval around the bars and discarded hot dog buns at four in the morning on my days off.

When we travel these kinds of walks are much more the norm because before we got the van and slept in hotels, shopping centers and vast  empty parking lots are the most convenient open spaces near the hotels. 

So I asked myself, perhaps he'd like to walk here for a change?

Our first foray to Searstown was such a success I repeated the experiment behind Overseas Market.

Four thirty in the morning is the ideal time to social distance.

All alone.

Perfect.

And Rusty couldn't get enough of it, back and forth for more than an hour.

Even here there are mangrove hideaways.

Industrial Key West and abstract art!

A convenient parking space for a commuter who lives at anchor and uses the Salt Run Creek under North Roosevelt as his road to a daily routine:

This place used to be called Shimp (sic) Daddy's and now it's Biggie's. I hadn't heard about the change in name, which when you work 911 is probably a good thing.

Interior Design!

And exterior maintenance:

And some rather less than salubrious exteriors too. 

Pay attention, even during Spring Break:

Our of focus art, the picture above on my first attempt...

He liked it and I did too so I guess we will be back.

Who needs Mallory Square?

Into Bahama Village

I took this picture in 2013 of the famous Octopus on Catherine Street heading towards Duval from mid town. I included Cheyenne sniffing around as she continued to do for the next three years.

In 2016 after she left and went to her reward making room for Rusty, I took time to photograph the old stump once again, not much changed. 

Last week things had changed drastically and I felt a great deal of regret. Things ain't what they used to be.

The turquoise attracted me...

The line of several "NO!" signs kept me and amused me.

I went by the Gato building named for the Gato family who built it a century ago as a cigar factory. That proved to be uneconomical when the Cuban factory owners discovered Tampa with all its cheap land and created Ybor City as the place to roll cigars. The usual story for over priced  Key West. 

Nowadays the Gato Building houses, most importantly the county department of health whence the authorities deal with coronavirus issues including vaccinations. 

Bahama Village has changed over the past couple of decades just like the rest of the city.  Gentrification has pushed into the village though the African American community remains as the largest segment of the population.

I used to read on forums years ago about nervous some tourists were at the thought of penetrating the Village, the rough neighborhood of Key West which struck me then as ludicrous and more so nowadays. There used to be drug dealers from Miami who meet Key West residents in the Village but even in those days if you were walking through someone might sidle up and ask if you were okay and when you said fine thank you, they scuttled off. Violent crime has always been quite rare in Key West.

The architecture is as interesting here as anywhere in Key West with lots of churches and former churches scattered about. A smattering of tourists too.

And a few restaurants of note, including Blue Heaven on Petronia. Still there still doing business.

And on the subject of times past and Bahama Village the  city commissioner for the neighborhood passed on the news of the death of a former resident of Chapman Lane, James Chapman. I took this picture in 2012 but the internet is littered with pictures of the man, the myth and his brightly colored tricycle.

He had been forced to move from Key West in a land grab that took away his home on the lane named for his family, a bitter fate that earned him a goodbye in the local paper:

The Blue Paper.