More Old Key West

Don't you love wordy notices that, reduced to their bare essentials say: please be well behaved. Which if they were going to be well behaved would mean they would need no sign to remind them how to behave.I was so astonished when the puppy pictured above rolled on his back in act of submission to a bleary Cheyenne I forgot to take his picture until he had moved on half a block. Cheyenne spent a good twenty minutes grazing around the base of a kapok tree at the Old Harris School on Southard Street. http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/11/harris-school.html The school was in the running to become a cultural and art center through the Rodel Foundation, which never happened and the place is now supposedly going to become office space for rent.I'm not sure this next picture worked as well as I intended but I liked the silhouette riding past Mangia Mangia.This is a spiky palm which is about as botanical as I can get. There are tons of these around and I really like how they look.

Classic old Key West, a small house on rocky supports, wooden shutters and door. Welcome to the almost-Caribbean.

This lady shuffled by carrying her dog, Francisco, who as far as I could tell was a year old and recently orphaned and came into his owner's life as a replacement for her much lamented and recently deceased dachshund.

When a safe distance from the fearsome Cheyenne she put Francisco down and they resumed their conventional perambulation. It's that time of year when you can sit in your car with the door open and you don't need to button it up tight and crank the air. That rates this is the pleasant time of year.I was sitting next to Cheyenne and looking across the street I saw this odd play of light and shadow.It was a balcony at the island House seen below in it's context.

This old decoration for the rest Fantasy fest was lurking in Fast Buck Freddie's warehouse, where Cheyenne took her second pause of the walk.Endless downtown roadworks to install storm drain improvements, they say.

I have omitted to photograph this mural which was completed some time ago. Now my omission is rectified.

I have been on a con leche diet for some time and I miss the coffee and cheese bread fix. I'm thinking it's been a while since I photographed a Cuban meal (or snack) for the blog. For the blog of course I might have to yield to temptation. Old Key West on James street, still hanging in there.Sometimes there are slow dogs as well on James Street.

And slow bicycles on Olivia Street

And they weren't in a hurry, but they did eventually pull over for me.

I hung back and was very patient and polite, as one should be. Looking below I am very fond of unintentional irony. Especially from Realtors who would sell their grandmothers if you believe their advertising. The newspaper said yestersay that home sales in Key west are as low and as slow as they have ever been. I think sellers need a reality fix if they think homes will sell for as much as they did four years ago.

I haven't eaten at the Southard Street Bobalu's though I have enjoyed the odd bit of southern food at the original Bob and Lu's on Big Coppitt Key.

Old Key West? Probably not but it looks kind of old and funky and all outdoorsy.

Breakfast With The Boys

At first glance it looks like we were invited to a pre-dawn meal with Wayne and Chuck.Their Sugarloaf Key home looked inviting for dinner.And, by way of insult we had to walk past their Earthboxes, the ones we bought for them in Key Largo at the RV store. Their plants, the ones they bought with my wife at the Big Pine Key flea market are flourishing. Ours have been eaten down to tiny nubs by iguanas all over my Earthboxes. Grrr."You okay with breakfast for dinner?" Chuck (the one with glasses) asked. Wayne had told Chuck that yesterday was the night he wanted pancakes and sausage for dinner. When they invited us my only query was whether one was allowed to have wine with breakfast."In this case yes, " Chuck said. "There are no rules." That's nice; I was in.
Cheyenne got her dinner, a bowl of sizzling rice sprinkled with cooked chicken. "She does like her food, " Wayne remarked as Cheyenne threw herself into the bowl headfirst. He then disappeared outside on a mission which saw him return with a carefully wrapped bottle of red plonk to accompany dinner. Apparently thanks are due to a mysterious sprite who lives up the road who calls herself church or chapel or possibly abbey according to Chuck who was not very forthcoming. She apparently learned of my taste in tippling and sent along a note with the bottle. It was very reassuring.Thank you Abbey. The surprise and astonishment were complete.So we sat and tippled and Wayne and Chuck navigated their way around the dogs and produced breakfast for dinner. Zuzu and Tootie, shy as they are, were not about to be left out. From living as fearful rescue Vizlas they are learning to be out and about among people, just like their trainer Cheyenne. The pancakes were safe from their depredations behind bullet proof glass, the sausage patties were sizzling and Wayne's fluffy muffins were getting a coat of sugar sauce. This was not a meal for the faint of heart. I make no claim to be a people person and pointing the camera at Wayne produced a look Lucifer might have been proud of. He's quite nice really but my camera bring's out the eccentric in people.

Cheyenne likes this place and not just for the rice and chicken, or the fussing she gets from the boys but also because their floor is cool and comfortable. She immediately adopted the alligator position.

We loaded our plates in the kitchen and Wayne was hungry enough he moved like greased lightning with his food out to the terrace. Well, he looked like greased lightning through a slow shutter speed.We ate and drank and talked, on a delightfully cool fall evening, 71 degrees and no humidity.

Full of wine and breakfast I slouched and admired the black view out over the water.

My colleagues at work have been telling me about this new TV series which they think is fascinating- English unarmed cops and the Crown Prosecution Service. We watched an episode about child abuse which was as heavy a meal to digest as pancakes and sausage, but Top Gear had me laughing soon enough. Wayne and Chuck have the cable TV system that lets you record stuff to watch later. If we had cable or satellite I'd loose the ability to move off the couch there is so much to see. Netflix and an absurdly small TV screen are enough for me. I am weak and television is strong.
We made our goodbyes and took off for home. Pancakes and wine. It really does work for me.

Living By Water

I stopped on the Overseas Highway and with the excuse of letting the dog wander I whipped out the camera.There's lots of ways of living on the water. Or under it.Mangroves turn salt water to fresh and then drink it.

If I had to move to Key West I would miss the drive on the Overseas Highway.

It's just one road, but every turn is one helluva view.

With all due to respect to Cheyenne, my much loved Labrador, the Highway is still much better ridden by Triumph Bonneville than driven by Ford Fusion.But the views remain the same.

Bits Of Old Key West

I was walking Cheyenne pretty much at random, in town for an event we were going to later, when the advertising phrase preferred by Schooner Wharf Bar sprang unbidden into my mind. "A last little piece of old Key West" is a superb slogan for a bar which wants to sell itself as a spot that claims to be funky, old time, down at heel, anything goes etc...in the spirit of a fondly remembered Key West that may or may not have existed. I find these kinds of slogans a bit vexing because I know damned well not many people alive today would be the least bit happy to be transported back to the Key West of Hemingway's To Have and To Have Not, a place of no money, little charm and lots of hard graft. But I digress, Key West has always been charming and I am just made grumpy by advertising slogans. Aeroplane! Remember that life in Old Town consists in putting up with lots of noise from various sources. Old time Key West might have been a lot quieter at least.
I am not a great fan of the food at Mangia Mangia, I like my Italian-American food to resemble what I think of as Italian food, but I am alone in this. The restaurant building qualifies as Old key West and very pretty it is too.Electricity in old time key West was a rough affair, coming and going pretty much at will. I remember outages used to be much more frequent, but in those days electrons mattered less, I had no computer and land line phones worked independent of electricity. Nowadays Keys Energy has installed big power poles made of cement and things seem much more reliable. I photographed this scooter ridden by a man who saved walking five feet by occupying one of two handicapped spots. The other one was available but it seemed rather chintzy of him, especially as his scooter has no placard.
This sign looks rather silly like this but it is intended to keep the door free of parked bicycles when it's closed. Finnegan's Wake used to be a much nicer Irish pub before they went all sports bar and installed millions of TV screens. That's just the sound of me grumbling again. Life in key west is all about change.I do not have the imagination to take some old colored glasses and turn them into garden ornaments, but I do like them when I see them.

This next sign cracked me up...."circa 1925." Circa used to be used to measure a span of time in antiquity, "around the fourth century," or some such. In Key West where history is buried in an alcohol induced blur 1925 may as well have been when Athens and Sparta were at loggerheads it is so remote a date.

Now here, further down James Street we have a true piece of old Key West. This shed is now fenced off where once it was open to anyone who wanted to bed down in the grassy area in the back. And they did bed down there with their beer and their bedrolls- hence the fence.My accountant doesn't have a bird cage in his window and he certainly doesn't have one with a dead fish inside. I'm guessing CPAs in Kansas don't either. But in Key West this one does.

This car might be pretty old considering it's got shrubbery growing out of the back door. An old time piece of Key West? Maybe. Old Key West is cute. That's why there are so many visitors filling the city coffers.

Cheyenne loves the old homes propped up on rocks instead of being built modern style on a cement slab. There is food lurking somewhere under here, old unconsidered trifles of mouldy cat kibble.More old Key West. This is not the first time i have photographed this divine shed on Lopez Lane but I really like the way it looks. This would be a perfect man hut with naked women calendars and a fridge filled with Boddington's and Yuengling and Smithwick's and a couple of bottles of Pinot Noir. You could sit in here sweating and listen to the rain dripping down of a summer's afternoon.

The old sponge market on Fleming Street looked pretty in the crisp sunshine and the dark blue sky in the background.And the figurehead appears once again on my blog. About as much nudity as that crass old toad riepe will ever see here. The more he grumbles the more I dig my heels in.

Whoa! A new sign! Change comes crashing down about our Key West ears once again. Silly billies, just about every street in Key West is a bike route. I wonder what it means.We were having a great walk and Cheyenne wanted more and I was happy to oblige, but those pictures will have to wait till Monday.One more picture, I liked this one. "Active member" means get out of speeding ticket free, perhaps?

It seems a bit blatant to me but what do I know? I have an Iron Butt tag holder on my Bonneville, "world's toughest riders." Hardly, but hyperbole comes in all shapes and sizes doesn't it. "A last little piece of old Key West..."

====================================================================

Post Scriptum: On making the Friday rounds I find myself filling in endless word scrambles. Is mine the last blog comment page that doesn't require you to spell out nonsense in order to tell me I make no sense? Comments on entries older than five days get moderated which is how I eliminate the spam. I just filled out a word scramble that spelled "balls." And it wasn't on riepe's blog. I need a strong cup of tea.