This is the neighborhood that lies within 5 minutes of the city but lies apart from it far enough to make it suburban. I can't help but feel that the island's name was some marketing tool used in the 1960's or 70's to sell a "lifestyle" away from the urban decrepitude that was Old Town when the Navy was scaling back and the economy appeared in terminal decline.
There is a large swath of open space across from the gas station, an area known locally as the "Key Haven Truck Stop," a place where yes, truckers stage before entering the city, but also where people park vehicles for sale, boats on trailers and all manner of stuff, much to the annoyance of residents who don't fancy a truck stop as the entrance to their community, even one labelled in jest. Across from the truck stop is more open space, filled with Australian pines, trash, and from time to time the odd motorcycle...it may be cold, 69 degrees in the wake of a cold front, but the Bonneville is running again after a few days set aside for car driving.
This stretch of abandoned waterfront overlooking an almost entirely enclosed lagoon has been slated for development, which is hardly surprising. Even less surprising is the fact that people rose up in arms to complain about the plan to build some 43 homes around the seawall.
But what surprises me is that this area has been left to its own devices for as long as it has. My wife and I used to meet here occasionally and take Emma for walks, taking advantage of a soon to disappear open space. Perhaps not, at least not for a while, will it disappear. So far so good, with no signs yet of construction.
Key Haven itself is a curious community, lacking in amenity, devoid of personality and neither sparkling with architectural gems nor flourishing with botanical abundance. Its just kind of flat, and many of the houses lack any kind of tropical flair:
I think its relative old age (50 perhaps?) gives it a rather dated feel, like some of those Miami suburbs built outside downtown as experiments in urban planning with an emphasis on concrete order and cement block bungalows.
It's not a community that invites exploration and side walks are not seen in abundance, though there are elderly, peeling bicycle lanes painted on the main roadways, which surprised me:
The island reminded me of nothing quite so much as Grand Cayman, flat and subdued and begging a reason for a second visit. The fact is much of Key Haven is treated as a public parking lot for quasi abandoned boats, trailers and trucks: 
And when I stopped to photograph this alluring display of urban decay I attracted the irate attention of a nearby homeowner who came out and stood, silent but belligerent in the street while I turned out in the dead end, took a picture... 
...and came back out past him. He stepped back as I smiled breezily and rode by. The last I saw in my mirror he turned around and stumped back indoors as I disappeared out of his street. I guess he has attracted some unwanted attention for his sprawling public abandoned trailer lot...and must have wondered if I were documenting his lack of public spiritedness for some nefarious purpose. No such luck, I'm just a a wanderer with a camera.
Part of my actual self imposed mission, far from working as an outrider for Code Enforcement, was to seek out the home advertised on the real estate flyer that landed in my mailbox recently. I found it easily enough and it was as promoted, brand new looking in "move in" condition. I liked its multitude of sloping metal roofs:
And it sits on just one of several crowded canal front streets that eschew the eminently sensible notion of raising your precious home on flood-proof stilts. Which is not to say new homes aren't sprouting on Key Haven bringing with them the architectural motifs of McMansions from Up North.
I'm sure you can find any number of homes like these huddled round golf courses from Pensacola to Port Saint Lucie but they have always struck me as somewhat unsuitable for tropical construction. The lovely terracotta tile Mediterranean roofs for a start are just perfect for hurricane force winds to lift up and peel off in one hundred mile-per-hour winds. Steel roofs make sense. Then I wonder how you attach hurricane shutters to their abundance of nooks and crannies and half hidden windows...
Fortunately there are a few quirky homeowners even in Key Haven and this one I liked with its absurdist airplane parts front gate (Beware of the Dog and No Trespassing...just to add a touch of class) and this grotesque mishmash gateway to purgatory, begging for a touch of varnish and a pet for the guardian lions:
Key Haven enjoys the mixed benefits of canal frontage ,open water and easy access to the city, but its not a place that invites serene reflection, even in its most open viewpoints:
And the tiny urban park has a most unfriendly sign announcing it's for Members Only. As if this might be just the sort of magnet to attract hosts of undesirables, people just like me, bikers, or worse, if the gate wasn't posted Keep Out!
Key Haven doesn't speak to me, doesn't make me wish I lived in a low lying easily flooded home, right under the flight path of Navy jets just five miles from the fleshpots of Key West. It does have a couple of nice curves on the main road through the community which is nice,
but not enough to make me pine for the delights of this funky little neighborhood. I doubt they will miss me, or my motorcycle any more than I shall miss them.
Down on the waterfront at Truman Annex there lie a couple of squat cement buildings, close to the gorgeous turquoise waters of Key West's inner harbor. These buildings are harbingers of the City's future, not least because they are growing sod on the roof to reduce cooling costs:
It's going to be a while before we see a lawn on the flat roof of the Police Station, but the Dr Nancy Foster Eco Discovery Center is new and bringing innovation slowly with it. This is the headquarters of the National Marine Sanctuary in the Lower Keys, and there are 33 new acres of land to be developed by Key West around here now that the Navy has handed the waterfront over to civilian use. The Marine Sanctuary in the Keys is easily accessible to members of the public for the waters are protected and shallow and these islands are littered with boats for rent to go out and enjoy them. From cruise ships on down:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the grandly named Federal agency works with the State of Florida to protect these waters with their boats:
and with their markers and their buoys:
My buddy Robert who has lived in the Keys since 1976 moved from working as a commercial lobsterman to become the waterborne educator of the sanctuary users. His job is to welcome boaters to the sanctuary and then educate them how not to wreck it:
The drive to educate is what got the Eco Discovery Center built and a very modern building it is too, inside as well as out:
Admission is free, the air conditioning is cold and there is even a movie theater in here, so there are lots of reasons on the face of it to pay this place a visit. However, as a friend of mine said to me, "You need to be prepared to spend a lot of time in there, there's tons to read!" and its not all about the water:
The Center really pulls all the habitats together into one web of life. Its not just a matter of not stepping on the hard pressed corals on our reefs, its also a matter of not throwing out trash, not interfering with the life cycles of birds and fish and reptiles; it is all, in short, connected. A point made clear in the movie theater, a painless way to explore the various sticky, buggy environments in the Florida Keys, as seen through the wide eyes of a visitor to the Marine Sanctuary. The movie shows us a child's eye view of the wonders of mangroves and fish habitats in the sanctuary:
There are dioramas explaining the world of the animals underwater:
And above the waters, in the dry land hammocks:
And on the beaches:
For a professional diver and educator like Robert the submersible exhibit holds a special place in his heart:
I like visiting the Eco Discovery Center, not because I feel the need to discover, or reaffirm my desire to be polite to the planet I call home, but because I like reminding myself, during the winter months how much I am going to enjoy immersing myself in the mysterious waters that surround my island home. And just when they seem to be a little less mysterious than usual a weird event pops into the headlines. Like the visitor from Up North killed by a flying ray that broke her neck when it hit her sitting in the bow of her boat slicing through the water at 25 miles per hour... a ray like this one possibly:
I guess it must be a fair representation of a ray but it has those big old Bambi eyes staring down from the ceiling...
No mention here of Casuarina trees. This building is at the heart of the drive to re-vegetate the Keys with native plants and the Pines of Fort Zachary for instance wouldn't be something I'd bring up with Robert next time we're out for dinner at El Siboney...
It has been a few posts since I included gratuitous pictures of my Bonneville posing around town, and today, alas alack, is another one of those. It happened that we have been living through another Easter weekend and it seems for some this festivity is best enjoyed with one's family, which in the Keys often means making a journey, thus orphaning one's pets. So all is not lost for those like my wife and I who are on the holy day sidelines; we got to enjoy the company of Lula Mae for a long weekend.
I am one of those people that gets along quite nicely thank you with almost any dog, unless it is one of those sad creatures driven mad by neglect or imprisonment in solitary confinement in a yard or worse on a chain. My last dog died a couple of years ago and I'm not quite over it..yet, which is perhaps one reason I have yet to write an essay about Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs (and Debs died of cancer six long years ago already). My motorcycle had to stay put at home which was the down side of Lula Mae's visit but we did get to take a few splendid walks:
Lula Mae is an urban dog, used to wandering the sidewalks of the metropolis, but my idea of a walk is to find the path less traveled and then give it a good work out. Any dog that lives with me gets used to riding in the car and being poured out at one of any locations that strike my fancy. Lula Mae has no facility with water either and the sucking and gurgling sounds of the tide's ebb and flow at the submarine pens caused her some consternation:
Lula Mae grew up in rather insalubrious circumstances in Marathon and even had a litter of puppies before she was rescued from her dungeon. These days she lives the good life but from some dim recess of her memory she has retained a powerful loathing for other dogs. She's the reverse of my own phobias, as it were. And when taking her for a walk one needs to be cautious if other dogs are in the offing because she can pull like a train. While she has been known to overpower my wife, with me she pulls just for fun (Lula Mae, not my wife):
But in order not to spend too much time worrying about chance encounters I like to wander alone with her comfortably running back and forth off leash tiring herself out. That and some tug of war earns me a few quiet hours at home before the next bout.
That was the fun part of dog sitting, getting to enjoy the company of dog for a little while, long enough to be reminded of the pleasure and the obligation of dog ownership. The less fun part is a temporary return to driving everywhere in air conditioned comfort (it's been hot and sticky around here all weekend) with NPR on the radio and windshield wipers to fend off the occasional downpour. The thing is I have been bored senseless, more senseless than usual, trundling around in the back of a long line of cars, everywhere I go. I am reminded why many people who drive do it so badly- its deathly boring. 
I try to make it interesting, I try to stay alert and involved but other vehicles clog my sight lines and passing, even with a 3.5 liter v-six is fraught with all sorts of unpleasant possibilities when one is trapped in a cage. In town I find myself forced to lump along with no sense of adventure, no desire to take the long way there, no pleasure at taking longer to get there. I joined the lines of glazed eyes and glazed brains that bump across the bridges and causeways of the Keys. Of course I had a bright eyed and bushy tailed Lula Mae sitting up in the back wondering where the walk was going to be.
I'm not yet ready to be looking after a dog full time, I know it and I'm resigned to it for the time being. One day I'll put a fence around my house, stick a sidecar on the Bonneville ( like Ara and Spirit) and throw my dog and my walker in the hack. But for now, when I have to drive a cage I look out the window and struggle to stay alert, while not envying those around me carefree and irresponsible on their freedom machines:
All good things come to an end and Lula Mae is back home, after one final exhausting walk and tug-of-war and tomorrow I will be commuting properly, on the Bonneville once again, envying no one, riding for the fun of it. And yes, I will be missing Lula Mae just a little bit.