I do like White Street by night. I was there yesterday on my lunch break around 1:30 in the am.
In the picture above we are looking south toward Sandy's Café and in the distance, the White Street Pier. In the picture below we see White Street looking north toward Eaton Street.
The big white building on the corner of Truman Avenue houses a well known travel agent who gets in the newspaper occasionally for organizing off the beaten track adventure tours in dusty messy places around the world. And for apparently choosing to put ornate metal sculptures in the shop window.
Across the street the fish vendor seems to have got a good thing going. It hasn't been there that long but it seems to be doing well, in a town with lots of fish competition:
I can't help myself; I like photographing Key West homes and especially at night, double especially if there is a Bonneville in the frame:
Some dude came by and nearly gave me a heart attack when he asked if i was selling my Bonneville. "Argh! Never!!" I squawked. "Oh," he said, "I thought you might be photographing it for eBay," he went on "Nice bike," obviously to mollify me after he saw my pained expression.
No this Bonneville is not for sale, get your own.
I have no idea why they call it Author's Guest house- perhaps it's a criterion for would be guests?- but it's Palm trees look good at night. Especially with a Triumph in front. I know it's lame to keep mentioning it, but I haven't been including the Bonneville in enough pictures lately.
How about this Conch Cottage with deep velvety black night sky behind? And the Bonneville blah...blah...blah.
Talk about a velvet back ground, I took this picture of the plaque at the veterans cemetery on White Street near Southard:
without the flash and with a five second exposure this was what I got of the area behind the picket fence: 
And across the street this rather formal topiary hedge. I'm not sure if it counts as an actual topiary being as how the hedge doesn't properly look like a carved animal but I was figuring maybe you could call it a caterpillar and be done?
And then there is Art in other tangible forms along the street:
Not to mention Cuban food next door:
And my friend Amy runs her gym on this stretch of White Street as well. Their original shared location burned down across the street from Sandy's Café but the Stay Fit Studio landed on it's feet here:
And then finally a reminder that traffic always tends to be a little heavier on White Street, a major artery across the city. A couple of scooters came blatting through while I was taking these pictures so I snapped the shutter on one of them: 
Just for fun. here today, gone tomorrow in a streak of red and white light...
In the picture above we are looking south toward Sandy's Café and in the distance, the White Street Pier. In the picture below we see White Street looking north toward Eaton Street.
The big white building on the corner of Truman Avenue houses a well known travel agent who gets in the newspaper occasionally for organizing off the beaten track adventure tours in dusty messy places around the world. And for apparently choosing to put ornate metal sculptures in the shop window.Across the street the fish vendor seems to have got a good thing going. It hasn't been there that long but it seems to be doing well, in a town with lots of fish competition:I can't help myself; I like photographing Key West homes and especially at night, double especially if there is a Bonneville in the frame:Some dude came by and nearly gave me a heart attack when he asked if i was selling my Bonneville. "Argh! Never!!" I squawked. "Oh," he said, "I thought you might be photographing it for eBay," he went on "Nice bike," obviously to mollify me after he saw my pained expression.No this Bonneville is not for sale, get your own.
I have no idea why they call it Author's Guest house- perhaps it's a criterion for would be guests?- but it's Palm trees look good at night. Especially with a Triumph in front. I know it's lame to keep mentioning it, but I haven't been including the Bonneville in enough pictures lately.How about this Conch Cottage with deep velvety black night sky behind? And the Bonneville blah...blah...blah.
Talk about a velvet back ground, I took this picture of the plaque at the veterans cemetery on White Street near Southard:without the flash and with a five second exposure this was what I got of the area behind the picket fence: And across the street this rather formal topiary hedge. I'm not sure if it counts as an actual topiary being as how the hedge doesn't properly look like a carved animal but I was figuring maybe you could call it a caterpillar and be done?
And then there is Art in other tangible forms along the street:Not to mention Cuban food next door:And my friend Amy runs her gym on this stretch of White Street as well. Their original shared location burned down across the street from Sandy's Café but the Stay Fit Studio landed on it's feet here:
And then finally a reminder that traffic always tends to be a little heavier on White Street, a major artery across the city. A couple of scooters came blatting through while I was taking these pictures so I snapped the shutter on one of them: 
Just for fun. here today, gone tomorrow in a streak of red and white light...
Florida lobsters don't look he least bit like Maine lobsters with big claws and everything. They more closely resemble large craw fish such as one might see in Louisiana, but left unmolested they would live 120 years hanging around under rocks and minding their own business. Lobster has become a fashionable food, despite the fact that the "bugs" as they are known, are bottom feeders and their meat doesn't offer any of the health benefits associated with eating fish with scales. People do like to hunt them down as early as possible on the two days of mini season:
On my way home from work, around 6:20am I stopped the Bonneville on the bridge between Cudjoe and Summerland Keys to watch the boats processing up the channel toward the Gulf Of Mexico:
The thing about mini season is that it is basically open season on the lobster. There are limits to how many one can harvest ( and it's not open to commercial fishermen) and the Marine Patrol tries to get extra units into the islands for this peculiarly Keys event but it's tough to patrol every nook and cranny. Inexperienced people end up snorkeling (air tanks aren't allowed) and they can end up getting into trouble all too easily. Especially inexperienced unfit townies down from the mainland.
They go out on the water all day, or as long as it takes to get their quota (whatever it is, I can't remember). Then they come in to eat at restaurants everywhere and spend a ton of money which is the point of the exercise. I spoke with a local restaurant owner who told a story of a table of eight who complained about the quality of the food and he just turfed them out. "Better to lose a four hundred dollar tab than try to make a bunch of assholes see sense," he shrugged. We like his place and eat there often, so it's hard to imagine he dropped standards suddenly and profoundly. The excitement of the lobster chase can make even mild mannered accountants lose their marbles, I suppose. 
Me? I'm not that fond of lobster; not fond enough to get up before dawn and go out blundering about in the dark trying to beat a bunch of crazies to the punch to snuff the life out of an animal that would live longer than you and me combined. Call me sentimental. 
It's lobster mini season this week, two days and nights of mayhem on the waters around the Keys when any yahoo with a boat in South Florida invades the islands and has permission to harvest lobster from local waters (outside canals please!) This money raising ecological madness happens every summer ahead of the start of commercial lobster season which opens in August and runs into winter, hurricanes permitting. 
I loathe the mini season as it gioves people license to rape the waters, they don't give a fig about ecology or habitat and they drive cars and boats like maniacs. But they do spend money so we are stuck with them. The metal lobster sculpture however was another story. By the time we came out of the blind store the space was empty:
Let's hope the real live lobsters do better than this old timer did.
Sometimes people confuse Naval Air Service Police cars for civilian police and traffic slows to a crawl around them. The NAS police cover military bases all over Key West and can frequently be seen traveling from Boca Chica to the city on Highway One. In this case I rather wished they had jurisdiction and could have politely told this nice guy on his Harley that following too closely is a) a violation and b) dangerous. I loved his loud pipes though (said through gritted teeth).
We have been having some rather slow traffic jams on Stock Ilsand thanks to much needed roadway repairs. After one spectacular foul up that had traffic backed up for two miles in Key West the state Department of Transportation graciously decided to figure out a better solution. That nevertheless presented a short back up for a while, so that people, caught for three hours in the original major traffic snarl up got pretty fearfuland at the slightest provocation would pull a u-turn to get out of anything that looked like a back up. I wanted this picture to show the "Keep Off the Median" sign in the background: 
I arrived in Key West after just ten slow minutes on Stock Island. Slow driving that gave me the chance to snap the pictures I showed up above..
I noticed recently that an empty lot on my street which had been for sale for years is now boldly showing a "sold" sign on it. One wants to think the recession is drawing to a close...Summer meanwhile is in fullbloom and the poinciana trees I wrote about earlier are still flaming in the hot streets of key west, here forming a rather fetching arch over Olivia Street:
It was in this area I passed a parked truck somewhat the worse for wear. I wonder why it is people let these eyesores molder way infront of their very eyes. But I suffer from a congenital inability to collect anything. I am the opposite of a pack rat.
My complusions would lead me to dispose of unwanted carpet of course, but I hope not in the public trash cans provided for the temporary relief of passers-by. Perhaps it wasn't a local occupant who abused the city's largesse with this object dumped in the trash. Perhaps there was a tourist out there on Petronia Street that suddenly found themsleves encumbered by some formerly necessary carpet, and finding it surplus to requirements they felt complelled to toss it in a public trash can?
But it's not just household trash in public trash cans that caught my eye. I was forced to wonder what this appliance was doing on Truman Avenue, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag awaiting curbside pick up? Waste Management operates a generous pick up service for appliances that need to be removed but when I put out my old fridge they told me to tape the doors closed to prevent accidental suffocation by any passers-by moved to play inside it. They never said it had to be weather proofed:
I usedto have a motorcycle once with a dashboard mounted radio. I rode that fully dressed Yamaha Maxim 650 from Fort Myers to Santa Cruz California in 1991 and thoroughly enjoyed the trip, but I never did get to understand the purpose of a dash mounted radio. Underway it was hard to hear, and when parked I was afraid of depleting the bike's battery as already motorcycles wer ebeing deprived of kick starts and the Maxim was a heavy brute with the bags and full fairing and shaft drive made it hard to bump start. At least, unlike this Harley, my Yamaha's windshield was unencumbered and offered a clear view of the way ahead:
I did manage to find a motorcycle more spartan than my own, one evening at work.
This orange Yamaha 600 appeared in the parking lot at work one night bearing an "Under 21" tag from the great state of Florida, thus letting us know the registered owner is not allowed to drink alcohol or ride without a helmet but is allowed to vote and to volunteer to fight the Taliban if s/he so chooses.
It was a study in contrasts, the kid's minimalist cortch rocket with twice the horsepower of my 860, and absolutely no capacity to carry anything escept the rider with a passenger possibly perched high on the back.
So much motorcycle evolution in thirty years,and most of it leaves me indifferent. Ah, old age. 
MadJack (Above Solaris Hill) wanted obscure lanes (all gathered in one place- ha! not bloody likely at this late stage...) and here I have my entry for among the most obscure. Eanes Lane (pronounce it how you will, something like "innes" is the best I can come up with and police officers on their rounds mangle it much worse than that) lies between Whitehead Street to the west...
This sign says no parking in driveway but I suppose a bicycle can get away with it:
