Doctor's Arm

It's just a subdivision on the backside of Big Pine Key, but it has this weird name. And there's this weird Bonneville parked there. No, that's my wife's Vespa I stole because she can't ride it for a while after her shoulder surgery. Doctor's Arm seemed an appropriate place to take the patient's 150cc scooter for an outing and as the place is next to No Name Pub this could also be a good place to visit for refreshment. the subdivision is to the left whence exits the SUV, the pub is in the distance on the left where the cars are parked, on Watson Boulevard:
This is rural Florida Keys the place were contrarians come to hole up and avoid too much contact with the world. It's also the place where you can goof off and hope not to get disapproval from newcomers not used to the laid back ways of those already here. In California this sort of thing is strictly not kosher:But happily I'm not in California anymore and riding in a towed boat (on land) is just another way to get where you are going.I don't think I've ever seen this before either. Look closely above and you will see a large fungus type thing sprouting succulents dangling from a child's swing. I guess you have to hang it somewhere.

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I think I was going to give up an explanation for the peculiar name for this sub division but I got distracted. In that vein the houses around here are a typical mixture of various stilt styles:The one below is actually a manufactured home on stilts, a popular option in the Keys to get an affordable home out of the path of floods. Insurance for homes not on stilts tends to be twice as expensive as the raised homes.
So why do they call it Doctor's Arm? What a good question. In the meantime here's a mailbox for Celia who likes them decorated:This next home was the scene of a triumphal return by the hunter gatherers in their boat, applauded by the damsel at the balcony:
This next damsel was peddling around her neighborhood but wasn't exactly talking to an over sized flamingo, it only looks that way:
The flamingo's owner was inside the back of the van. though it isn't obvious in my sneak picture.
Perhaps it's just because it is under construction but this future home across the canal looked huge to me, and there was evidence the building is progressing. They do like them big in the Doctor's Arm subdivision. What a funny name for a place to live. I think the chair was for trashing, not to enable the owner to lounge by his trash can, but who can tell?

Earlier I said that Doctor's Arm (there's that name again) is on the backside of Big Pine Key, when really I should have said it's a prestigious (real estate) neighborhood on the north shore of Bi Pine.Here below is the bridge to No Name Key:The main drag through Doctor's Arm is actually called Matthews Road and it boasts two lanes divided by a massive median:Most of the streets have canals dug out of the rock to allow people to keep boats behind their homes. This home and boat seem long since abandoned:And the canals, though picturesque, always struck me as being a long way from open water and as prestigious as Realtors may want to make this place sound, it isn't on the Atlantic side of the island which is the preferred side for people who like to fish. The Atlantic side of the Keys is the side with the reef and the deep open waters of the Straits of Florida where the big game fish reside.The planners also chose exotic sounding names for the streets,many of Italian or Spanish extraction, Ortega, Malaga,Minorca or San Remo and San Marco:And its a network of dead straight side streets leading off toward the waters of Big Spanish Channel:I read about motorcyclists worried about hitting deer in the wooded hilly country Up North. Well, we have the same though smaller sized issue here.Key Deer are a source of irritation as they are protected but they do like to eat gardens, and their detractors sneer at them describing them as :just small white tailed deer" which is probably how they started out before they evolved into little deer able to survive on little patches of land, a lot of it occupied by disorganized human beings.And so we come to the final frame, the dead of this essay. Doctor's Arm is a name shrouded in mystery and in my opinion a lot of bullshit. However the generally accepted story is that a pirate was hanging out in Big Spanish Channel, the large body of relatively deep water north of Bahia Honda. Or possibly they were on the other side in the waters if Big Pine Channel. In any event they captured some people including a man whose name may have been Doctor Armandi. The pirates had an injured crew member but the legend goes that the good doctor refused to treat the scoundrel so they marooned him in the mangroves of the place that later became known as Doctor Armandi's (or Armondi's) island. Which they gradually abbreviated to Doctor's Arm. And there you have it. If you believe a story with so many holes in it. And that is the very dead end of this shaggy dog story.

Shavers Lane

Shavers Lane lies west of Duval, and it has two notable bookends. Above one can see the north side of the Hemingway House on Olivia Street and below on the Petronia street end is the rather oddly named restaurant which sells desserts only called Better Than Sex:
In light of the fact that Key West is currently in a ferment over plans announced by the City Commission to hold a nude beach referendum, you'd think that a restaurant by such an unappetizing name might merit a referendum of it's own. No such luck. That and the ghastly Big 'Uns bar on Duval are here to stay apparently. Looking toward Olivia Street Shavers carries old time Key West charm, breeze block walls and bright lime paint:
Despite it's location in the heart of the city Shavers boasts vast open lots of land with tiny, elderly cottages perched on a corner of them: And it's own share of peculiar residents, or residents with peculiar senses of humor:I don't have any such sign at my house but I belong to the big stick and less braggadocio school of thought. On the subject of trespassing I really wanted to invade this secret driveway but contented myself with a picture from a legal spot in the lane:And this next cottage revealed itself a palace when viewed from two sides. Small and intimate from here:Stretching all the way back into the next lot with a side apartment and deck when viewed from here:Perhaps I haven't had my head in the air so much lately but when I spotted these sneakers I was once again reminded that people do the most inexplicable things:There are large lumpen buildings on Shavers too, this one artfully masked by greenery in bloom:And these identical homes in the famous Conch Cottage style, though rather more spacious than Cuban cigar workers might have enjoyed:The originals might have looked more like this:

Or this, which is high on the scale of cute:And this a parting thought on the wall at the Petronia Street end:

To which demand I can only ask: why?

Nicaraguan Wheels

I was mulling over a bunch of photographs my wife took on her vacation in Nicaragua and I thought she took some street scenes that might be of interest. Nicaragua is a rated as the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, wedged between Haiti at the bottom of the list and Honduras one step above Nicaragua. So street scenes here have a flavor that tends to be quite different from suburbia USA. Not all people have actual wheels to get around so they end up walking. When my wife and I were sailing down Nicaragua's Pacific Coast a decade ago we walked a ton too, though not usually with a load on our heads:The US influence is obvious on the streets, the yellow lane paint, the green road signs and the fact gas is sold by the galon, not the liter. A new sight on the roads that caught my wife's eye were these Bajaj three wheeler taxis, based on the Italian Ape of years past:The more traditional cab is a multi purpose pick up truck hauling people and stuff, and they don't spare the weight as economy is critical when you live in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere:Nicaragua is fixed in the average American mind, if there is any consciousness about the place at all, as the place where the Sandinista revolution took over the government 20 years ago and President Reagan instituted a Counter Revolutionary War to win back the country for capitalism.Those days are long past and Nicaragua has been at peace long enough it's difficult for an outsider to see any signs of that civil war. Nowadays it's a matter of working long enough and hard enough to make ends meet. The Danish government built some pretty decent roads across the country more than a decade ago and they are still there. The trick was the Danes sent their own engineers to Nicaragua to see that the money was spent on the actual project so the main roads are really quite excellent:Earning a living is tough when there isn't work and Nicaraguans have to be adaptable and tough to try to figure out how to earn some cordobas, (20 to the dollar, roughly). Imagine earning minimum wage standing out in the sun all day doing cleaning windshields rather than take charity:I find the anti-immigrant rants in the US to be extraordinarily uninformed. Granted these people who seek to make some money in the US don't have papers, but they don't come to the US for charity either. These are people that work:One aspect of Nicaragua that always intrigued me was the legacy of Sandinismo, the leftist ideology that left behind a series of social reforms that make Nicaragua one of the more progressive peasant socieities in Central America. It's modest stuff, regulated hours and conditions on the job with some protections against arbitrary firing, but it's revolutionary in this part of the world.
The World Bank has figured out that Nicaragua has the 14th most "free "economy of 29 in the Americas and is almost 70% "free" which I suppose means capitalist. And there they are out there beavering away as best they can:

It would be hard to imagine threading one's way through this sort of rush hour traffic on a motorcycle if you were used to the orderly flow of North American streets:And even though it looks romantic, a horse and buggy isn't the most efficient way to travel, unless of course you can't afford the cost of gas:In Key West pedi-cabs are a tourist attraction, in the provincial capital of Rivas they are actual taxis:And where would be without a picture of the local fuzz? If stimulus money doesn't stimulate I wonder how long it will be before Key West officers are "protecting and serving paradise" with less than pristine cars? It seems we are all a recession away from being on the ropes, so one can only imagine what local government budgets look like down there: And there's another Bajaj doing sterling work hauling people and their chattels:

A one horsepower cab:

A one horsepower pick up:

One feature of street life in Nicaragua (and other Latin American countries) are these gruesome noise pollution devices. They trundle around town advertising in loud horribly distorted voices, or alternatively they can be hired to announce political races or new city ordinances and the like.

And yes these countries do have helmet laws, though brain surgery here would be a bargain compared to getting the noggin reassembled stateside. And before you sneer at the level of private medical care in these countries remember the doctors here trained in the US and Europe and nursing care is amazingly affordable. Rely on Key West Diary to waggle your stereotypes.I've driven in all these countries at one time or another and I've found traffic to be no worse than anyplace else. It's a matter mostly of getting in the flow and remembering the basic right-of-way rule in all developing countries: whoever has the biggest wheels gets to go first. And whatever you do, don't get in a wreck because then your worst stereotypes will all come true!