Barber's Italian Collection

When I was a child this was the way race bikes looked and I sat in my country bumpkin kitchen miles from the action down on the farm and read my motorcycling magazine and dreamed.

These days anytime I visit Birmingham, Alabama, I get to spend a few hours at the Barber Museum just outside town in the suburb of Leeds off the Atlanta freeway. And there I have the chance to be alone with my memories of my youth. MV Agusta, famous for building helicopters is still in the motorcycle business after several decades of varied ownership and near terminal bankruptcies. These are specialized bikes and not everyone wants one. That my first motorcycle was an MV 350 has given the brand a special place in my heart.

In the US Italian motorcycles are viewed as weird exotica because only the premium models made it out of the country, but in the sixties and seventies the Italian government had a policy of supporting local industry with severe import controls. Gasp! government interference!

As a result Italian industrial output blossomed, people worked and Italians rode Italian bikes. Above we see a Benelli 250 two stroke twin, brilliant and simple and below a Benelli four stroke four cylinder, the worlds smallest production four cylinder motorcycle.

These were the days when outside Italy Japanese motorcycles were decimating motorcycle production. Britain and the US, former giants were reduced to penury, with Triumph collapsing last among the big names and Harley Davidson being saved by sporting goods maker AMF, an inglorious chapter in the Motor Company's history.

Italy, protected by tariffs, import quotas and taxes kept on building. Above the Benelli 500 a copy of the Honda below, but in the US the Italian bike was an exotic as it cost 30 percent more than the Honda.

The Benelli six cylinder 900 was designed to outdo the Honda 750 but price was always a factor, along with quality control issues. Good enough was never good enough for the Japanese factories.

Below we see the Honda 750 the machine that started the modern revolution in manufacturing, quiet, reliable, with modern conveniences such as electric start and disc brake, the 750 Four was recently voted, rightly so, as the Motorcycle of the the Century by Motorcyclist magazine.

Yet Benelli and others were making bikes behind Italy's protective tariff barriers. These days the Benelli factory is still building bikes, employing Italians in Pesaro, even though the company is owned ironically enough, by the Chinese.

MV Agusta built impressive four cylinder machines before Honda but was unable, or unwilling, to market them widely or sell them at competitive prices. They were luxury sport touring bikes for the lucky few. They are still viewed with awe by lovers of old motorcycles.

Ducati survived hard times thanks to the protection of the home market and even though today has been purchased by Audi the factory is alive and active and setting standards for high performance quality motorcycles at affordable prices.

They too started small selling single cylinder bikes after the war and gradually moved into sport bikes led by this funky unprepossessing Sport 250 single. Not much to look at by modern standards but it rocked it's world with a 90 mile-per-hour top speed.

The Monster series of Ducatis were entry level sport bikes that introduced a new generation to the brand, and they are still going strong, built in Italy.

This Ducati circled the world:

And this two stroke single was built in Italy and sold in the US as a Harley Davidson together youngsters onto home brand starter bikes. The Italian protectionist market made this strategy possible for the venerable Motor Company which bought Aermacchi in Italy and used it's small bike technology to brand small Harleys for the American market.

Italians also had a thriving 50cc market in the Seventies when I was a kid. The museum labels this moped as barely better than a bicycle but we had go faster kits in Italy and our motorized bicycles could be persuaded to go 50 miles per hour on a good day. They were street legal for fourteen year olds, no tags, no licenses and no inspections. What a childhood!

Italy after World War Two was a mechanized desert and these small bore motorcycles got the country commuting at 45 miles per hour. They were the basic motorcycle industry that grew and flourished in the Sixties and Seventies behind the trade barriers of which I have spoken.

It's unpopular these days to talk of protectionism as a way out our crisis but I wonder how it is that skilled American labor stands for the exportation of jobs to the Third World to profit the bosses. I find it especially odd when you consider that the cost of labor amounts to a mere 15 percent of the cost of the finished product.

Icons of Italian two wheeled industry set standards like the Lambretta scooter above, the Innocenti rival to Piaggio's more familiar Vespa. Or the rare Cagiva carbon fiber sport bike below, built to make a point, and a very expensive one too. Italians can build bikes.

We know Americans can too and we know that the level playing filed is an industrial myth. Japanese firms have always received government help to dump products and we know China does the same but we for some reason can't protect our own industries and our own jobs for some reason.

It saddens me that US products aren't built here by well paid American heads-of-households turning out machinery and I austral products as they used to. If they can't compete with Chinese salve labor let's level the playing field so they can, and let's bring real jobs home. I find it tantamount to treason to suggest this is fantasy.

Above we see the Pegaso 650 designed by Phillipe Starck, a lovely bike by Aprilia using an Austrian Rotax single. Below the Gilera 125 a technological marvel never seen on the streets of the US.

Moto Guzzi founded in 1922 with the green 500 single seen in the background below is now part of Piaggio Group, Europe's largest motorcycle manufacturer which includes Vespa, Gilera, Aprilia, and Moto Guzzi.

This rather dark picture should show my favorite Moto Guzzi the 1100cc LeMans sport-tourer tucked away on a shelf in the museum's recesses.

Barber has massive workshop operation to repair the bikes on display and cars as well which are often seen racing round the track.

The have 1200 or more bikes in the collection with 800 or so on dilly at one time. It's $15 to visit all day long you like and you should like. I don't know what I'd do with my money if I was Mr Big Bucks of Birmingham but Barber has done a fantastic thing here for posterity and for old farts like me, with his wealth.

It really is a place where you can go and dream. Dream perhaps of a resurgent American industrial heartland once more. Is that really such a subversive idea?

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Audience Indifference

Every week the blue paper KWTN offers hardcore news ("Where Journalism Is A Contact Sport" they say) along with biting commentary and a useful listing of live music around town. This week in addition to some very interesting stuff on the future of Wisteria Island, known as Christmas Tree Island to locals, the music listing had a headline out of The Onion.


Gibson plays at the White Tarpon in the Key West Bight waterfront and he has a playlist of his music that he admits is a challenge for listeners. Good for the Blue Paper for highlighting him. It's what one comes to expect from this sometimes irritating and always unpredictable paper.



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A Strange Night Out

I've heard it said that a meal in a restaurant is a piece of performance art. Diners are there for the food of course, that part of the meal that gets most of the attention but service makes or breaks the meal in my opinion. On that basis eating out in Key West is a hit or miss affair, as professional wait staff are in short supply. The worst of it is that the negative experiences remain in the back of the unhappy diner's mind for a very long time.

I hesitate to recommend a place to friends because in Key West taking pride in your work is a tenuous concept. Alcohol, partying (ie: getting into an altered mental state) takes priority in a town that is home to people who ended up down here for a number of reasons and rarely is that work. Emigration is often viewed as a cure all for those reasons that caused to leave home in the first place, but as they say you bring the cause of your misery with you to the island. And then try to drown it in between spells at work at an eatery.

With that in mind how can I recommend a place to eat? Go, spend your money and hope the staff showed up, sober and ready to have a good night working that will translate into a positive night out for the guests. If any of them flaked for whatever reason there is an excellent chance my first class meal last week will be a crap experience for you this week. And the cost of the performance remains the same.

So when my wife suggested we stay in town last week for dinner I protested immediately and asked why not go to Square Grouper on Cudjoe Key? Four miles from home and with a perfect record of superb food properly served by a crew that has a record for longevity on the job in the Lower Keys, Square Grouper epitomizes value for money when eating out in the Lower Keys and Key West.

But my wife wanted "something different" so I said fair enough with a sinking feeling. I sank even further when our first choice, Santiago's Bodega proved to be closed for the week for renovations. The tapas place on Petronia is actually a fine choice to go for dinner with interesting small dishes, proper service a convivial atmosphere and a great wine list which I define as interesting wines at affordable prices. Had Santiago's been open this essay would never have formed in my head.

Nothing deterred my wife had a second Good Idea so I pointed the bows of the Bonneville across town at the Santa Maria resort at the southern tip of Simonton Street. Had Ambrosia not been closed we probably would have got away with a slightly delayed dinner and from all accounts it would have been good. Their schtick primarily is sushi and though I am no great fan of not cooked seafood I can appreciate a decent meal Nippon style. I grew up in Italy so udon does me fine and properly crisp light tempura makes up for raw eel and pink slabs of dainty fish meat served on seaweed.

This setback stymied my pillion but she rallied valiantly and we rode the Triumph up Duval to 915. This a street front Victorian with indoor seating which is okay and an upstairs area which some diners like for the view down into the street but I prefer sitting next to the street surrounded by banana palms and flicking candle light. It seems very exotic for some reason and reminds me of The Quiet American by Graham Greene. It's just one of those mental associations I permit myself from time to time as irrational as the fantasy may be. Me in Saigon in the French era. Not very likely is it.

Given that sitting out and eating a whole Thai fried snapper would give you heat stroke on an airless August evening I was not completely enthusiastic about sitting indoors there, but I'm a good sport (I'm told) so there we stopped. Well, I needn't have worried, they weren't open for ten more minutes it turned out and rather than lure us with a glass of wine while we waited or some other thing they were a bit unceremonious so we buggered off.

Sometimes you just know you're not wanted. I knew I wanted to be heading toward Square Grouper at Mile Marker 23, but my headstrong wife checked the menu at Martin's and gave the thumbs down. Café Sole got the same treatment because my wife, who likes the café was still pressing to try something different. The record was stuck on the theme of somewhere different to eat.

I know, she said brightening up considerably. Let's try Two Cents on Appelrouth Lane she said. So we did. And we both wanted to like it. I did like the funky little wooden house when it was Martin's before the German eatery lost it's funk and went upscale in it's bunker on Duval. Now the place is just weird.

The tables were set high at chest height requiring seats that are as tall and as uncomfortable as bar stools in a room that is about as warm and enticing as a ships engine room, and as noisy too. The music speaker mercilessly spewed loud classic reggae directly overhead making conversation with my wife impossible. The waiter arrived wafting bonfire fumes of recently burnt tobacco and whispered the specials inaudibly to us so we decided spontaneously this was a mistake and limited ourselves to a couple of starter dishes as my wife finally caved and admitted we should have just left town and gone to Square Grouper instead. Told you so.

The rich odor of burning rags announced the imminent arrival of two small glasses of eight dollar Tempranillo an inexpensive Spanish wine that packs no surprises usually. We sipped very slowly and waited for the duck nachos and scotch egg to arrive. The sun was setting and the view across Appelrouth Lane would have won no beauty awards in a travel magazine contest for Inspiring Sunsets I Have Seen.

The Quack Quack nachos, laboring under a nursery room name were a disappointment, a small dish of whole wheat nachos a big lump of inexpensive sour cream a few vegetable bits and some insipid gray pieces of greasy meat, it looked like the product of a Soviet military kitchen. Fourteen dollars please, hidden under a coating of cold grilled cheese. The scotch eggs were okay, three quail eggs hard boiled, coated in sausage meat and fried in bread crumbs. A Scottish delicacy, enough said. Eight dollars please. All this delight came to something close to fifty bucks with tax and tip. Phew! The music was still loud so we grumbled once we were back in the street and could hear ourselves think.

The whole Key West thing was such a bust we went to Square Grouper anyway just because, and had two six dollar glasses of Tempranillo, fried eggplant with goat cheese and fried calamari appetizers and took home a slice of peanut butter chocolate pie to eat with Netflix. Corey our waiter mentioned the place was closing for the month of September which made our decision to stop by all the smarter...

We mentioned our evening fiasco in Key West and he was interested to hear our take on Two Cents. "I was wondering why I hadn't heard anything about them" he said. I had hoped Two Cents was going to be the vanguard of a wave of new and interesting places to eat in Key West, but so far I'm disappointed with two visits under my belt and no more. I'm glad we have a few old reliables to fall back on but at a time when eating out is a rare treat I have no interest in wasting money on places that don't get the function of a restaurant, a place where the food and service represent hospitality and a welcome to a hungry traveler off the street. The number of places I trust to get that right I can count on the fingers of one hand. And I don't give two cents for the rest.

(Pictures taken at Ohio Key)

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I Live With Coconuts And Jack Riepe Envies Me

I had a conversation with Jack Riepe yesterday and consequently he rounded up, apparently, his coterie of neighborhood lunatics to descend on this modest page and flood the comment section. For those of you who have not seen riepe's comment cohorts they are something to behold. That being the case I figured I might as well hold this essay over a day in the hope the fumes from the comment section will dissipate into the ether and not into my pink clad iPad. I encourage you to go to his website and order several copies of his book, at www.jackriepe.blogspot.com I have ordered my copies and look forward to reviewing it here when it arrives. His previous effort was a great read and he assures me this new book is his best effort yet.

One thing I didn't do properly when I was preparing for Tropical Storm Isaac was to knock down my coconuts before the strong winds arrived.

My home is surrounded by mature trees loaded with nuts and in a storm they can become lethal missiles.

I lack the strength agility and skill to climb a coconut tree like one sees in residents of other Caribbean islands so about seven years ago I popped down to the hardware store and bought one of the best most reliable tools ever:

It extends about twelve feet and as hard as it is to wield at that length, this venerable tool can still cut down the nuts from a great distance and I'm lucky because my home has a wide balcony wrapping the entire house. The wide wood balcony makes it easy to put up hurricane shutters and to trim encroaching trees.

I am not a fan of power tools as they need care and maintenance and they make noise and they smell too. So instead I use a machete. I don't care for sports either so we have no need of TV reception which leaves me behind in the red blooded masculinity stakes. Instead I wield a machete and I have a whetstone to keep a blade on the big knife.

Coconuts aren't native to the Keys but they are ornamental and tourists expect to see them in these sub-tropical islands. They produce tons of fronds and lots of nuts when mature. Coconuts in the wild don't look much like the brown hairy orbs you can buy in first world supermarkets.

I like to drink from my nuts while working in the heat and to do that I rest the coconut on a brick and hack the pointy end with the machete. The coconut comes from the tree wrapped in resilient fibers which cover the nut and the meat inside the hard shell. In decades past copra, the white meat was preserved to make coconut oil which has fallen into disfavor in much of the first world.

The brown nut is hidden inside the fiber. Normally I clip the fibrous covering from the pointy end and cut the nut to access the water inside the meat. For clarity I've stripped the outer fiber from this entire nut:

Inside you'll find maybe half a pint of water and it tastes sweet and refreshing. I've tried mixing it with ice and rum or vodka or gin but I find it tastes best direct from the nut.

The fresh meat is sweet and very filling. For those that care you can grate it and dry it and call it copra. Below we see a professionally trimmed tree, as ordered by some snowbird sitting out hurricane season Up North.

I've been told that cutting all the nuts at once off a tree can weaken the growth of the trunk leading to bendy weak spots in the tree, like this:

In the event I've got some time before the next storm to cut my coconuts down but I'll probably procrastinate a bit before I deal with them. That's living with coconuts.

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