Waiting For Armageddon

Fantasy Fest may be the testing ground for the chaos to come this winter when snowbirds and tourists crowd the streets and discover to their horror that Key West's main artery, North Roosevelt Boulevard, resembles the first day of the first Battle of the Somme minus the barbed wire and explosions. It's all mud and puddles and one way signs which sow confusion and delays and impatience. And the town is expected to be packed to capacity over the next couple of weeks.

I heard a comment from a friend about one hotel bar tender who, to her great astonishment apparently, has had only one weekend this summer of no guests, no drinkers and thus no money. The rest of the time her bar tending cup overfloweth with unexpected wealth. In this uncertain economy I am astonished by the numbers of visitors but not everyone is hurting. And they come to Key West to let off steam in droves. This picture put me in mind of the series The Walking Dead.

Key West is often described as being south of reality and even though the job market isn't the free wheeling affair it used to be unemployment numbers are relatively low. Around here you lose your job and you leave, unless you don't actually need a job. One of the candidates for State Attorney lost her job as Chief Assistant in the last round of elections when she disagreed with the winner of the race. This time round she beat him in the primary and may very well win the top job this month. She spent the interregnum in exile in Central Florida. No job equals no Key West for most of us, no matter how important our titles while in office.

My own job continues to astonish me. Just this week our union ratified a two year contract with the city and we get three percent raises each year, night differential goes up next year which is good for us night shift workers, and we will also get minimum pay for subpoenas. All very cool but how it happened I have no idea in a world where unemployment is rampant and not getting better. I just hope the visitors keep coming even if they choose to wear peculiar headgear. The city is hoping for tons of visitors even if all they wear is body paint and peculiar headgear.

The city commission has decided to put the harbor channel widening proposal to a citizen vote. The idea is a two part problem. First there will be a referendum on whether or not to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a five million dollar study of how to widen the ship channel to accommodate vast spacious new cruise ships. Then if the study says its a go, and you'd better believe it will, there should be a second referendum on whether or not the widening should be done. The forces aligned in favor of the project are powerful and top of the list of reasons to do it is: employment. Argue with that if you can, and in this town coral preservation is a distant second to work judging by the voices raised in support of widening.

The city commission has also approved some sort of park for the Truman Waterfront though the newspaper article was decently vague about the details. The marina proposed by the Spottswood family may or may not be built though now it is supported as a way to pay for the park. How to pay for open space seems like the least of this city's problems but it is yet to be decided and I am pretty certain the people in charge have a plan. They spend their lives pulling financial rabbits from hats.

The county commission has voted to build a three million dollar fire station on Stock Island to replace the funky shed currently claiming to be a fire station. The new facility is promoted by Stock Island boosters as a suitable upgrade for the future of the down at heel island whose trailer parks feed the need of neighboring Key West for workers. The idea is that hotels and marinas and stuff which are expected to pop up like mushrooms on Stock Island will be reassured by the presence of a proper fire station. That Key West is making noises about annexing Key Haven and Stock Island doesn't come into the calculation to build the fire station.

Goodness gracious, so much stuff going on. These convulsions should lead to a new improved visitor experience one way and another. I'd like to see a shady park at Truman Waterfront but the fear always is that bums will end up owning the space. It's happened at Bayview Park where seating is removed periodically making the space untenable for normal people who like sit with their feet tucked under their hips, rather than with their backsides in the dirt. Personally I'd like to see the Truman Waterfront added to Fort Zachary State Park which charges a modest entrance fee and is mercifully bum-free.

The newspaper has been carrying lots of anonymous comments about Key West's resident population of bums. There is an idea floating around, delightfully naïve in its simplicity, that the willfully homeless should be shipped elsewhere, as though there is a city somewhere in this country that is actively seeking to augment its own population of dispossessed. Key West's next export: heroic hobos sent North. Failing that the back up plan is to keep on keeping on. Local charitable providers are in a tizz over how to keep running the homeless shelter on Stock Island. The main fund raising entity has been running the shelter and has decided that's more rewarding than seeking grants for everyone else so they upped and quit and said they will run the overnight shelter and all other groups can go seek their own funding. The funny thing is even though the deadline for a replacement organization was looming, the city had done nothing to replace the Southernmost Homelesss Assistance League as the operator of the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter. Now to everyone's astonishment, except the city's, SHAL shall run KOTS indefinitely.

It's funny how the city seems to stumble from here to there, pratfall to pratfall like the Marx Brothers, who's antics were carefully planned and choreographed well out of sight of the people buying the tickets to watch them. I keep wishing Key West had a vision but I'm pretty sure the city leaders, elected and not, have a vision alright and it is being implemented step by step. And it's not just a vision, it's a plan that will be paid for, which is amazing to me. The Mayor, who had moved to Cape Coral, came back a few years ago, re-established residence and announced he wanted City Hall to be re-built at Glynn Archer School on White Street. Guess what? No one knows how much it will cost, perhaps as much as $21 million, but the city's new administrative center will be built right where the mayor originally wanted it. It's taken a few years but it's going to happen, doubters are cast aside. I think the location is excellent and as long as they can preserve the facade it will look great, and as far as paying for it, that doesn't worry me. This town has an amazing capacity to raise money. Join me in being amazed.

So this weekend Key West has a genteel street fair in Bahama Village because Goombay always happens before Fantasy Fest. And then next week the gross bad taste starts to leak onto Duval Street culminating in an endless parade next Saturday, local floats with local themes at the front followed by the dreary plastic Krewes from Tampa Bay weighing down the back of the parade. Visitors will come in droves, eighty thousand of them, imagine that, and spend tons of money. The equivalent of 27 cruise ships in town all at once.

Locals will bitch about the crowding and the cars stopping suddenly at intersections and blocking driveways when they park. But the cash will flow for a couple of weeks until the Meeting of the Minds is over. Then peace and quiet will return for a few weeks until winter starts. The question is, will the chaos on the Boulevard spreading across town like an ink blot persuade snowbirds to stay away this winter? Businesses on the Boulevard are freaking out already about the loss of business. A taste of what Key West would be really like if tourists and snowbirds and other irritants stayed away.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Speed, Rage and Prudence

It was innocent enough from my perspective. I left home with plenty of time to get to work for the start of my ten o'clock overtime shift. The night was slightly cool and as I rode up the street to Highway One I was thinking that my mesh armored jacket was just right to keep the cooler October air off my skin. A month ago it felt suffocatingly hot to wear so it's safe to say that even down here nights are cooling off a little even if days aren't. Cool is a relative term you understand when considered from the perspective of one who is seeing snow falls already this Fall.

Pink Bike at La Concha Hotel, Duval Street.

Traffic was moderately heavy as I nudged the Bonneville onto Highway One, took my moment and leaned into the traffic lane, heading left, toward Key West 27 miles away. It was going to be a long twenty seven miles I realized when the headlights behind me suddenly lurched forward and closed on me filling my mirrors with light. I sped up thinking I had misjudged his speed and not wanting to block him. I got up to an indicated 75 miles an hour (in a 45) with the hulking Escalade-type SUV towering over my tail light and quickly pulled into the turn-out lane at Mako Drive on Ramrod Key. The SUV drove by. On the downslope of the Niles Channel Bridge the SUothot stuck behind a dawdler admiring the nighttime view over the waters from the top of the forty-foot bridge. It's a passing zone on the downslope into Summerland Key but the impatient SUV didn't pass, so I passed both and then the SUV pulled out and started tailing me again. I pulled into the gas station on Summerland and let the fiasco pass me by. Shit, I thought to myself, Fantasy Fest is here already.

Monroe County Courthouse: Mile Marker Zero.

The irony of this stupid act of road rage was that I was actually in no hurry. I had been into town earlier yesterday to pay a visit to the courthouse to pay my $131 plus ten bucks in fees, a gentle reminder of my recent nine mile an hour transgression and it was a lovely evening and I had no plans to rush. Yes, I was riding a motorcycle but no, I am not a boy racer, ready to challenge a Miami kid driving his father's expensive SUV (Florida registration RMF3T). All I wanted to do was enjoy the night air, the almost empty highway and my pulling out of a side street was mis-construed as a life-or-death challenge. But this is that time of year. People from Up North are flocking to town his year to enjoy taking their clothes off and getting drunk in what used to be a bit of harmless Halloween revelry in an off season empty little town. Now the newspaper says 80,000 people have come to this town of 23,000 and every single one of them has decided its open season on Key West residents and the Conch Republic. Luckily they bring lots of cash, because cash is the real passport to this Republic's "state of mind."

The Former Strand Cinema,Y 527 Duval Street.

This weekend will be Goombay featuring a sort-of Caribbean festival in Bahama Village with lots of food music and people wandering about on Petronia Street. And already Public Works has started lining Duval Street with the barricades needed for these festivals, not forgetting the Meeting of the Minds after Fantasy Fest. Check the search function on the top page of this blog and "Goombay" will return a couple of essays I've written about it. My first taste of fried alligator (it's all in the batter, so why not stick to chicken?) and an excellent curried goat stew last year every bit as good as that which I've had in the British West Indies over the years.

I grumble about Fantasy Fest perhaps because it is a foretaste of the traffic chaos to come this winter with North Roosevelt all torn up to hell and back. Perhaps I grumble because I can, because I have seen enough Fantasy Fests to last a lifetime, or perhaps I grumble because I feel as though I ought to enjoy this silly exhibitionism and public playfulness. There are just some things that ought to be kept private in my opinion, speaking as one who takes no joy in wearing a costume. The state of my gonads is one and the shape of your folds of flesh is another. But good taste goes out the window these next two weeks, as do manners more than usually so, and apparently also good driving and patience. These buggers had better bring a lot of money with them, is all I have to say about that.

Posted with Blogsy

Sandy's Café

To the great relief of night workers all over the city of Key West Sandy's has reopened after a month of renovations which were supposed to last ten days. It looks nice and bright and shiny.

Nothing much has changed fundamentally from the customer's perspective, except that the interior has been refurbished, the equipment is clean and the lights, at one in the morning seemed brighter than I managed to remember them.

Apparently there were problems with the laundry building attached to the café and it was a case of the more you do the more you need to do. Now the shop is ready to last another thousand years, give or take.

There are lots of Cuban coffee shops all over town, from the tiny and totally Conchy shop in Habana Plaza on Flagler where old Cuban men go to gather, to tourist havens like Ana's on Simonton. How they all make money, Kim's Kuban, Little Jon's, Five Brothers, Conch Scoops, Cuban Coffee Queen and so forth, I have no idea.

Sandy's is operated a by a crew of Mexicans, not Cubans, who play Banda music in deference to their heritage and offer several Mexican dishes on the extensive menu. But that isn't their biggest selling point.

I limited myself to a small café con leche with a cheese bread, the classic Cuban snack as I wanted to celebrate the opening of this vital institution, the only Cuban outlet open 24 hours. And that's what makes them special. Show up on White Street, a block south of the gas station on Truman, which itself sells excellent Dion's fried chicken, and here you are, an oasis of light on a dark street, here seen looking south toward White Street Pier.

This is a gathering place for night shift cops between calls when they take a meal break, or stop by to pick up coffee. It's been hell for them such that they decided to club together on night shift and buy coffee and bring a coffee pot into work...one of their number is a Cuban Conch and he was assigned brewing duties. It was, they admitted no substitute for the real thing.

My midnight feast of melted American cheese (white cheese bread made with Swiss is not authentic, though don't tell my wife as she hates American cheese) on Cuban bread, made with lard, a d hot pressed flat is what a body needs. I'm not Cuban so I only take one sugar in my coffee but Conchs will take three or five. Strong people. On the subject some people like to ask for their con leches dark, but that's not for me. I like my "liquid candy bar" to give the caffeine the proper mild taste.

The overnight institution is back and we are all very happy about that. If you are on vacation and not calorie counting go for the fried fish sandwich which is to die for when they are on their game. Take your coffee and sandwich to Rest Beach and look out at the ocean as you enjoy local cuisine, in proper Key West style.

Posted with Blogsy

One More Fiery Sunrise

These cool breezy conditions keep producing clear wintery skies and consequently some interesting sunrises breaking through the racing clouds.

Cheyenne loves her early morning walks on these dry cool mornings and as a result I have seen more skies like this than I might otherwise feel the need to.

Even so I can't resist the temptation to snap a picture or two for the record. Great stuff.

Posted with Blogsy

Blimp Road

I have been enjoying the weather lately, a prolonged period of cooling north breezes similar to a prolonged early cold front. Cheyenne has expressed her joy by demanding long walks early each day after I get home. So instead of retiring to bed I will find myself out and about watching the sun come up.

I tried walking Cheyenne in the Spain Boulevard subdivision on Cudjoe Key but the dog doesn't seem to enjoy it for we reason. I love the sandy lanes wedged between hedges of palms, houses tucked almost out of sight behind huge lots, horse stables and mangroves. So in an inspired moment I took her to the north tip of the long straight line called Blimp Road.

The balloon known as Fat Albert, the aerial platform used to check the Straits of Florida for intruders, gives its name the the three mile section of dead straight road pointing north from Highway One. The blimp is tethered to a piece of land that is owned by the Air Force curiously enough, the only Air Force Base in the Keys. We are told it costs you $16 million a year to fly the balloon called Fat Albert on the sort-of secret base. I knew a guy who retired from a life of piloting the blimp from its ground station and I tried to find out more but his lips were sealed. A pity because as jobs go driving a blimp seems among the more esoteric even if not terribly interesting.

The refreshing winds have not only driven away mosquitoes, a pleasant change in itself, but they have also whipped up white caps in the channels and created the sort of crisp white sunlight that is typical of Florida in winter. Small dogs in heavy fur coats enjoy it very much, I'm told.

As I drove north from Spain Boulevard I saw a man swinging his arms vigorously as he strode along, passed by the stream of early morning vehicles driving out to the Air Force base and I stopped alongside him to offer a ride. He smiled and pulled his ear plugs out - he was exercising, silly me. He caught up to Cheyenne and I water's edge and pulled a one-eighty and marched back the three miles onwards the highway.

Aside from all the cars streaming into the Blimp Base and the early county workers opening the dump, Cheyenne and I were the lone dog walkers. But alone we were not, entirely, at the end of Blimp Road.

In winter the turn around space will be full of the vehicles abandoned by kayakers and canoeists and bored snowbirds will sit in their parked cars admiring the view across the channel. For now it is empty and unused except for the occasional happy Labrador.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Key West Roofs

So how big is one of the current crop of average sized cruise ships? Why this big, compared to little old Key West. All we have to do is widen the harbor channel to get bigger ones in.

I was in the Key West Diary helicopter, also known as the roof of the Park and Ride garage, taking pictures and it seemed like Key West was looking good under a burst of rare, rain free sunshine so I baked a little on that roof and took pictures.

I think the shot above shows the Galleon resort, the gray box on the right, which GarytheTourist calls home from home.

And here's Christmas Tree Island on the horizon. Looks pretty doesn't it? Wish you were here...

Posted with Blogsy