Cruising around the southern half of Stock Island I was put in mind of an incident more than 20 years ago when I lived in Santa Cruz, California. It happened that health officials decided to shut down a farm worker's camp located along the Pajaro River Valley. The Monterey County Authorities decided the housing was so substandard the workers were at risk, and I believe the owner may have spent some time behind bars as a result on their investigation. That incident sparked a massive debate among humanitarians of all stripes arguing over whether it was preferrable to allow the field workers to remain housed in the camp while they completed the season, or to throw them and their families out into an overcrowded housing market. The authorities were firm; the camp structures were dangerous and uninhabitable. The farm workers took to cardboard boxes and bushes along the river levee. A hell of a solution.
There are better and worse examples of housing on Stock Island but this place houses many of the lower paid people who keep Key West's economy functioning. During the recent development boom in south Florida Stock Island was bought up in large chunks by people with elaborate plans for the future and some of those plans are starting to see the light of day.
Fancy new boat slips are first up and former shrimp docks are being razed to make way for the fresh new water playgrounds. The shrimp boats have moved across the water to Safe Harbor and their future there seems assured by a local who has set up a permanent home for them. However this section of Shrimp Road has been bulldozed and cleaned up in preparation reportedly for a hotel and upscale appurtenances, while a few small workshops are still holding onto their places in the sun. This one was featured in a recent Citizen article:
And this boat building yard seems to be doing well. Their multihulls are well known in the world of sailing:
Behind Multihull Technologies lies the last haul out facility which has not yet announced plans to close and be transformed into luxury waterfront housing. I used to know it as the 3-D boatyard, and it's still moving boats around in the slings we boaters know and dread:
All skippers hate seeing their cherished vessels dragged around the yard like a bag of cement but these Travelifts are critical for the future of boating in Key West. If you can't lift boats out of the water from time to time you can't do basic maintenance. The Travelift costs better than a quarter million dollars an investment that needs a long future to pay itself off. Boating, traditionally of the commercial sort, but more recently pleasure boating, has kept Stock island in the marine business for a very long time:
Originally this was the island where Key West kept its livestock, and in servicing the needs of what was Florida's largest city Stock Island adopted its role of satellite to its more famous and more polished neighbor to the south. Now it appears to be growing into its own upscale destination, for good or ill. Peninsular Boatyard used to offer haul outs, marine services, a shop and liveaboard slips as well as a dinghy dock for people living out at anchor, in a dusty working class environment. The plan is for these monstrous new tin sheds to house the runabouts of the new class of Stock Island resident projected to take an interest in this freshly minted community:
Granted, the state of dilapidation on Stock Island makes it hard to defend the status quo:
But no one said commercial fishing has to be tidy. It's a disorganized way to make a living, sudden wealth with a good catch, back breaking labor relieved by plentiful alcohol, and its adherents aren't required to have strong formal educations. All of which combines to produce an industry that exists in a state of mostly benign chaos:
Fishermen, if they have to be lumped together, could be defined as old fashioned rugged individualists, self reliant businessmen of the old school who would rather spend time of their choosing, making traps and sorting nets in the discomfort of a boatyard rather than taking orders from a chain of command in a more organized workplace:
Then there are the stores on Stock Island that keep this tenuous lifestyle supplied. On Highway One there is a Burger King, a liquor store, a minimart, a dollar store, a gas station, a Mexican restaurant and so forth. Here's Highway One looking north from my magnificent Bonneville:
But deeper into this world of trailers, boatyards and fish traps there's a Tom Thumb convenience store right there on the main drag that offers Stock Islanders a place to get the ncessaries and to hang out:
For some a flat surface is all that's needed to pass the time of day...not unlike how things go in Key West, except that around here tourists are less numerous.
I am quite fond of Hogfish on Front Street, a bar and restaurant that serves a mean basket of fish and chips, in the open air environment that we all love and enjoy on a brisk sunny, winter day in the Keys. Good luck finding Front Street, a road which leads to the old power generating station that Keys Energy keeps on stand-by in case the main powerline from the mainland fails. The Stock Island power station could keep Key West in electricty for a couple of weeks if needed. Hogfish keeps the hungry traveler in fish and beer as the need arises:
The Rusty Anchor is another good one, nondescript from the exterior but with a long history of serving up plates of seafood on 5th and Shrimp Road. These aren't fancy eateries but suppliers of honest grub to the workers looking for their noontime break. My favorite breakfast joint is an unassuming Cuban place serving an inexpensive plate of eggs, bacon and grits with a steaming cup of con leche right here:
The view from El Mocho of Maloney Avenue is what it is, certainly not waterfront vistas but the food is what counts and for the daily regulars bellied up to the counter this place is a source of the real daily news.
At my table I sop up my grits with cuban toast and soak up the ambiance. Tomorrow who knows what might be occupying this spot?Across the street lies the fire station,
charged with protecting all these homes and businesses, scattered around south Stock Island. It seems a lot of ask of this tiny fire station and plans have been mooted to modernize the facility. Where the money will come from with the county's current state of insolvency doesn't bear wondering about. County employees have been laid off, more than two dozen so far, next year the budget crisis will undoubtedly deepen as Amendment One kicks in. A State prosecutor quit the other day because his salary didn't qualify him for a loan he needed to buy an apartment. The State Attorney's office in the Keys has the highest turnover rate in the state- 40 percent in 2007. I saw this vehicle outside this trailer and I don't put it beyond the bounds of possibility that a Deputy Sheriff lives in a trailer on Stock Island. This is affordable housing for all kinds of workers. 
We are in crisis in the lower Keys and the impending redevelopment of Stock Island trailer parks seems likely to make the crisis worse. When you see travel trailers made into permanent housing you know the need for somewhere to live is well beyond platitudes.
One curiosity that I find somewhat ironic is that a mobile home, even of the permanently immobile sort, is rated as a registered vehicle in the state of Florida and all these homes have little vehicle registration stickers on them, like this one under the mailbox:
I didn't have to look far for the signature piece of furniture I am finding in all neighborhoods I photograph in the Keys:
Away from the waterfront and all its marinas and commercial shrimping there lies a neighborhood of homes off Cross Street called "Lincoln Gardens" in the official lingo but known locally as "The Avenues." Its a wild mixture of trailers and homes, old and new:
This two year old modular home on stilts is for sale, all one thousand square feet of it, for $368,000 according to the brochure. It has 3 bedrooms, two baths and bugger all in the way of landscaping. 
Nearby there is a row of two story housing that has been built for sale as affordable and I have no idea what their selling price is. Units deeded affordable generally go for possibly $200,000 for 1 bedrooms and around $250,000 for two bedrooms to qualified county residents. The Conch style homes are next to Bernstein Park, which is an open space landmark in this part of the island.
Across from the park is the old dog track now transformed into several blocks of affordable rentals, built by Ed Swift part owner of Historic Tours of America. Swift comes in for a lot of criticsm not least thanks to his street-clogging Conch Trains, but he has put his money where his mouth is. These places look pretty good for $700 a month for a one bedroom:
Let's face it he could do more and Meridien West is supposed to be matched I believe at some future date by another 100 units labeled Meridien East, a suitable replacement for a long defunct drive in theater.
These are the times that try men's souls and as I wonder how long I will be able to hold on to my little tree house, our leaders, to their eternal shame, haven't yet sorted out a collective Plan A to replace worker homes which are being reborn as playgrounds for the rich. God knows where it will all end.
I don't go out to bars much, unless dragged by a friend, but I couldn't help noticing how many people were thronging the sidewalk with little black boxes poked in their ears. What did people do before there were cell phones? Bad enough that people drive with them on all the time, but you can't even hang out in a bar without yakking on them too? 
I just liked the looked of the sidewalk outside, a warm night in February, what a luxury. 
For all that its slightly fuzzy I too am a tourist and my motorcycle is there to prove it! 
And just across Fleming from the county building lies the symbol of Federal munificence, the Post Office which was looking particularly toothsome that night.
I find the main post office very evocative, built of brick and looking permanent in its majesty with a huge parking lot and yet it is welcoming too with its long portico and open access to the P O Boxes. I love ducking into the walkway on rainy summer afternoons and watching the water pound the feeble lawn in front of the building.
I like the symbolism of the gate across the city street, the reflectors, the whole "Keep Out!" message reminds me of Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin where I stood in 1981 on my first trip around the world. 
I struggle to differentiate the fake "Conch Houses" inside the Annex from the soulless Stalinist blocks of apartments you can see in East Berlin just beyond the Allied Check Point. West Berlin was a vibrant crazy place, much more so than Key West today, and it too was an island, though surrounded by dour do-gooders of the most oppressive sort. East Berlin was ghastly. I just feel bad for the limp retirees who mope around the Annex, and simply want to ignore Key West's middle class naughtiness; they would do better to let down the barricades, just as the East Germans eventually did.
One of their (living) neighbors on Windsor Lane made the effort to illuminate their flourishing palm:
And across the street is Poor House Lane which leads to Bill Butler Park nestled deep in this residential neighborhood It takes on a mysterious, unwarranted gloom in the middle of the night.
Sloppy Joe's is ambling along and there aren't the huge lumpen crowds on Duval's sidewalks I was hoping to photograph. It always amazes me how people imagine Hemingway ever would have been caught dead, drinking in this sloppy neon studded music bar. I think Sloppy Joe Russell would be astonished how his name has taken off! The two of them must be laughing like drains in the Great Beyond.
The San Carlos stands all but ignored, day and night, on the 500 block of Duval. This theater is generally credited with being the place where a speech by Jose Marti set fire to the Cuban revolution that ultimately saw Spain abandon its Cuban colony. And yet today the restored theater stands as a monument to the exile Cuban community's total inability to think of anything to do with this historic building. It could be a fabulous museum relating the story of generations of Cuban migrants to South Florida. Instead its pretty much ignored.
What a tremendous waste; another reason I have little time for the Miami Mafia as Fidel Castro calls them. 
That was when Kelly and Nick pedalled up and we started a long discussion about motorcycles and Triumphs and Harleys and their relative merits and Kelly had to drool over the Triumph. Silly man he has his own splendid H-D Road King to gloat over.
They launch the blimp on the end of a very long piece of string and it can be seen from miles around lollygagging in the sky. 
Aside from the dump and the blimp Blimp Road is also home to a ramp where people can launch boats or simply hang out and fish. Its pretty handy for small craft like kayaks but the ramp isn't very long and it doesn't seem to go very deep, for my taste and I imagine it might be all too easy to launch your car if you got it wrong.There was some kind of old fogey kayaking event going on when I stopped by yesterday afternoon so I kept the hellish machine (which has standard factory exhausts I might note) away from the nature loving paddlers. In summer this is a great spot to be alone with the sounds of wavelets splashing on the ramp.
Then one returns to reality and there is the Cudjoe Pocket Park at Valencia road opposite the entrance to the dump. 
It's kind of weird as parks go, kindly provided by Keys Energy our publicly owned utility company (I like it that my electric bill doesn't go to pay shareholders) and though it is equipped with a bike rack (!), a sign, and an artistic rock there is nowhere to sit. The grass is nice and lush which would make this a good spot for a picnic as lawns are in short supply in the Keys.
It was a glorious afternoon, low humidity, breezy and sunny, a continuation of the absolutley perfect weather we have been enjoying lately. The thermometer on the Bonneville recorded the fact for me, and I guess 92 degrees should feel hot but for my thin blood this was just as it should be:
Valencia Road wound its way back into a subdivision that was tucked out of sight, a criss crossing of dirt roads lined with palms and shrubs of various kinds. There are no canals back here so these homes would be considered "dry lots' in the local lingo but they are quite delightful for all that they aren't boat accessible.
I worked my way back along the lanes and found myself in another world. Aside from the purring of my Bonneville the place was silent, no dogs, no squawking kids no aircraft overhead, nothing. I found my way to the end of Valencia, where the street was closed by a fenced area and beyond was an old geezer walking his dog. He turned to look at me and I waved but he just stared icily back. It was perfect, a place less friendly than my own neighborhood!
I found my way to Spain Road and somewhere near there I came across a couple of horse paddocks. Now, I've never viewed the Keys as the place to come if you fancy riding horses but there they are, happy as clams.
My sisters loved to ride in their youth, and though they still keep horses, because they live in the country, they don't ride any more. Beats me, but thats how it is. I've always preferred horsepower to horses and here I am still riding. I may have imagined it but the nag seemed to be a little envious of my steed, loose on the backroads outside their stockade.
There was more than one barricaded animal in the subdivision, practically every home warned of fearsome canines within, beware of this dog and that on every fence until I came across a dog of a different breed:
Bad snakes? Thats what it says and no I didn't stop to investigate. And no, I have no idea why the first line is in English and the snake warning is in Spanish. As I am frequently moved to explain, asking "why" isn't cool in these islands. Things just are. Like iguanas:
Iguanas drive gardeners crazy down here. They aren't indigenous as for the most part they are pets that have been released and survive pretty well in the climate. They tend to seize up during cold fronts but mostly they plod around looking solemn and eating everyone's flower beds. Some people apparently don't mind the iguanas, I count myself among them, but I haven't put up a sign to that effect.
This house is at most half a mile from the dump; a $5 trip lasting perhaps 15 minutes and this excresence would be gone. But no, there it sits decomposing gently in the lush greenery of the neighborhood, a blight for all to enjoy. If I lived here I'd be hitching up my trailer and counting my pennies for the dump fee!
This magnificent manufactured home structure, complete with gingerbread fretwork is another example of the snowbird style of living. Apparently unoccupied like so many homes in the Lower Keys sitting there waiting for heaven knows what. An occupant perhaps? A happy grateful-to-be-here occupant? And one who perhaps would like to get rid of the gruesome hurricane fencing, but I'm pretty sure I'm overthinking this.
Or at least it would if the County's Public Works department could spell. I think its meant to be Asturias Road, but whats a vowel between neighbors?
There's a decomposing truck next to the crane, as though one was loading the other next to what appears to be a water filled quarry of some sort. It's all terribly bucolic now the engines are reduced to rust.
And then I hear a madly revving engine across the pond, a red truck appears in a cloud of dust and ducks behind a pile of gravel. Harder and louder the engine revs and the red truck appears closer than ever. I put my camera up and the truck spins out in a spectacular cloud of dust that my feeble picture only manages to hint at: 
The driver pulls alongside, a young kid looking worried. "I'm not doing any harm," he says defensively. I start laughing which breaks the ice. Ron is 23 years old and he grew up in the Keys. "I've seen everything there is to see and I've done everything there is to do, " he says gloomily lamenting the lack of variety in his corner of this huge and variegated country. I sympathize, telling him when I was his age I visited key West and left in a hurry bound for the exciting opportunities awaiting me in California. "Its just a way to let off steam," he says of his rough riding around the quarry. He complains that the deputies come out at night and try to put a stop to it. "We're not doing drugs," he adds, making what I think is a reasonable case for some off street fun. This encounter is typical of young people in the Keys; I find them generally to be polite thoughtful and well mannered in total defiance of the preferred model of sullen bad mannered youth reported elsewhere in the country. I wish Ron well and he takes off after letting me know of another secret spot nearby worth exploring. 