Getting Hitched

I like to shop locally and support local businesses and I don't mind paying more for the privilege. I used to find books online and go to Voltaire Books on Simonton Street to have them order the book for me. When they closed they told the newspaper most people did the opposite and they used to browse the store then order from Amazon so it's not surprising we have but one bookshop left. What amazes me is that it's Island Books staffed by the grumpiest bookseller in Christendom. I don't go there anymore so now I have to order online.

I recently had cause to call for a plumber who came on time, started the job, failed to finish and left a leak that I had to sort out by myself. That I wasn't charged was part of the business's inability to get anything done. I offered to pay for the minimal work he did but he never came back. I have seen this pattern over and over again in the Florida Keys. I went to a car lot to buy a car and the owner tried to sell me his mechanic's services for my ailing car that I wanted to replace. I went to Carmax and went back a second time and will go again next time as Carmax meets my needs exactly. We tried to buy a oat locally a few years ago. We nailed a price and when we returned to close the deal he had sold the boat and offered us a replacement at a higher price. We went north to get our boat.

It will become apparent after a few years living here that people don't come here to work, to build careers or to provide services. When you find someone who takes pride in their work you praise them extravagantly, keep them close and thank the gods for your good fortune. On top of that you learn to pray to whichever gods are available that your capable business owner doesn't plan to leave these islands soon. We rely on Oily's Car Service on Stock Island. Originally from Santa Barbara he runs an honest shop and does what he promises. Jiri is my rock when I need something done to my motorcycle and scooters. Originally from Czechoslovakia he used to have a partner who exhibited signs of Keys Disease through drinking and now he runs his shop himself.

My experience getting a trailer hitch put on my car has been more of the same. Hitch King on Big Coppitt did okay a decade ago but three years ago they hired a guy who had no idea what he was doing and I spent hours wondering what the hell he was doing in the trunk of the car. I took the "installation" elsewhere to be cleaned up and repaired! So for this car I dived online and found a shop in the southern suburbs of Miami that claimed to only install hitches. Forty one years of experience. I crossed my fingers and made a date.

I left home at 5:45 Monday morning and arrived at 8:25 five minutes before the shop opened but the owners were ready for me and fifty five minutes later, five minutes sooner than estimated, the job was done. I hitched my utility trailer later and everything worked perfectly.

The job cost $328.41 complete and unabridged. I drove three minutes off Exit 13 off the Florida Turnpike, which makes it about 115 miles from my house. That's just life when you live in an isolated community, often to get stuff done you just have to drive. Or you stay on The Rock, ride a bicycle or a moped and try not to think about what the wide world outside has to offer. I like Indian food - not available in Key West. Vietnamese? Nope. Mountains? World class museums? The Keys do what they can but these are small slivers of rock and the world is large. Luckily we are connected by a road so why not use it? Enjoy it even? Highway One is a world class tourist route and I like driving it, though I do prefer riding it actually.

Give them credit as they have been doing this for a while, he takes pride in this being his 41st year of installing hitches! I've been working at my current job eight years and that seems an age so my hat's off to them. I don't like driving pick ups so I always need a hitch to do my hauling in my little utility trailer. I'll be back next time I need a hitch installed.

Apparently a lot of car owners buy their vehicles and ask the dealer to install a hitch and I'm told they pay the price, not surprisingly. I was surprised to hear it as this place was easy to find online. I wasn't surprised that Miami area car dealers come here to get their hitches installed.

It's not a pretty spot this part of Perrine, but the two streets Cheyenne and I walked were absolutely packed with every kind of service you can imagine. Body shops, canvas shops, plumbers, welders outboard mechanics and I can't remember what. It was a gold mine of eager little businesses. I was jealous of the people who call these businesses local.

But I had the best drive home!

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A Walk Beneath The Clouds

It was hot and muggy Thursday afternoon in the Lower Keys and Cheyenne seemed happy to sleep in the house with me. She got restless as dogs do and started staring at me, her big brown eyes full of reproach, and I even though I knew it was too hot for agog in a fur coat I loaded her up and off we went.

The fact is I have myself have been feeling restless, due mostly to work where the youngsters are acting agitated as though seeking change. They too look at me with reproachful eyes as I push their shoulders to the wheel and expect them to keep doing what we do, because that's my job as I supervise the shift. They sigh and mumble how dispatchers get no recognition or respect, like spoiled children stamping their feet and crying "It's not fair!" while I, the unwilling nursery monitor stifle my exasperation. Raises, health insurance, paid time off, and an easy schedule and still the brats have the gall to complain. I'm better off walking my dog. The right wingers aren't all wrong when they moan about the modern work ethic.

It was sunny as we drove away from the house and under the blue skies I opened the sun roof in honor of the sun and enjoyed the fresh breeze blowing through the car. Cheyenne was right, it was good to get out of the house.

Cheyenne prefers urban walks but I laid down the law as this was my refreshment as much as hers so I decided it was to be a walk in the woods for a change, in nature and unlikely to meet people who are altogether too numerous in these winter months. She stepped on the trail, looked around and didn't think much of what she saw so she stopped and planted herself on the trail looking more like a bulldog than a Labrador.

I ignored her refusal to walk and kept going. Grumpily she decided a bad walk was better than none and soon she stumped past me making the best of a bad job. I liked my surroundings even if there wasn't any trash to root through, scattered by careless human beings.

These aren't summer walks when heat humidity and mosquitoes make The Great Outdoors uncomfortable.

In summer I figure she is likely to get thirsty but in winter...however this winter, when most days have been as warm as summer, outdoor boozing suits the furry walker. Besides she naturally prefers dark tannic water to the clean fresh stuff I put out for her every day.

These mysterious channels were cut by developers who saw this scrub land and figured, as one does, that there was money to be made. The problem was that...well the biggest problem were the mosquitoes. So instead of spraying Agent Orange everywhere they dug holes and filled them with fresh water and seeded them with Gambusia Affinis which is a fish that eats mosquito larvae by the ton, give birth to live fish not eggs, and swim with notable grace, they say.

Other problems overwhelmed a lot of planned development and all that's left are a few overgrown trails and these weird Gambusia canals.

By the time we got on the road black clouds were rolling in and it was clear a fast cold front was over us. It was obvious to me it was getting dark early so I turned my headlights on in the darkness, though not everyone seemed to think that was a good idea. In addition to premature darkness the front brought a little rain and blew away the mugginess, so Cheyenne liked it. I was glad to turn off the air and 65 degrees may not sound like much but it feels cold in these salty windy islands. And if not a real winter front at least it's something. A reminder of what winter used to be.

 

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Climate Has Changed, Guns Haven't

Stories about Climate Change threaten people in a way strikes terror to the core of their being. I wonder why?

I don't have children, what the Victorians called "issue," so Climate Change is somewhat remote for me. I have no children or grandchildren at stake in the future of the planet. I have twenty, perhaps thirty years more to live. In the meantime I stand on the sidelines and struggle to understand the conundrum that are my human neighbors. I love living a sea level but every day I wonder what if...Yet my neighbors who do have offspring seem oblivious.

We live on an astonishing planet that has provided a perfect living environment since the last ice age and the evidence is piling up that the climate is changing once again and likely because of human carelessness. Droughts and floods wreck crops, food prices are rising, cheap oil is harder to find, jobs are exported and our leaders don't lead. Our political systems operate by polling so whatever fantasy grandparents prefer to believe becomes national policy when backed by Big Money. Climate change threatens how we live so we pretend to ignore it. Guns kill people, so we pretend gun control isn't necessary. Honestly I don't give a toss either way. I'm not in favor of gun control because I am not afraid of guns or people with guns, but I fear dictatorship through social ignorance not because our military will turn on us. They say climate change will likely wreck our comfortable climate and leave me and my First World neighbors hungry and impoverished but still eating I hope. For Second and Third world people with fewer reserves things look much more immediate and bleak. What astonishes me is that people who do have a stake in the future don't seem to give a toss either way. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves but many of my neighbors can't even be bothered to do some light recycling never mind consider changing the course of global warming. I doubt it's all apathy, I think feeling overwhelmed is a common cause of Climate Change Overload.

If I saw parents across the US rising up in unison demanding gun controls to protect their offspring I would understand; but they don't, even following weeks of national hand wringing and crazy talk about shooting people who want to take away our guns. If parents don't feel strongly enough to speak up in favor of banning assault rifles and huge magazines why should I bother with the issue? I don't go to school, I don't have children in school I just am happy to pay taxes to support free public education for all. I wish instead of tests educators could teach people to think and reason and debate. Meanwhile on a longer scale scientists estimate sea levels will rise nine inches in a few decades though some days they tell us polar ice is melting so fast sea levels may rise much faster and much higher. Or not if you listen to those that would rather not think about these things.

Climate change is so vast and so all encompassing it seems a subject far out of reach of us ordinary mortals who go to work and live what seem to us to be modest lives. We drive, we fly occasionally for family gatherings or as relief from the daily grind, but the notion that my air conditioner is melting polar ice caps seems too remote. Life goes on and it's hard to picture a future of ecological devastation as predicted by scientists and ecologists. Yet the possibility is there and in some deep uneasy way we have all of us seen changes in the weather where we live. We console ourselves with the hope that it's an off year and next year things will go back to normal. What else can we do? That there has been no evidence of winter at all in the Keys this year seems to astonish only me.

Then there are the nutters. I have read about crackpots who claim the school shooting in New England was a plot or conspiracy or an overblown fire drill that went wrong or some other such nonsense. The 26 people who died didn't and are in the Witness Protection Program or something. In my opinion anyone who spouts such stuff should be denied ownership of guns for the rest of their lives because clearly they are barking mad. And they should be forced to write letters of apology every year on the anniversary of the shooting to the grieving parents.

And there are the climate change nutters too who deny everything and claim conspiracies and on and on. The preponderance of the evidence suggests things are changing and not in a good way. The scientists may be wrong but if they are right your offspring have a very bleak future indeed. Yet it matters not to you apparently who have offspring. If the scientists are wrong we can breathe easy but if they are right biblical famine and suffering is in store, and if you have read the Old Testament you know what I am trying to say. That we could try to make changes for the benefit of future generations seems like too much effort for too remote an outcome. That being the case I say bugger it, I'm going to enjoy the twilight years of the Industrial Revolution as best I can.

These lovely low lying vacation islands are at risk, but further afield millions risk drowning in river deltas that make up most of Bangladesh, and South Pacific Island nations make plans to evacuate to higher ground, even as China ignores the lessons learned in the 19th century and tries to pollute its way to superpower prosperity. Worst of all we cannot even discuss these issues, or potential issues, rationally. Never mind try to forge consensus on the best way to move ahead as we struggle with mighty changes in our collective future.

My solace in these trying times is to look to the past for a guide to the future and the more I do the more I realize there is nothing to be done. The cycle requires us to go through a period of fantastic prosperity, over weening pride and then collapse followed by a struggle to regain control, hard work to rebuild and so forth. Skeptics will always tell you this time it's different but history will confirm for you that it never really is. The hard part is trying to figure out which part of the cycle you and your generation is living though. Hindsight helps and in twenty or thirty years we'll be able to look back at 2008 and figure out if it was a blip on the financial radar or the beginning of the Great Depression of the Twentieth Century.

We look at Easter Island, Rapa Nui, and wonder how silly they were that alone in a vast ocean they managed to destroy the forest that sustained them, apparently in an effort to transport giant statues to honor gods that oversaw their civilization. Instead they destroyed their ecosystem and died off leaving behind a mystery and monuments to human self delusion and stupidity. I hope for the best and ignore the worst and whistle in the dark as I go about my daily habits, burning dead dinosaurs as I go.

It would be an awful shame to submerge these lovely places because it took too much effort not to. Perhaps it's the price we pay to appease the gods of our darkest innermost fears.

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The Real Keys

I was walking Cheyenne last weekend in the backwoods of Big Pine Key. As we get deeper into winter and more people show up around here it gets harder to find some outdoor space to be alone. In some fit of wild optimism I went towards the Blue Hole and found the parking lot was packed. Cheyenne weirdly enough wanted none of it, briefly sniffing in the bushes and backing up rapidly towards the car as more people clutching hydration bottles strode down the fifty foot path to the viewing platform looking as though they were seeking adventure in a place so arid there is no chance of convenience store water for a hundred miles. I looked for somewhere more remote and came up with a side street leading off into the pine woods. This truck reminded me of the character Doc Ford in Randy Wayne White's novels about Sanibel Island.

 

I know of another such operation at Bay Point, perhaps its part of this one I don't know, but when I read the novel featuring a collector of sea life I thought it sounded an impossibly unlikely career choice but there again in a world where people feel the need for indoor fish someone has to find them. I have never understood the attraction of watching fish swim around in one's living room, but there again I suppose watching a Labrador shed on your carpet is also an acquired taste...

 

 

Further up the street I came across a more conventional fishing operation, lobster traps and all.

 

 

 

There's a canal in the back with access to the channel and, like a farming operation this location won't bother residential sub-divisions. Fishing is the way most people made their living in these islands before the advent of mass tourism. Fishing has been pushed out of Key West and where these kinds of operations used to function now you'll see tourist cruises.

I like to eat fish though I heard a story on This American Life, doing the investigative reporting that strikes fear into the heart of dullard All Things Considered and the upshot of the story was that about half the fish you eat is not the fish you ordered. Indeed some restaurants serve "artificial" calamari made from unmentionable parts of a pig. That gave me pause. Even I have heard that some restaurants serve scallops made from sting rays which I find appalling. I see these small businesses and hope this reality is some insulation from the reality of fish sold under false pretences.

 

 

 

I have no desire to romanticize the life, partly because earning a living from the sea is similar to earning a living by farming, which is as hard as it can be lucrative and is always dependent on market forces and the weather, which are both out of the workers' control. As in farming where sudden frosts or floods wreck crops, in fishing cold snaps storms and so forth wreck catches, not to mention the high costs of fuel.

 

 

And yet, despite the fragility of the life and daily tasks people persist. I guess its a living for people who have trouble with school work or sitting still indoors. What appeals about it to me is that these kinds of yards, seen from Stock Island north, in ever fewer numbers, are a direct link to the past. This is the world Hemingway did write about when he wrote of Key West. These aren't mythical pirates or freebooters, these are people who live to fish and fish to live and you won't see them in Key West Bight. More's the pity I suppose, though smelly fishermen won't attract tourists. Or perhaps their authenticity or the authenticity of their catch might?

 

Cheyenne enjoyed the peace and quiet out here.

 

 

 

 

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The Mayor Speaks

Mayor Cates was quoted in the newspaper as saying, more or less, locals don't go downtown so who cares if locals object to widening the entrance to the Key West harbor to bring more cruise ships to town. Well, that set the cat among the pigeons. They say one should speak truth to power, but when power speaks truth everyone gets annoyed.

When the mayor says locals don't go downtown he is technically correct if you look at those who he figures are his constituents they don't go to Duval Street much. I have worked with Conchs who tell me adamantly they never go downtown as there is nothing there for them. There is a barely suppressed current of anger in the remarks as though the speaker is casting around for someone to blame. Old Town is the lost paradise of eternal happiness known to some as Shangri La. It is the Garden of Eden from which the Conchs have been ejected for selling their souls for a mess of pottage. Enough with the aphorisms, here's how it happened.

Key West was a navy town and men came to find men here. They also found a run down fishing village at the end of a very long narrow road with superb weather and no facilities to speak of. Electricity came and went and telephone calls outside the local five digits were communications with another world. Old timers like to prove their credentials even today by quoting their phone numbers as five digits. They'll say something like 32929, which assumes that the first two unspoken digits are always 29. Because in the good old days the telephone exchange in town was only represented by 29 so local calls were all five digits only. In any event it became clear a few decades ago to some bright sparks that opening guesthouses in this remote US outpost and inviting snowbound friends to Key West could be lucrative.

So they bought the run down housing stock and converted it slowly into the glorious mansions and Victorians you see today. A few smart businessmen bought up the shells of businesses on Duval, reduced to penury by Navy draw downs and held fiercely to the dilapidated main drag painfully restoring it and hoping for better times. Which, when they came made the crazy speculators into visionaries. Such is human nature; you're a nutter until circumstances prove you're not.

The Conchs who had been living in a small town dependent on fishing and the Navy thought Christmas had come early when they found buyers for their tired elderly homes. Which sales in turn enabled them to buy lots on the former dairy fields on the other side of Division Street (Truman Avenue today). So they too at last could enjoy the American Dream with weatherproof homes, air conditioning, car ports and nice sized yards. We call it New Town today because before Searstown was built in the sixties the land was scrub while downtown is really Old  and always  has been.

Old Town is where the tourists want to be and winter residents revel in indoor/outdoor living when their less well off friends Up North are shivering and shoveling snow. But the power structure of Key West fr the most part lies east of First Street and goes all the way to Key Haven. So when the mayor says locals don't go downtown he isn't wrong, even though people who do live downtown and don't want more cruise ship passengers get miffed.

Mayor Cates gets stuff done and he doesn't waste a lot of time on empty talk, which at a time when most national politicians are caught in the spotlight of indecision makes a change. For instance he decided he wanted to build a new city hall at the Glynn Archer School on White Street. City Hall on Angela got a death sentence from mold caused by Hurricane Wilma on a structure already well past it's deadline and the debate was loud and at times acrimonious. Every one had an idea what its replacement should look like. Mayor Cates wanted a historic building easily accessible (to New Town as well of  course) with room for parking. He just had to bend the obtuse school board to his will. They bent.

The Truman Waterfront has been handed over to the city long since by the Navy, once again in a military drawn down, and those 34 acres have been sitting. Not anymore and despite the usual clamor for this and that a fancy new park is on the boards, not the ill fated waterpark proposed by Cates' predecessor but the suburban loveliness of gardens, paths and coordinated architecture so beloved of Florida developers across this blighted peninsula. In similar vein plans are afoot to develop and beautify Caroline Street just in time for Pritam Singh's planned hotel. Singh built Truman Annex on the first bunch of superfluous Navy property deeded to the city, a superhuman effort that took him two tries to complete. It got him going on  big developments all those years ago and he still needs to do more apparently. The city will oblige with a spruced up street to front his latest creation.

I live in the county and work for the city so as far as I am concerned anything that brings in money works for me. I appreciate the way the city takes care of my job and I do my best to give back value while I sit up at night taking calls from distressed residents. How the city organizes it's streets doesn't have much to do with me though I am among those who don't spend a lot of time on Duval Street. I have never been inside Sloppy Joe's or Ricks though I did once have a beer at Captain Tony's. Mostly I go downtown to see a movie at the Tropic, have a beer at the Porch or take pictures for this blog.

Nevertheless, like many non residents of the Southernmost City I have an emotional attachment to the outcome of these development plans. For the life of me I can't figure how I feel about these "improvements." I like the City Hall plan, that one's easy. Gentrification though is tougher because in principle I don't much care for it, but in practice I like parks and trees and clean sidewalks free of smelly panhandlers. At some level we have to accept that Key West is going through another period of big change which  seems to mean inevitably that funkiness and eccentricity will be pushed further away. The easy money is gone, and people making money off the current mass tourism plans aren't looking for changes, they want more of the same formula that has worked so well for them thus far. It's never a good time for change, so the Mayor is pushing for more of the stuff that is mass tourism. A wider ship channel brings bigger ships and more day trippers. More money is good and the price is Lower Duval clogged with people. But as we have already established the mayor's supporters don't do Lower Duval so that isn't a problem... 

As I wander these historic streets I have my own vision of a Key West I'd like to see come to pass even though I know my imaginings are as vapid as a child's dreams of becoming an astronaut. I'd like to see Duval Street one way with wide sidewalks as a sort of Third Space where people could gather. I recollect walking downtown St Augustine with its parks and open spaces and bum-free sidewalks. I'd like to imagine that with some effort downtown could be welcoming to Conchs and non-Conch locals as well as tourists. I'd like to see the ruinous t-shirt shops replaced with almost anything that appeals to a higher emotion than crude high school fart humor.

I guess I'm an elitist but I'd rather see some gentrification rather than just letting Old Town's heart go to mass tourism. It's at a tipping point and the tip is leaning the other way, because it's more of the same and thus less scary for those who have businesses based on this mass tourism model. I don't have a stake so I stand on the sidelines and wonder. I wonder how anyone can imagine that if Mayor Cates says the harbor channel should be widened, it won't be. And with that widening will come  vast great  cruise ships that have never before been seen here. The question is, will their passengers negatively affect enough of the city to drive out the wealthy strata of snowbirds and visitors who keep property values high? It doesn't seem likely to me. Cruise ship passengers come and go in a matter of hours, their radius of operations is small, perhaps five blocks from Clinton Square and restaurants do not cater to them. That channel widening will pollute the reef as will larger ships seems indisputable to me, but thus far in the Keys' history the reef has always been sacrificed to immediate economic interests and that won't change here and now, no doubt. 

Meanwhile the county is moving ahead with approving a new strip mall at Rockland Key. It turns out Walmart did look at the site and so far seems to have turned it down. The developers hint at another major retailer with interest in the site, Target is high among local hopes, but I'm guessing it will be some second rate anchor store as the population base around here is pretty small for the big popular retailers. Solares Hill had an interesting article two Sundays ago on projected sea level rise which would swamp the areas surrounding the mall which would occupy space near the current porn store alongside Highway One. I suppose that's one reason not to build the mall but by the time Rockland Key floods regularly there will be  plenty of other flooding to worry about around here. I figure I will likely be dead in a couple of decades and without children to worry about, apres moi le deluge...

It seems odd, doesn't it, that at a time when malls are failing across the country, when suburbs served by cars are under stress as suburban housing loses value, as urban renewal becomes fashionable once again, Key West seems poised to miss the boat. Conchs who have lived in nice homes for two generations have long since missed out on the mainland shopping experience and this is what they want, and it looks as though in some form it's what they will finally get locally. The Rockland Key Strip Mall won't threaten the t-shirt shops on Duval. More's the pity.

This then is the future of Key West, an urban core devoted to mass tourism and suburbs devoted to internal combustion; driving and shopping separated from residential  development. I can't help it, it just seems so old fashioned and out of date. I wonder why this has to be the path to  success in a town with so much going for it.

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