I had to take the car into town yesterday and I have to admit the air conditioning was quite pleasant to have on tap. I think I am the only person left in South Florida who uses sun shades in the car. This is the time of year they are invaluable:
Summer has kicked in and its hot and muggy and utterly delightful to be in the Keys. I should mention that my new air conditioner is running splendidly and the house is cool dry 76 degrees. Outside the temperature rises to the mid -90's and dips by night to around 80 degrees. The spring winds have eased up a bit but there is still the merest wisp of a breeze keeping things entirely bearable. Rain has been in short supply and things are crisp and brown everywhere. The occasional brief shower has kept my rain tank full, but the salt ponds near my house look like sand flats from someplace out near Bonneville, my motorcycle's namesake in Utah.
Downtown Key West is busy enough but a few short blocks from Duval and Elizabeth Street under the afternoon sun looks empty enough to shoot a canon. Looking closer at the front of the Key Lime Store a couple of visitors are taking advantage not of the free Key Lime taffy (fools!) but the misting spray:
At the monument I found one visitor pretending he was in the Empty Quarter of Arabia.
The parking lots on Green Street were packed with ten dollar-a-day parked cars, some few in the shade, locals no doubt, but most in the white glare of the open pea rock, fully exposed to the summer sun. The demarcation line was quite dramatic:
The parking lot attendant was making no waves, sitting tight and waiting for sunset:
Locals abandon the tools of their trade in the heat of the midday sun, fork-lifts can roast and vinyl seats can burn as though under a magnifying lense when parked out under the suns rays:
But mad dogs, Englishmen and tourists will happily stroll the sunny side of the street:
Some sun-mad lunatics come to Key West to eat by the water and nothing will stop them from fulfilling the desire to eat fish outdoors and they scarf in the inadequate shade of an umbrella at Conch Republic Seafood:
To me the murky waters of Key West Bight even managed to look inviting, as they sat there all smooth and cool and wet:
But some people are just cool no matter what the ambient temperature and relative humidity:
Call it a paradox but the brick building housing Peppers of Key West looked cool and inviting: 
Inside they were offering their usual hot sauces and barbecue recipes and cute though it all was it was too warm for me:
I don't mind the heat, as long as I'm not working out in it. I talked to a cop the other day who was lamenting that on the day shift he has to get out of his car and walk around in his polyester uniform. He looked hot and uncomfortable just talking about it. Other people have to do physical work like moving stuff under the sun:
This guy left his Mercedes just like that and his trailer just like that for the entire forty minutes I was wandering around taking pictures. I think he planned to come back later to finish the job,m whatever it was. My little stroll worked up a sweat of my own:
I was all damp and ready for cold air when I got back in the car, and only feeling slightly traitorous in that I had had to leave the Bonneville at home yesterday. I love summer.
Thus it is I work for the Southernmost Police Department, and South (south...get it?) Street boasts the southernmost everything, from a modest Deli, a Bikini shop, several hotels and on and on and on. All of which speaks of lack of imagination to me but they keep on coming our way to be southernmost and closer to Havana than Miami. The embargo notwithstanding; perhaps making Cuba inaccessible makes it all the more alluring, we hope that next year all will be revealed, ninety miles south of the Southernmost City.
Having only one point that is southernmost (perforce!) creates all sorts of weird anomalies. Across the street from the Southernmost-Point-Guest-House lies another house that claims to be southernmost, the red roofed structure visible above and owned by a long time Key West family that defies geography in claiming southernmostness. 
Indeed a few years ago the city commission in response to protests from the less commercially inclined neighbors was ready to move the point from its location elsewhere. Geography is flexible in the Conch Republic. And there are people who choose to just live in this neighborhood without pretensions to paint, or tourism or anything much:
The actual southernmost point is...further south behind a fence:
And is only visible from South Beach's newly refurbished pier. The satellite dishes and antennae should be a clue. This is a top secret (more or less) listening station to listen to the Communists in Cuba. It all seems a bit over the top to me; Radio Havana comes through loud and clear on my car radio, 950AM, nevertheless there is a real southernmost point, owned by the Navy:
I suspect that the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor is further south than south beach but I am not going to take my GPS to test all the theories out. I prefer confusion.
Or tangling your lure around your out-of-school son: 
Or Selling nondescript stuff, jewelry perhaps while staring at women in bikinis on the beach: 
People keep insisting life in Key West is tough. Which may be true but some people try to keep a sense of humor:
Instead I mind my own business. Like this dude: You know he's not a tourist, long pants penny loafers and a smug air of this-is-my-daily-transportation look about him as he swings smoothly past the point:
Locals have their suave balconies to look down upon the masses:
And yet there are still buildings for sale just a block from the point.
Even if one could afford it one would have to have the self delusion of a dictator to find this pile the least bit attractive surely? And still I can hear the realtor announcing, convincingly, "...just ninety miles from La Havana." 
We haven't had much rain lately, just the promise not fulfilled, watching the clouds blow in from the south or the west. And where are these blusterous winds coming from? the south? the west? what happened to the comfortable, usual southeast trades? The winds blow, thunder cracks and the rain clouds hustle off to the horizon and I take a bucket and pour water on my fledgling palms using air conditioning condensate.
I stopped on my way into work to photograph the splendid colors of summer's near shore waters and all I got was what you see, shades of green not reflecting at all the turquoise and aquamarine I see out there with my eyes but that I cannot seem to capture with my Canon. Grrr. I did capture this liveaboard going home after a hard days labor (maybe). He buzzed out to his boat from the Highway One causeway which crosses the north side of Newfound Harbor. Today was one of those days we envy the liveaboards snug in their floating castles, cooled by fresh breezes on slightly ruffled waters.
Further up the highway I pulled off to hit some back country I'd cycled through this morning. I spotted a collapsing shed, or boathouse on the edge of the sparkling waters of Niles Channel when I rode my bicycle out to the park known as "The Pool" which is simply a saltwater indentation in the coastline. The Bonneville snuck into the old structure picture as it always does, somehow. And in this case rather overwhelmed the old structure in the distance. I thought the shed looked rather Bahamian in its decrepitude.
I know I am enjoying the Bonneville, even after my vacation riding the super powerful, extra smooth, rented BMW. I know because when I stopped for gas I found I'd got 45 miles to the gallon (18 km/liter) which is two mpg more than usual which means I've been ambling more and revving less. Smelling the roses one might say. And because i stopped at the Big Coppitt Key Shell I got that five percent rebate with the Shell Mastercard, which at $4:34 per gallon of mid strength gas is a nice savings:
Of course Shell is making cash hand over fist these days, and I recently read an interview on the BBC with the jug eared leader of said corporation. He argued that more exploration would find more oil and high prices help to cover the cost of finding and extracting the new oil supplies. I figure we've already proved we're willing to pay $4 a gallon so why would they ever drop the price? The US has cut consumption by an anemic one percent and car dealers in Key West tell the Citizen newspaper that SUV sales continue apace. I have been saying for some time that if you want to see $2 gas, double the mileage of your vehicle and in Italy, where they pay nearly $9 a gallon they drive 60mpg cars. Which means they effectively already pay less than we do...and a Nissan Micra Convertible is a cute car, believe it or not, even if it is small. In the Keys I am seeing more two wheelers out on the roads and in people's driveways. Not all the riders dress the part of Serious Motorcyclists . This dude was wearing a leather flying cap of a style that went out of fashion before World War Two:
And his exhausts were loud enough to wake the dead. I think the lady in the car at the pump next to me thought I was the cause of the ruckus as I thumbed my quiet little starter at the exact same moment. I thought my engine had blown up and I think she wished it had. 
The Bluewater Key RV resort is quite nice (we had a look when we were house hunting years ago) but its not really a solution for someone looking for a home. Its a space for someone who owns a quarter million dollar 4mpg motor home who wants the same parking spot winter after winter... and seen from the Highway it is quite attractive, in a South Seas sort of way:
Tiki huts and palm trees on the waterfront, with AstroTurf for the RV and all for a cool half million. Astonishing ain't it? People will pay astronomical sums for this stuff.
I'm going to keep on riding the Bonneville and photographing the Florida Keys. Now I just need the lap top back from its long hiatus while it was getting repaired. Today they say it should be back on my desk at home after a month without regular Internet access. I really miss having a computer in my home and its been a long month away from the Web. 
When we were kids Giovanni spent his summers at this end of the street and I lived in the castle at the other end, which I photographed by day:
The family mansion has been empty since I left and it was sold to some businessmen who had grand ideas for the grand structure that they have managed to do absolutely nothing with. There it sits dominating the village and deteriorating as only grand old homes know how. It looks like someone is in the downstairs study, but its just a street light reflected in the glass.
That picture evoked for me the endless winter nights sitting by the fire reading and waiting for the short cold days to pass. It was not a happy time for me. Not many people live in the village, even fewer than when I lived there and nowadays most of them are temporary, the equivalent of snowbirds in Florida. The empty square damp with June's extravagant rainfall I found had all sorts of angles for the camera:
The village was dedicated to the proposition that grain harvested had to be stored so they built large stone warehouses to pile the stuff into. Just because the buildings had a purpose didn't mean they couldn't be stylish:
And off the main piazza there's a road leading down to the back of the village where a few more hardy souls live, year round.
And of course there is a little shrine in the wall, the sort of shrine one sees anywhere in the world, even Key West. I photographed a similar display one night on Flagler Avenue and published the picture in this blog. Here's the shrine in the wall in Morruzze, taken with a flash:
And speaking of shrines this isn't the only one. The bigger of the shrines is at the entrance to the village, a chapel sized building surrounded by boxwood hedges and live oak trees:
The altar cloth was providing a snug residence for a couple of locals seeking shelter from the unseasonable rains:
My front door looks out on the main piazza and it was for many years my garage door as my first Vespa lived inside the door in a vestibule under the stairs as did all my early mopeds and motorcycles when they were small enough to fit:
Later I took to parking them in the main courtyard under the house, an area I stuck my camera in and fired off a flash. The "new" owners don't seemed to have developed a grasp of what to do with the space. I had the same problem:
Just looking at the pictures makes me miss my snug little 800 square foot berth on a canal in the Lower keys. Less is best, it turns out.
Architecture, History and Art, and I turned my back on it all. There's a proverb that comes to my mind when people ask, breathlessly why I left. "Those with teeth don't have bread while the people with bread don't have teeth." The bread for my teeth lies in the islands off the tip of Florida, not in the mountains of Umbria. Weird but true.