National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather synopsis for Key West:SATELLITE IMAGES DEPICT SUBSTANTIAL SEA FOG JUST NORTH AND WEST OF THE LOWER KEYS. A LIGHT NORTHERLY BREEZE SHOULD ADVECT THIS SEA FOG OVER THE MIDDLE AND LOWER KEYS THIS EVENING AND EARLY TONIGHT. HOWEVER...THE LATEST DATA INDICATES A LIGHT EAST TO SOUTHEAST BREEZE DEVELOPING LATE TONIGHT...WHICH WOULD PUSH THE SEA FOG BACK TO THE NORTH AND WEST OF THE MIDDLE AND LOWER KEYS. THEREFORE...THE DENSE FOG ADVISORY IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL ONLY 400 AM SATURDAY FOR THE MIDDLE AND LOWER KEYS.
I looked west as I rode into town and below the setting sun, bright in my eyes, I saw a bank of fog. Hmm I thought as I slipped onto Stock Island wedged in between rows of cars jockeying for position at the triangle. Hmm, this looks like a genuine California marine inversion layer, and I felt a cool blast of air hit my chest as I rode under the gray bank of cloud. It felt just like a summer day in Northern California. Behind me was the sun:
In front it looked like the Sunset district of San Francisco:
For me it was deja vu, for others it was an opportunity to get home without too much sweat:
Or to get some exercise in an unaccustomed cool breeze taming the afternoon heat:
When I got to work I talked to Noel who is certainly not used to these conditions, and he was marveling at how cool the air was on his skin. "Refreshing" he marveled. Out on the water it looked weird in a town used to unending vistas of blue skies and blue water:
I was meeting my wife for cafe con leche in Searstown, at the end of her work day and the beginning of mine, and we marveled at how much the low ceiling sea fog reminded us of Santa Cruz, California.
We neither of us liked it much, as we are both fans of crisp unadulterated sunshine, but like all less-than-perfect-weather in Key West, we know it will pass soon enough. It is a trial working police dispatch into the night though as the officers are grumbling at the lack of visibility and unaccustomed burden of "bad" weather:
It's not a blizzard or anything, I know that, but it is a bit weird when you're in the police station and can't actually see the fire station next door. I'm glad this is a temporary phenomenon.
I looked west as I rode into town and below the setting sun, bright in my eyes, I saw a bank of fog. Hmm I thought as I slipped onto Stock Island wedged in between rows of cars jockeying for position at the triangle. Hmm, this looks like a genuine California marine inversion layer, and I felt a cool blast of air hit my chest as I rode under the gray bank of cloud. It felt just like a summer day in Northern California. Behind me was the sun:In front it looked like the Sunset district of San Francisco:For me it was deja vu, for others it was an opportunity to get home without too much sweat:Or to get some exercise in an unaccustomed cool breeze taming the afternoon heat:When I got to work I talked to Noel who is certainly not used to these conditions, and he was marveling at how cool the air was on his skin. "Refreshing" he marveled. Out on the water it looked weird in a town used to unending vistas of blue skies and blue water:I was meeting my wife for cafe con leche in Searstown, at the end of her work day and the beginning of mine, and we marveled at how much the low ceiling sea fog reminded us of Santa Cruz, California.We neither of us liked it much, as we are both fans of crisp unadulterated sunshine, but like all less-than-perfect-weather in Key West, we know it will pass soon enough. It is a trial working police dispatch into the night though as the officers are grumbling at the lack of visibility and unaccustomed burden of "bad" weather:It's not a blizzard or anything, I know that, but it is a bit weird when you're in the police station and can't actually see the fire station next door. I'm glad this is a temporary phenomenon. 
The numbers for January were 7,841 visits and considering last May the numbers were under 4,500, I have no idea where all these people are coming from. I guess pictures of sunshine in the northern hemisphere winter has to be an attraction but the numbers boggle my mind. So, let's mess with Sitemeter and everybody that reads this entry now has to tell at least one person they meet in the course of the day, to visit Key West Diary. There, that should freak the system out. It would certainly freak me out completely. Thank you for your attention. 
Appelrouth used to be known decades ago, according to J Wills Burke as Smith Lane and in 1981 it got a new name, in honor of a man described by the author as a Jewish merchant by the name of Billy Appelrouth. We get no more information on the man but I can't help but wonder if his appreciation for the peculiarities of this street would delight or appal him. From Whitehead Street Appelrouth is closed to traffic as this is a one way from Duval:
Walking the wrong way one passes a guest house which according to friends who know better than I, prefers the company of men (though others are not excluded I am assured):
I could hear the sounds of cheerful female laughter from behind the stockade as I strolled by...and made my way towards the back of the San Carlos Theater, the old center of Cuban culture in Key West. It had the air of a Spanish mission church in the early morning light, a touch of California I thought:
Across the street is the abandoned remains of a funky old German restaurant called Martin's which is now in a spanking new modern building on Duval. I liked the funky slightly askew diggs that Martin's used to enjoy on Appelrouth:
But closer to Duval things get a little kinky...which isn't something I am too knowledgeable about and if I were I probably wouldn't admit it here. Just thinking about a hairy man wearing these makes me feel a bit off kilter, but it does happen:
I managed somehow to miss this festivity, though friends that take great pride as it were, in doffing themselves up for these events say you can see the most surprising people being led round the event on a leather leash...
But if you feel the need for a leather, nail studded, speedo, Leathermaster can oblige:
I am told this is also an excellent place to bring your bourgeois leather goods for repairs, bland things like sandal straps and handbags and the like. There are limitations though:
There is also a handy rack on the street filled with straight, gay and lame publications for you to pick up and check out:
And if all this leather fetish nonsense isn't enough there is a rather nasty place further up the street called Zoo, or something Teutonic like that:
I have to rely on the word of friends who tell me you can meet perfect strangers here and take them home with you, if you like that sort of thing. It's not as seedy as the commercial parts of Amsterdam but you get the idea. They have a long "tasteful" spiel in the window if you need more clues and need to feel reassured that you can explore in comfort the more bored parts of your personality. Across the street is Virgilio's a clubby sort of bar and restaurant where everyone keeps their clothes on as far as I can tell, but I guess you might stand a chance of taking someone home from there too. Why else would you be in Key West? To enjoy the scenery? Only simpletons like me do that.
And then happily you pop out onto Duval Street:
And there's the cheerful converted cinema, formerly The Strand, now called Walgreens, selling sun tan lotion and mugs with "Key West" printed on the side. Not a leather jock strap in sight, and thus safe browsing for the most reticent of visitors. Caveat hospes!
When I was a child in England it wasn't at all uncommon to drive past clumps of vegetables on the outskirts of small towns. They were little gardens on common land called allotments a place for city dwellers to get back in touch with nature, and subsequently eat it. The little tool sheds were also, by reputation, places where manly men could go and do manly man types of things away from the eyes of their all seeing wives. You could smoke a pipe, sharpen a blade, read the sports pages, and not get interrupted. Which is something I don't suppose anyone needs to bring up in the context of the new community garden in back of May Sands School on United Street, not least because the tool shed is small enough a man standing in it might be grounds for calling the fire department to extricate him.
The garden is a thing of wonder to someone such as myself who is struggling to get vegetables to sprout at home. I was at May Sands doing a chore for my teacher wife when I spotted what had been a wasteland a few weeks ago. I had seen the raised beds going in but this was the first time I was exposed to such vigorous growth:
This tomato plant is about as big as I am:
And quite large enough to swallow a small boy whole:
His proud grandfather confided in me, when I expressed my unbridled envy of such prowess, that he too couldn't grow a tomato to save his life. His grandson though had become an avid gardener thanks to the communal plots behind May Sands School.
It was an educational experience wandering the rows of vegetables (and flowers) checking out techniques and ways of doing things:
I was particularly fascinated by the beds made of cement blocks. Where I had built movable beds out of plywood and planks they seemed simple and solid and offered a strange and interesting new way to plant, in the blocks themselves:
I like my wooden planters not least because they are portable as I am still looking for their final location around my house. No such doubts here apparently, and I will be back in the heat of summer to see what they are planting and what's growing. I saw a mother and two children picking up food as well as a woman silently and industriously plucking the evening meal out of the ground:
I hate to say it, but there something very un-Key West about the community garden. In a city where hedonism is the superficial prevailing culture there is something sturdily peasant like and not Key West about the food on the table culture of this garden. I felt less alone in my quixotic attempt to grow my own food when I stood in the midst of all this successful effort:
And there was no one to ask when I saw this, but I am glad someone is honoring this unknown gardener if he has anything at all to do with the creation of the project:
The sun was setting and it was getting time to go, but it was hard to tear myself away and I wasn't alone in that:
I checked the shed for unhappily married men but none were in evidence, and of course I admired the rain barrel collecting that precious rain water. Such a simple way to not waste water and so rare in the Keys, land of tropical rainfall:
I have no idea which architect deserves to be shot for designing the abomination that is May Sands School, a building that resembles a nightmarish nuclear bunker with all its cement and bizarre roof supports and impossible angles:
The building looks ugly but the garden has done a lot to cheer it up, make it look pretty in a way no architect seems able. Call it the Triumph of Nature.
An old road, barely more than a track that runs through the mangroves is meat and drink to me, a mouse for a mouser, the source of the Nile for Speake and Burton. I had to go see what was what. Trash was to be my portion, my reward for my curiosity:
Someone with a can of spray paint had taken the time to describe in some graphic detail how much better he was at certain acts than any woman could possibly be. It was left to me, not one to ignore a challenging thought, to wonder how lonely this Summerland man must be, to find himself just 25 miles from the fleshpots of Key West and reduced to this to get attention:
The trail wound it's way under a leaden sky, a muddy rocky trail underfoot and an unpromising sky overhead, full of gray foreboding:
Taken on foot the trail seemed long, but it's probably a half mile, easily ridden on a bicycle to a deep square pool of what appears to be freshwater, possibly an old quarry. The building in the distance sits alongside Highway One:
There were signs of trash all the way:
Until I turned a corner and came across the treasure trove!
This looked like an innocent wonderland to me, a place that would have ignited the imagination of a 13 year old me. I parked the bicycle and took a stroll:
The parental cry of frustration that rings across the Keys is that there is nothing for children to do in these islands. I have no children, I rejoice in that newly minted status described as "Child Free" yet in my memory I keep the seeds of a very active outdoor childhood. This collection of unused concrete pipes would have served me very well 38 years ago.
Upon my arrival at home in Italy from my English boarding school Diego and I (in the stylish hat) would have broken loose from the grip of his parents and my older sisters and we would have made slingshots for ourselves out of Y-shaped tree branches, bicycle inner tubes and patches of leather begged from the local shoe maker.
And we would have run through this splendid array of trash turning it into a wonderland worthy of the multi-colored plastic Ronald MacDonald. It even has its own enemy dirigible (the very innocent Fat Albert checking for intruders in the Straits of Florida):
I must be bacterium resistant after spending so much of my youth running around most unsanitary places. We had a blast. I was however alone on Summerland Key that afternoon free to wander and wonder. I have no doubt someone will be able to identify this reeking lump of rust:
Or this old trailer, I wonder how and why it found it's way out here to dissolve slowly into a pile of rust alongside a load of roofing tiles:
Of course I had to climb up and enjoy the view from atop the rusty heap. I may be 51 years old but I still feel some sort of kinship with the little boy pictured above. The view across the mangroves was hardly startling:
There was more artwork to admire among the ruined fort of my imagination:
While I was amusing myself taking pictures and enjoying the view someone was sneaking up on me. He turned tail and scooted as soon as I spotted him. Perhaps he was the author of the rude scribblings I found earlier. Or perhaps, even more titillating, he thought I was the author the doodles and he turned tail through the bushes to escape my horrid intent.
I made my way back through the trash to the start of this little adventure:
But when I looked up the street and spotted his broad brimmed hat the last I saw was the mystery cyclist pedaling hard to get away from the weird dude photographing rubbish.
Even the trash piled up in people's yards.