The disadvantage of living in the sub tropics is that the blood thins. It really does, though some people think its a joke. When temperatures drop below seventy (local zero) it starts to feel seriously cold. The lowest recorded temperature in Key West was 41 degrees and I have seen 50 degrees (10 Celsius)on the thermometer which was as cold as I ever want to see again. Thus it is that when people from Up North come down to splash on the beach in December and revel in temperatures around 70 degrees locals are wearing sweaters and boots and dusting off their winter wardrobes. When I read of people motorcycling on a lovely 40 degree day I shudder. So for me, swimming season is when the water is 80 degrees, preferably higher.
We're not quite there but we are definitely getting close. Last week I put the boat in the water and tied it up at the dock behind my house. Having a house on a canal is a wonderful thing, and sea waters are close enough to 80 degrees now that swimming will be an almost daily activity till the second cold front of the Fall. Choosing between the motorcycle and the boat for recreation will cause me some severe indecision between now and November.
My house lies about a quarter mile from the open waters of Newfound Harbor along a canal that is bordered by quite a few homes and mangrove bushes. It seems crowded but it's quite wide enough for the snorkeling boat that leaves from Looe Key Resort each day and takes a few dozen people out to the reef 7 miles south of Newfound Harbor. My neighbors keep some pretty impressive boats at their docks:
When we bought the house my wife and I decided we wanted to scale back and get something small and simple to tie up at our dock, a boat that we could use with very little effort or preparation each day. We ended up with a 14-foot used Dusky self bailing center console, and it has no lights or electronics. We have a 25 horsepower Yamaha that can push the boat up to 23 miles per hour, as I have measured it. For a sailor used to lumbering along at 6 mph such speeds still seem astronomical. The Yamaha also uses very little fuel which these days makes casual boating very easy to enjoy:
In addition to not enjoying getting blind drunk every day I dislike fishing which puts me in the minority camp in the Keys as far as recreation goes! I love to swim though and having the ability to jump in the boat and go for a quick swim any day of the week is a big part of the pleasure of summer for me. My wife gets home at say 3, we get in the boat and go swim till 4:30 and I have time to shower off the salt water and get to work by 6 pm. That's another great reason to work nights, the afternoons are still mine to go swimming... On my days off it stays light till past 8pm this time of year so we can be out on the water for a long time in the evenings. This is the corner of the canal as it turns out into the open waters:
That's Newfound Harbor beyond the channel markers, an almost circular body of water whose shores give wave protection from any direction the wind blows. Our neighborhood association planted a bunch of official looking channel markers after Hurricane Wilma trashed the old ones. The channel is cut from coral rock and is only wide enough for one boat at a time:
But once out there is an abundance of places to drop the anchor and enjoy the water:
In the distance here is Little Palm Resort, at the entrance to Newfound Harbor, where they charge up to $1200 for one night in one of their cabins. It's a resort where wealthy famous people sometimes commandeer the whole island all for themselves to live for a week in privacy the way I live all the time...You can see a big white blob which is a boat tied up to their docks:
Little Palm is actually a very cool spot, much nicer than I imagined it would be before I went there. And for $125 a person you too can take a ride out on their launches (only overnight guests can use their docks) and have a bang up brunch on a Sunday morning. Its sounds grossly extravagant and it is, but once a year we treat ourselves (with a locals discount. Hey my wife is an absolute bulldog when it comes to sniffing out those discounts!). You get the usual buffet choices and the chef cooks up as many sampler breakfasts as you can order and eat. Unlimited gluttony, as it were.Swimming season is here at last, and soon it will arrive no doubt in Minnesota's ten thousand kettles and at the beaches of Cape May and Cape Hatteras and all the way to South Padre Island. For me this is where I like to plant my swimming flag, amid the mangrove islands of Newfound Harbor:
Ten minutes away from my house. 
I worked the weekend, Saturday night, Sunday night and Monday night and my afternoon hours on the weekend I spent at home with my wife before I came into work. 
Old City Hall is a church-like brick building facing Greene Street with wide sweeping stairs, a clock tower and windows and doors of institutional proportions. This was never built as a home but as a place where important decisions are taken, a place where communities gather and hear their leaders. Which is lucky because that is precisely what it is. Upstairs there is a typical formal chamber with the city commission's seats set in the classic oval on a dais, and we the people sit below in orderly rows of chairs. Old City Hall was replaced by City Hall on Angela Street (a collection of buildings that have become ramshackle and are scheduled for replacement), but the commission itself still meets here on a couple of Tuesdays a month, as there is no meeting room at New City Hall on Angela Street. 
The side doors open to offices underneath the meeting chamber upstairs. This used to be the offices of the marine Sanctuary until the Eco center was built on the waterfront a couple of years ago. I find the handicap parking stickers on the doors to look rather odd, and I wonder why they couldn't have stuck them on their own poles. The exterior is imposing but 
I circled the block, walking down Ann Street to Caroline Street and form there down to 
Back on Caroline Street I paused to snatch a picture of the home of Florida's first millionaire, the house that carries his name, Curry Mansion Inn. Wrecking and trade were good businesses for Key West's 19
They rent out 22 rooms by the night and offer tours all day long for the curious. The blue ceilings on the 
Back at Old City Hall I had time to take a gratuitous motorcycle picture just to prove I rode there I suppose, as though that makes a difference:
I think this was an 
I am not a collector, except perhaps of stories. 
What a mysterious looking city!
So, tell the truth: you want it all, you want a home in Key West within walking distance of the bars, you want your own pool, an indoor/outdoor breakfast nook and porch, lots of tropical greenery and a two car garage to keep your Vespas and Bonnevilles out of the corrosive climate. Well its all there readily available. If you have say three million to spend. US dollars; less if they are Canadian Loonies, even fewer if they're Euros and just one and a half million British pounds. Have at it and you might get lucky these days and find something for a third that.
It surprises some people to discover Key West has distinct neighborhoods, quarters as they might say in foreign parts. I like The Meadows best, then there's Bahama Village ("the Village"), some people prefer the modern homes on larger lots in New Town, other wouldn't consider living outside Old Town, and Realtors have invented a new area called Mid Town, but if you can claim an abode in Casa Marina, why that is something to boast about. Not really, but some people drop their quartier into conversations like you or I might be impressed.
Casa Marina is on the south side of the city, and its boundaries may be a little vague but you'll know when you are there. Look for nice lawns, lots of plants (for some reason all the wealthiest neighborhoods everywhere have the most greenery, as though hoi-polloi don't deserve trees). The heart of the neighborhood is here:
What Henry Flagler did as he built railroads down the east coast of Florida, was he put up destinations for his trains, a series of luxury hotels for people to spend the winters in. His extension to Key West ended at Trumbo Point, which his engineers built from landfill to accommodate the ships that went to Havana. But many of his passengers wanted to spend the winter in Key West, and this is where the well heeled did just that, at Reynolds and Seminole Streets:
And across the street there are some people getting a good deal on a pricey neighborhood. Key West is rarely all of a piece and even amidst expensive homes, rentals lurk:
And check this one out, campy Hawaiian anyone?
I envy this home its rather cool brickwork which I'd like to see covering my gruesome pea rock some day when I care enough to pay to get it done. Looks nice to me though (the bricks not just the Bonneville): 
Others have big walls, this one with the ventilation slats (for want of a better term) are quite popular:
Others have big hedges, really big hedges:
Or big roofs:
It wasn't too terribly long ago I was down at Boca Chica Beach at dawn taking pictures of the Bonneville and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. This recent cold front put the mossies to bed and made the beach safe for humans for a short while. That and the fact I covered myself in poison to keep them away maybe. I took advantage to pay a daytime visit to the beach and go for a walk.
Boca Chica (small mouth in Spanish) is actually a large island, large enough to hold a Naval Air Station and a good bit of land beyond that. Its southernmost coastline is open to the public and makes for a pleasant recreational area for those so inclined. To get to the beach one turns south at the Shell gas station on Big Coppitt Key, near Mile Marker 10. The road to the beach is several miles long and passes through Tamarac Park, a sub division on Geiger Key, before dead ending at the cement barriers in the photograph above. Beyond the barricade lies the rest of the roadway:
This was all open to cars in 2005, with a line of small trees throwing shade across the two lane roadway. Hurricane Wilma put paid to the greenery and washed out part of the roadway, that which is left is being overrun by vines, and there is little more than a footpath to show the way to the back country. The beach itself isn't much to write home about if you expect a beach to have sand, and lots of it. 
This place is more like a seaweed factory:
Which helps to give the waters their unusually tannin brown complexion. All very unsavory, especially when you consider the waters aren't even very deep. You can wade out a quarter of a mile and still not drown, assuming a wader of average height. So why come to this cruddy beach at all? Well, these are the keys and if you want decent sand beaches you'll have to go elsewhere, like Sarasota...but locals come to Boca Chica because the views are pretty enough:
And there is still a stretch of roadway with vegetation:
And a picnic table to contemplate the joy of it all:
I used to walk my dog here and after she grew old and died I was reluctant to come back, as I had too many memories of Emma stumping along and throwing herself in the water to cool off.
I wasn't ready to do the same but the water beyond the seaweed looked inviting. These days Monroe County is busy sticking up signs along the beach advising free range dogs are no longer allowed. 
I was glad to see one couple,and their small dog, ignoring the strictures to no one's apparent detriment:
It really is a pleasant spot for a picnic if one felt so inclined, or to watch passing boats:
I felt inclined to walk especially as I was a bit short of time- my wife expected me to be home when she got there. I got walking down the roadway. Two youngsters on skateboards ignored me completely, so engrossed in their private dramas were they:
Then a young mother approached pushing her offspring. I felt like I was in a busy city park:
I don't think the pavement lasted half a mile before it ended in the spot where, pre-Wilma, cars had to turn around and the dirt track begins:
The path follows the old roadway more or less, which at this point is washed out on one side and runs close alongside the boundary fence of the Naval Air Station on the other. The path meanders for a while and then rejoins the paved segment of the road further along. Some people bring bicycles, and I have cycled this place in the past. The roadway ends at the remnants of a wooden bridge that is gone leaving a rather large crevasse as the final obstacle. I may be wrong but I seem to think that traffic into Key West came this way in the old days before the new Highway was built in 1982. These days this area sees other kinds of travelers landing:
This hovel craft looks like a Cuban escape raft, one of the more sophisticated efforts, showing signs of an inboard engine removed, and flotation jackets still alongside the hull, which is metal sheathed in fiberglass. USCG Okay is painted in white spray on the side of the boat, presumably to show it had been checked, but the cost of removal of dead boats is prohibitive so I suppose it will stay here ignominiously destined to become a garbage scow, a process already underway. I have to admire people who would put to sea in a craft like this to take on the mighty Gulf Stream. I arrived in the U S courtesy of Boeing Corporation, a much saner way to travel. Talking of rubbish, someone took it upon themselves to decorate the Navy's fence with footwear flotsam:
The fence actually runs out at one point and turns inland cutting across the mangroves towards the Navy's traffic control tower :
These areas of Boca Chica beach open up to lots of little coves along the water, several notorious as gay nude (nude gay?) hang outs. Also young people like to gather and be uncomfortable around camp fires and the like. I met a few loaded with supplies headed out towards a rather loud gathering along the beach:
They had their faces painted white like Japanese Kabuki performers which gave them a grotesque ethereal air. Sprites on their way to a piss up. Which rather made me feel glad to be old and en route to a proper dinner with a proper wife in a comfortable home. I took the opposite path to Oberon and his fairies...
So I'm not going to deny the onset of middle age or anything but while the youth were getting drunk and even louder I was finding my lost youth with the help of two wheels and sixty horsepower:
Quite the best way to arrive at Boca Chica beach. And to leave also, in a cloud of mosquito repellent and exhaust.