Key West Evening

I was struck by the notion that Key west as a walking/cycling/scootering town might be hard to believe looking at the photograph below, snapped in front of the Green parrot Bar at a peak motoring moment.In many respects Key West is the city of paradox, heavily regulated, yet frequently lax in enforcement, a city filled with people who know each other far too intimately, yet leavened by hordes of total strangers who descend on the city every winter and who claim residence based on four months of fresh air seasonal life in the little city. I have no idea what tarot skin care is but I did like the bold unconventional approach to city signage: Across town the school district has sneakily built a new school more than twice the height permitted by city regulations. Judging by the furore you'd think they threw up the building overnight when no one was looking. City engineers checking the plan for safety failed to notice the projected building was 56 feet tall. The school district simpered disarmingly and said they thought they were exempt from city zoning regulations. The city manager shrugged and said, oh well, spilled milk and all that, moving on...The county accused a private group of bilking them in their contract to take care of stray animals in mid county. An audit tried to prove Stand Up For Animals used county money inappropriately. All it seemed to prove was that the woman who ran the organization is a rotten book keeper, but nothing worse. Speaking as one such myself (my wife won't let me near a check book) I sympathize with the accidentally mingling of private donations with public funds. A friend said SUFA was found guilty before the trail was even scheduled. The fact remains that dismissed in disgrace, a replacement agency for Stand Up For Animals at the same cost is proving hard to locate. And bidders are crying Foul! and Rigged! about the new bidding process. We are entering a new phase of Empire it seems, the part Edward Gibbon, writing about the Romans, called Decline and Fall. There is a belief among our leaders, eagerly adopted by their followers that the principle of something for nothing can continue to be adopted even after it was proved disastrously, to be untrue in 2008. We used to enjoy living on credit, nowadays we believe the debt can be paid off by cutting expenses, maintaining services at the same level even though fees are cut, and continuing to live well all the while. In Florida, where public indebtedness is a very small proportion of the state budget, 4 billion of 70 billion, the Governor is moving ahead with plans to cut programs he doesn't like while expanding unregulated giveaways of public monies to the private for profit sector as a way of "cutting expenses." It seems odd to me that private corporations that have to pay stock holders can do anything for less money than publicly operated agencies. Until one remembers that cutting wages and benefits is how they do it.Key West has weathered the financial storm quite well so far, but I wonder what the future will bring as we spiral down into an unequal world of lower wages, fewer benefits and even less paid vacations. You can't sustain a consumer economy on unemployment and wage cuts.I feel fortunate to have a good job in a great place to live and even though my wife faces major wage cuts we know how to live with less, having spent years enjoying living on a boat. many of our neighbors, even in the Keys, are far more rigid and I see signs of social stress all around me.My dog doesn't mind. I was at The Pines park on South Roosevelt enjoying the warmth and the glow of sunset over the Straits of Florida. Cheyenne, who is living retirement as it should be lived, was making new friends. That they had a roast chicken and a loaf of bread was purely coincidental to her interest in their well being.She was quite cheerful about the intruder, he less so, but it took me grabbing my pig in a fur coat by the collar and dragging her back to the car to separate her from her dreams of roast chicken. Stress for Cheyenne has a whole different meaning.

The Porch

My wife wanted to go on a date. Beer and movies sounded like a good idea to both of us. We could have chosen to go to one of those dank noisy dark places that "specialize" in gnat's piss on the 200 block of Duval or we could have chosen to go here:No television no piped music, just beer wine and conversation. I liked this place as soon as I stepped in. No clunky tourists waving drunken souvenirs in our faces either. The chalk board listed the beers on draft, including cider, and we asked for something not hoppy. there is a passion among hip brewers to make the strongest most bitter beer they can. It's like the hip fad of making red wines as dark and tannic and nasty as one can to impress the customers, or brewing coffee so dark and mouth puckering it tastes like battery acid. I got a Sam Adams Saison, mildly bitter but very smooth and my wife really liked her Namaste. "Hey, Michael" a voice called out. And there was Fred sipping a Chamay Blonde. "I can't fucking get rid of you!" he said cheerily and asked me to record his greeting verbatim. I have been training Fred in dispatch for quite a few weeks, an intense and intimate relationship learning the main police channel.Which I had to try in due course. The only shortcoming I saw at The Porch was the lack of salty nibbles so I hiked across the street and bought some chips at Mr Cheapies.The bar tender actually listened when I suggested chips go well with beer, in fact he took a hike and came back with a bag of bugles for himself... This is not your average beer parlor, not at all. There has to be a television somewhere I suppose but it was well out of my way. Plus you can sit outside if you want and watch the poor slobs being abused by live raucous music at The Bull across the street. while drinking Bud "Lite" and listening to small testicled bikers rumble by on their Harleys. Well, I exaggerate a bit, but the Porch is a really nice spot downtown. At the corner of Caroline and Duval it's not hard to find, though it is hard to leave. I felt quite at home on Duval with my pocket camera.But we had places to go and tickets to buy. Tomorrow night we go to the theater. Becky's New Car has received rave reviews from our friends and for some reason, my wife's busy season teaching probably, we are barely able to get in under the wire as tomorrow is the last show. I hate procrastinating but the Red Barn has done a bang up season this year and I will grasp every opportunity to go. http://redbarntheatre.com/ The sun was setting over the roof tops as we emerged back onto Duval at the Hard Rock Café, which sits alongside the entrance to the Red Barn's cute little plaza. Wednesday night was my night off so full of beer and popcorn we watched Lincoln Lawyer which we both enjoyed. My wife the former public defender could only appreciate being a teacher these days after the movie reminded her of the trials and tribulations of the Law. Two hours in the dark and Key West was dark itself when we emerged from the Tropic. We paid $6:25 for four and a half hours parking at a meter just off Duval Street so when people tell you there is no parking in Old Town remind them this is a great time of year to be in Key West.Cheyenne was snoozing on the back seat, exhausted after another afternoon of strolling the streets of key West. But those are photos for another day.

Walking And Thinking

I don't use a drier at my own home. I bought some line and strung it up under my house and let the clothes swing in the breeze. Our drier died a couple of years after Hurricane Wilma sent it briefly under water and we decided we had better ways to save 500 dollars than buy another such machine. My clothes don't look picturesque like this but......I have found that air drying clothes makes them feel less stiff and it doesn't shrink them and they seem to last longer if they aren't tossed around in hot air in a flailing metal drum. Odd, that how the natural way works best. Plus we evade the corporate consumerism thing of buying more stuff all the time. Looking at this doorway below, I rather wondered why the occupants of Unit 2 were forced to bend double to get their mail- the last arrivals to the communal house perhaps? Seniority might just offer the easiest and most convenient mail box. Or possibly the occupants of unit two are the most limber in the house. We strolled past the newly re-opened Frances Street gate to the cemetery. After months of furious debate the city commisison intervened and required the gate be left open by day for pedestrians and cyclists, and the irate sexton is only permitted to close it for funerals.The sexton had unilaterlally closed the gate permanently saying inconsiderate people had been using it's easy access to disrupt funerals. The city's open arms approach to the tourist economy is not quite so open when it comes to respecting the dead. But even here it is a struggle to imbue people with that respect and it isn't always visitors either, not by a long chalk that don't mind how they behave in public. Perhaps this little tussle over the gate will remind people of thatneed for public probity. Looking up another Key West skyline:Another red flower, Key West is full of them. Some time ago Chuck on Fleming, currently working at being an engineer overseas, told me modern cars have a limited lifespan by design. He set me to thinking about how annoying it is that all those plastic components are designed to self immolate after a decade or so. Older cars he said don't have that kind of planned obsolescence. I rather fancied this convertible Cadillac for my wife, not that such a magnificent machine is for sale or anything. Besides we drive rather a lot to be living with single digit gas mileage...Look at this next sky picture. Key West is far too lovely. I enjoy seeing heaps of bicycles round town. Nowhere in North America do you see basic transportation piled up in daily use like this. This fish stand has survived and apparently flourished, as improbable as that seems. Some businesses do really well, others come and go. This one gives a splash of color at Truman and White.

Art Alert: I was playing with the camera while Cheyenne sniffed and I came up with this picture of a pink Jeep's hood. It would match my Crocs.

Another picture of daily transportation, this time attached to one of the cuter bike racks around town. A dental office has a tooth bike rack in New Town.Cheyenne and I strolled past this sign on Truman offering rental and sales services. Imagine my ironic delight when I noticed their own building was for sale! I suppose from time to time this sort of thing happens but it was a first for me.Florida's cretinous governor is now promoting a new state law that would allow anyone to rent their homes for any unregulated length of time, overriding limitations like those imposed by Key West and Monroe County. The county allows no short term rentals (less than 28 days) and Key West only allows some to properly licensed homes. The idea is not to allow neighborhoods to become unlivable and overrun by party harty central. The Governor wants to overturn that sensible rule and his shills say it will help break the monopoly of the tourist industry. Weird but true.I prefer my dogs live rather than turned to stone. It is interesting to me that recently Key West has been noted in the newspaper as being the object of a craigslist scam wherein people have been advertising private homes at non existent adresses for vacation rentals. Guess what? The cheapskate renters lost their deposits! Use reputable known rental companies to do it right. It seems obvious to me but not to our Governor, the man who ran the corporation with the biggest fraud conviction in corporate US history. And a majority of my neighbors thought that was an excellent resume on which to elect him to run the state. Little wonder I prefer dogs to people.I think I also prefer facing the wedge of traffic on Truman on a motor bike rather than a pedal bike. If I were cycling I'd avoid the main street into town and take a side street, Catherine to the south or Petronia to the north...there is no bike path here on Truman and the sidewalks are awkward with numerous decorative lamp poles (in Florida bicycles yield to pedestrians on sidewalks).It is amazing how much traffic there still is in Key West this spring. I have been reading about snow storms still peppering the north. That sort of news keeps people down here, for a little while longer at least.

Rambling The Meadows

There is a school of thought that says the Federal Government is overreaching when it tells municipalities how to letter street signs. Apparently any time a city or county has to replace street signs the letters must be in lower case and no longer all in upper case. This rule was dreamed up by the Bush Administration in between conquering other serious problems facing the nation. This street sign is supposed to say Albury. This is Key West so Homeland Security rules kind of apply, from time to time. I suppose when eventually someone happens by and repaints this street marker it will get the now proper lower case treatment. Until then evil doers will have to guess where they are at this street corner. Cheyenne is not much concerned by any such issue. She enjoyed the trash dumped by thoughtless people. I enjoy the Key West skyline as always, mixed roof line, palm trees and wispy white clouds.This picture I liked because it made a charming old Key west turret look like something else entirely. Rapunzel never did toss down her hair.Red flowers, whose name continues to escape me. the open window may be a hint that it isn't yet as warm around here as it will be soon. There is a still a cool breeze blowing.I liked the pale blue color popular around Key West enough that I pained the underside of my stilt house a similar shade. The color supposedly has the side benefit of keeping insects and spirits away.I am always bothered (because I am weird) when I see a badly parked two wheeler. The rule always was back wheel to the curb, so that the bike is less likely to roll and tip and because when leaving the rider can see the traffic in all directions and leave the parking spot safely. A lovely red Buddy parked like this just looks odd to my old fashioned eye.I was about to stroll up the ramp, when fortuitously I saw the ugly yellow sign. Without the big black letters one would never have realised this was private property...I am no fan of Christmas, hallmark holiday designed to make frugal people feel bad, but some people can't get enough.I like my vehicles to be paragons of practicality. Even my lovely Bonneville is simply a daily rider. For others a car is a blank canvas and this car has a bunch of sea shells glued all over the bodywork. Whatever works.Even I know this old Porsche is called a bath tub model. At least i think it is. For some reason it reminds me of my youth though I have never owned a Porsche nor have I aspired to one.

Happy tourist chaps sailed by on rental scooters. I really enjoy the two wheeled focus of the southernmost city.Jose's Cantina has been resurrected as Caribbean Blue but the menu is simply Cuban as far as I can tell. I tend to think of Caribbean as involving foods other than simply Cuban as delicious as they are. Roti, jerk, and other Anglo-Caribbean delicacies involving fish and the like. Coconuts are quintessentially Caribbean and decidedly not native plants around here. It's funny because no one claims to actually like these trees, the arguments in their defense always go something like "Tourists like them..." or "Tourists expect to see them..." as though it is too much of a geek thing to like coconut palms.

I like the way they look very much but they are tremendous amounts of work. I have a dozen mature trees around my house and they produce tons of fronds and tons of nuts. These days fresh coconuts seem like they could be a real boon in a time of crisis but I get more of them than I can handle... This next picture is ART, "Conch shell on milk churn," ...and when you say that out loud please remember the "h" in Conch is silent.