Trash, The Judge, And Trashing His Member

They do love their stickers in Key West and the latest I noticed advertises a blog I Conch Key West, purportedly, but in fact the blog seems to advertise a Facebook page  where all the activity seems to take place. I enjoy having a page to myself, a place wher I can think out loud and take as much or as little time as I like to express a thought. Facebook feels too hurried to me and life in Paradise is more than sunsets and webcams to me. More interesting too.

I suppose I should do a better job of advertising this page and start selling t-shirts and stuff but I am evading living in a world where the basis of everything is making a buck. I was approached recently to review motorcycle accessories on my page and allow them to post their own blog entries here; entries that more closely resembled ads than anything I write. Their representative got quite offended when I refused. This might as well be Cheyenne's page as I actually quite like her, as uncommercial as she is. She doesn't even mind sharing her lawn with a couple of bums, and she never panhandles.

Speaking of bums, this one (below) was passed out while the two visitors struggling with the map were looking for the place where you apply for a marriage license. Lucky for them I knew where the Lester building is. They were close but not quite there yet. Which is what the city pretty much told the would-be developers of Peary Court on White Street. They want to tear down the crappy Navy housing and replace it with "Key West style" housing that they promise will blend in with the neighborhood. However the Historic Architectural Review Committee nixed the latest proposals Peary Court developers reveal new designs | KeysNews.com. And the redevelopment struggle continues. Personally I think anything would be better than what is there now, but I suspect the developers, who p[aid  $35 million, will have to struggle a good bit more, or else get connected. I hope, perhaps in vain, that in the end Peary Court will look good and be livable, if it cant revert to being open space.

The city commission made a few people unhappy last week too when they fixed an application for trash service in the city and awarded the more expensive waste contract to the manager who has been in the rotary and chamber of commerce (please note Peary Court developers) while at the same time restoring twice-a-week pick up of trash. The irony is the recently enacted once-a-week schedule is credited with forcing city residents to recycle more stuff. So the city is rolling back the changes that increased the recycling rate from 7% to fully twenty one percent of the waste stream. And paying more to accomplish this improvement! So much so the city employee in charge promptly announced his resignation citing a coincidental family obligation across the continent in Seattle, while David Lybrand a member of the Sustainabilty Advisory Board, the group of volunteers trying to make Key West more Eco-conscious, also quit, accusing the majority of commissioners voted yes because of cronyism. All very ugly I'm sure.

In the realm of the law something notable happened last week. For the first time in years a Monroe County judge did not serve out his term but quit early, saying he wanted to restore his constitutional right to privacy by giving up his elected office. I suppose I should point out he was the judge who ruled against me in my civil foreclosure case, and even though I was expecting it as I am not after all too big to fail in the world of finance, I was still disappointed Florida constitutional law didn't  get invoked by the Justice in his ruling. Audlin was famous for ruling against a gay adoption ban in Florida but not at all well known for derring-do in foreclosure!   

Imagine my surprise when the announcement was made that chief Judge Audlin was abruptly stepping down last Friday with years left to run on his term. He has a reputation as a good and thoughtful judge and well respected inside and outside the courtroom. His disappearance from the bench has passed with nary a comment in the local press.

No one has stepped up to defend him publicly which I find extraordinary. His crime? Putting an advertisement on a gay sex site per the Miami Herald . As far as I can tell that has nothing to do with his ability to be a judge but when his photo and his most vital statistic were noticed the ad disappeared and so did his career with a prompt letter of resignation. The one human family was nowhere to be seen wondering why being gay and lonely is a prerequisite to judicial stewardship. I asked around and pretty much everyone gay and straight thinks resignation was appropriate, for a variety of reasons, not least because the web site in question wasn't about relationships but about sex. I disagree but clearly I'm in the minority, I don't see how exactly it matters.

We are told that America is not a racist nation and opponents of Barack Hussain Obama recoil in horror when the suggestion is made that they hate the Kenyan Marxist because of the color of his skin. I think they are transparently full of shit, but at the same time it seems to me we haven't progressed that far on gay rights just yet either. Judge Audlin is known in Key West to be "openly" gay, so what's the deal? Funnily enough the Florida Republican party just elevated a local attorney to the Appeals Court, but I guess he had better stay well closeted following the genteel lynching of Judge Audlin. Them poofs need to know their place, but I'm going to vote for Charlie Crist for governor whether or not he stays in his hetero-marriage closet.

I don't feel greatly encouraged by recent Supreme Court rulings allowing money to flow more freely and openly buy elections and the Republican Party is continuing to press for more relaxation of the rules. President Obama is hardly proving himself to be very effective in the role of Constitutional defender and his likely successor, the dynastic Hilary Clinton is calling ever louder for more powers to be given to government wire tappers and snoops. Meanwhile the great debate across the country is slowly shifting from gay marriage, kinda, mostly yes, to a return to the other great distraction of whether or not abortion really should be legal. Against such issues the rather dreary debate about the rule of law fades into a discussion of who killed whom in Benghazi and where to buy ammunition to defend yourself against the goons of government.

I think this summer really needs to be the year I get out on the water more, and our new home has a fabulous dock with davits and easy canal access.

Now that, and the presence of two loos in the house is really good news.

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From The Archives

From four years ago, a summer thunderstorm threatening.

Summer rains should be on us soon once again.

 

The Key West Cemetery is always photogenic.

And here we see the Eurostyle cubicle burial plots.

Yesterday's tour of Casa Marina did not include the coral rock house.

Four years have passed since this picture but not much changes for Cheyenne.

I used to spend a lot more time in the Old Town lanes.

If you use the search function at the top of the page you will find essays on all of them. Or at least most...

My outdoor pictures are inspired by the great Clyde Butcher who came to Key West.

I was at work but my wife got me an autographed copy of his book.

This summer we may get to go to North Carolina to see my sister in law.

The house and moving shenanigans prevent us from going to Italy to see my family.

Which is okay as I like Asheville.

And the inimitable Blue Ridge mountains.

Cheyenne loves the mountains but she doesn't much care for the Keys back country anymore.

She's seen all the trails she cares to and enjoys urban walks much more.

So we end this brief retrospective where we started, among the dead.

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Casa Marina

I admit I was surprised to see a pedicab in the Casa Marina district of Key West. It's not that you don't see working stiffs in this upper class neighborhood, after all lawns don't mow themselves and trees want trimming from time to time. But pedicabs normally lurk in the Duval-Simonton corridor with occasional forays up Truman, cheerfully blocking traffic as they go.

Casa Marina is where you see normal sized houses planted on normal sized lots at Key West abnormal prices.

But even here the tone drops sharply from lot to lot, and next to a multi million dollar mansion you may find a home of normal proportions, even perhaps a little run down. "Not Apartment 21" - what an intriguing inscription.

Lovely isn't it, wide avenues, trimmed lawns and swaying palms under a perfect summer sky... And within pedicab distance of Duval Street!

This place has been closed and mouldering for as long as I can remember. A healthy reminder to all the perfect homes nearby that we are all bound to return to dust one day.

I like Casa Marina even though you'll find more tourists wandering here than you might expect. It is far from off the path beaten by visitors to Key West. Certainly part of the charm is the variety of housing and the abundance of greenery, but there are hotels and guest houses as well which bring the world outside to the broad shady streets.

Not that the current heat wave encourages pedestrians this time of year. A quiet Casa Marina, a bonus.

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Dog Beach

There is a beach dedicated to dogs in Key West. It's neither vast nor spacious. Here it is in it's entirety:

Cheyenne is the world's only Labrador that hates to swim, a product no doubt of life with her previous, grievously messed up family. That would be the asses who gave her up to the pound. My best efforts to teach her the joy of swimming haven't worked.

So why bring her here? I don't as there are plenty of other places where we can go together. The beach east of the Higgs Beach Martello Tower is open for dogs, which is convenient as its across the street from the actual dog park. Access to the water is limited by a cement sea wall, so Dog Beach is good for dogs that play in the water.

Like so much of Key West the very expensive sits right next to the very least among us...on the other hand this contemplative dude was not planning anything as strenuous as a day at work, so even though he isn't welcome at Louie's Backyard for a sunset cocktail priced close to the national debt of a small third world country, he isn't trying to earn the price of admission either.

Vernon and Waddell Streets intersect here and in winter parking is not so great.

Cheyenne feels about Louie's pretty mug asi do. I've been a couple of times. And the staff worked hard to make sure I didn't feel welcome. So I'd rather go elsewhere for sunset drinks. A friend bought me dinner there once as a thank you for a favor. He went a bit green when he got the bill.

I read complaints about trash littering the street in front of this landmark, it's the sort of neighborliness one comes to expect in a small town when you're doing well. I don't spend money at Louie's but I dont begrudge other people that do. Hold your friends tight and take care of your trash. I couldn't see anything to bitch about, but that doesn't stop people.

Dog Beach reminded me of the time I took an acquaintance to Simonton Beach after she had read about it. We got out of the car and she looked one way then the other and asked "Is this all?" Well yes, and all her fantasies of walking a long sunset strand with her husband vaporized. The charm of Key West is also its size, which does sometimes work against it.

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Renting In The Keys

It's a funny thing but one of the best features of life on Ramrod Key has been the silence, and now that we are in the throes of moving out the silence has been shattered by a chorus of recently arrived dogs. I like to imagine that if there really were a God she would have a sense of humor and this last minute present of bands of howling dogs chasing boats passing in the canal is a parting gift. A reminder that in this life nothing stays the same, and change is a constant. Hence the need to move to a new rental.

The other funny thing is that my extremely useful utility trailer is snug in a storage locker in Pennsylvania, where I left it against the day I would tow my restored Vespa back home...a year later that day has yet to arrive (soon!) so I have no trailer to help make the four mile move...But yes! I have a trailer, with a boat on it, but it's a trailer all right, and easily adapted to carry stuff! Brilliant, thank you.

We met the landlords and they cleaned out the house and we got the keys even though our tenancy doesn't begin for a few days, so we can say in summary that we have been lucky. Which led me to ponder the business of renting a home in this red hot market. We looked at one other place and put in bids on a couple more but we rented this house in about three days, and when we saw it we knew we wanted to live here. We toyed with moving to Key West, ruminations I have shared on this page previously, but in the end we like easy access to the water, a quieter street than we would find in Key West, and more complete amenities for the price. The rent for this two bedroom, two bath house with dock and parking and a storage she'd is $1900 a month plus utilities. In Key West you might get a three bedroom condo on the eastern tip of the city (Oceanwalk) or small unit in Old Town, with no storage and no parking, and probably no pets and wary landlords tired of renting to flakes who want to live within walking distant of the bars...

That's not you? Of course not, but how do you convince the landlord? The rental market in the Lower Keys has been hearing up because the rental market in Key West has been doing the same. Expensive homes in Key West are purchased for second homes thus knocking them off the rental market and increasing their value. So people who might want to rent in Key West are pushed out with the inevitable consequences for people like us, displaced and in turn seeking rentals. I still fail to understand the benefit to Wells Fargo of refusing to participate in the HAMP program as my house which might be worth three quarters of a million in Key West is worth less than a third that, maybe $220,000 realistically 25 miles out of town, 27 miles from Duval Street. The banks' shenanigans with Credit Default Swaps and electronic mortgage transfers wrecked the housing market yet they got taxpayer bailouts and they don't get forced yo modify the mortgages they wrecked. Weird, but it's all old news now as we march on into a world of spiraling public debt and wealth inequality.

We learned a lot about the rental process in making our move. Pretty soon my wife figured out she had to monitor Craigslist Florida Keys all day on her phone. We applied for this Cudjoe Key home 12 minutes after the ad appeared online. A few hours later the rental agent told us she took down the ad when she found 25 applications in her email inbox. You need to answer extremely quickly, be available instantly to view and have the deposit in hand. It is a landlords market. We saw the house after dark and we both decided instantly it was a go, so the next day we transferred the five hundred dollar deposit and a week later we sent the landlord a one year lease and $4500 for first, last and deposit.

We were honest about having a dog, we looked stable as I have ten years with the police and my wife has ten years with the school district, our reference was a neighbor up the street, and our crap credit score, drowned by foreclosure didn't seen to matter. The lesson is you need to be ready to do it when you want to rent. Landlords that promised to call back never did as they were undoubtedly swamped and we applied with a very clear idea of what we wanted to rent.

Luckily we have a straightforward landlord, who keeps his word and seems cheerful and easy going. It's as hard to get a decent landlord as it is to get a decent tenant from what I've heard and we feel very lucky on that account. In the end we did not get any leads from friends but having a friend as a reference was extremely helpful. Coming from outside the Keys this process must be hell even if you have found a job.

My wife loves having two bathrooms at last, Cheyenne loves the cool tile (her first shed hair recorded for posterity above) and I think we may have some decent neighbors at last. It was emblematic to me that two of my neighbors on Ramrod glared at me, why I don't know, as I drove by not speeding, with a load of boxes, and my new neighbor on Cudjoe came out and shook my hand and met Cheyenne as I was unloading those boxes. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

And we still have a canal with a nice dock and mature trees to look out at and I can't wait for the next month to go by so we can move in fully and be settled, and kiss Wells Fargo a final good bye. I like my new landlord a lot more and my neighbors too, and if I end up changing my mind changing my location won't be as hard as it has been shaking off the damned oligarchs at the bank.

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