Utility Bikes Of Key West

I have been working so much my inner clock is getting knocked out of synch with the world around me. We are quite short staffed at work so I am getting one night a week off -if I'm lucky. Consequently I am turning into a truly nocturnal animal. Usually I have enough time off that I have little difficulty switching between sleeping at night and sleeping during the day as required by my schedule. Now I am working so much I have difficulty sleeping the whole night through.  

In this vampire state of mind I end up waking at one in the morning and after tossing and turning for a while I shake my dog awake and we creep out like thieves in the night so I can find sleepiness once again.   

Cheyenne's a good sport and she'll go from a deep snoring sleep to wide awake and tail wagging in a few seconds. Calvin and Hobbes are loose on the city.

I was thinking about nothing in particular as Cheyenne mooched around in the area of the Half Shell smelling God knows what and I realized I was looking at an vast cross section of Key West bicycles. This area is a parking garage  for people who live on boats or who work around here and leave their machines locked to the racks.

 These bicycles are working machines in a city where thousands of residents don't have cars.

Cycling is  a means of transport one frequently associates (in the US) with university towns, student wheels, and bicycles are manufactured to appeal to fashion conscious buyers. Style counts in bikes as much as it does in cars. Furthermore some bicycles are so specialized (no pun intended) that they can be as costly as a motorcycle. In Key West bicycles tend to make a more counter culture statement. 

I've made the point before but it bears repeating, that status is not defined by stuff, usually. It is an appealing side to Key West that is still holding on in the face of gentrification and encroaching wealth.

To have a bicycle and what's more to use a bicycle is a sign of common sense where the bicycle replaces the car. To have an expensive bicycle is asking for unwanted attention in a  city where beach cruisers do quite well in a small flat town.

 I like the colorful simplicity of the bicycle, even though I am a fan of motorized two wheels.

I do from time to time put my fiddly complicated universal bike rack on the car and bring my bike to town  from home. 

I do not find riding a bicycle in Key West to be a particularly relaxing way to get around town honestly. To do it in the company of a spouse or friend is even worse. Riding on the streets of Key West takes concentration as traffic is erratic and visitors have no clue how to negotiate the narrow spaces. I find a scooter or motorcycle much more efficient but I was shocked to realize this year that I have been riding for 45 years so my preference for motorcycles is understandable but not the norm.

In the end I like walking which is lucky because I like to have Cheyenne along, but also to take pictures. Fiddling with a camera and a bicycle is a pain. 

 I guess a bicycle as a station wagon is not my ideal. I had no idea.

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Key West Dusk

The Angelina guest house always looks picturesque, and it was the sight of it glowing in the dying of the light that convinced me to pull out my phone and record the moment.

When you tell strangers you live in Florida this is not what they imagine when they think of your hometown:

We are gearing up for a drive Up North in two weeks- Thanksgiving with friends in Georgia at Jekyll Island for a traditional meal. But finally it seems my Vespa is just about ready and the restorer says it will be ready to be loaded in the trailer in next week. Damn! So when I think of people asking me where I'm from that's what I'm thinking about. They think of Del Boca Rio and I think of this: 

 Or this, a banal county government parking lot, filled with light and shade and trees and mystery under the deep blue canopy. a 75  degree night in November is perfect.

 All American picket fences and yet so rare and unusual.

The Freeman Justice  Center is  fairly new but it was built in the traditional brick style of Southern Courthouses. Fewer Palladian flourishes perhaps but still it fits in with the original courthouse without being a Taj Mahal on the scale of that built for the administration of justice in Tallahassee.

In point of fact the architects brilliantly forgot to make provision for jurors needing to be screened for entry so they spent almost a million more dollars to create a jury  atrium in the back. I well remember doing my bit by snaking round the parking lot in baking sun clutching my sweaty disintegrating summons in my hand one July. They remembered to build extra secure parking. It has to be best parking in Old Town Key West. 

Fleming Street looking east toward Duval and the fleshpots of bars and crowds.  

Sunset comes early and its dark around six in the evening. One compensation is that I get to see some spectacular skies now, but in the evening and the morning as the transition coincides closely with my beginning and end of night shift.

Gone Girl At The Tropic

The movie Gone Girl came to Key West a while back, stopping first at the rather dreary barn that passes for  a multiplex in this small town. The Regal Cinema Six sits next to Sears and Publix in the far reaches of New Town and attracts movie goers who seem more intent on a  date than on dialogue and haute cuisine in the lobby is represented by popcorn and soda sold at astronomic prices. Call me a snob but I like the Tropic where my membership buys me a discounted access to adult movie going.

It does not however always work out that way. Summers at the Tropic are glorious, the older entitled petulant winter movie crowd have returned to their eeries Up North, the cinema is a quiet thoughtful haven of cool air and alcohol away from the heat and humidity of summer. I like to swim, I enjoy boating (when the boat runs) but my afternoons off are a glorious opportunity to see a movie in peace and alone allowing me to get immersed in the pleasure of the giant silver screen.  

 Gone Girl deserves the concentration a screening rooms allows, as it is superficially a thriller, a story of murder, cheating and trickery on an epic and disturbing scale. I found it also to be a delightful and sardonic take on the state of journalism, public gossip and the power of personality driven "reporting" that has the power to emasculate the police. The movie raises so many issues and propels so much social commentary on so many levels that despite my initial reticence I found myself sucked into a story that as my wife said was pretty straightforward but that actually deviated constantly from the cliches of the plot. It is really worth a look.

However our carefully crafted strategy of waiting for the movie to play out at the Regal, and then allow it to be screened for a while at the Tropic failed us. There were two people in the small theater screening room when we arrived. We sat across the room from them but unfortunately a dozen more movie goers joined us, the last clump of elderly patrons plunked themselves down in the seats directly in front of us despite the wide selection of empty rows to sit in. And it was party time in the row in front of us. We moved to the back of the theater next to the two young women in the corner. In retrospect that might have been a bad move.  

One of them had a raucous deep phlegm-filled cough, such that you could hear the nicotine tainted sputum circulating in her mouth as she gasped and wheezed and retched. All I could think was a) glad I got my flu shot, diphtheria shot and whooping cough shot this year and b) she needs to drop the meth habit or she will cough herself to death before her teeth rot. The two twats talked of course, more during the slow scenes of reflection and speech making and less during the bloody murder and contrived abuse scenes. I paid them back by laughing out loud as a sex scene ended in a fountain of erupting blood and sudden spasming death, even as they sucked their witless breath in, in horror. Then a phone rang. At least the second half wit declined to answer even if she couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

 They weren't alone. The old fogies further up the aisles were twittering and explaining the plot to each other and it was a plot with lots of twists so the conversation was spasmodic but never quite ending. The bloody death scene ended it for a while.

Somehow I kept my shit together and the movie kept me absorbed in its convoluted story and well drawn characters, so I'm glad I didn't obey my early inclination to leave the theater and breathe fresh silent air.   

 So I ask myself why people think the movie theater is an extension of their home viewing experience?  Some entertainment doesn't merit a theater and the pause button is a beautiful thing, but the joy of the theater is the ability to immerse oneself in a story. Why pay eight or more dollars to pretend you are at home? Furthermore why is it okay to  spoil my night out? Especially with a great movie right up there on the screen? 

My wife the teacher had Veterans' Day off so we came out of the theater to crowds of people cheerfully waving flags and I noticed something I hadn't noticed before for some reason.  Key West suddenly looked like the garrison town it is. There were white Navy uniforms dotting the sidewalks, and the place looked like those black and white photos from seventy years ago when being in the military meant living in uniform and being seen in public as a member of the armed services.

 Then my wife saw this fine upstanding citizen toss his smoking cigarette out of his car. Sigh.

 I'm not perfect and my phone has been known to go off in a movie theater, but it all just seemed too much for one afternoon. We went to Santiago's and had delicious tapas: clams, ribs, fiery potatoes, and meaty empanadas, and  that took the edge off the bad manners elsewhere.

With the roof rolled back my wife did me the courtesy of driving us home in her Fiat 500 and I spent the thirty minute ride looking up at a gloriously starry night. This place would be Paradise- without the people!

Sister Noodle House

Seen at night in it's usual place on Petronia at Thomas Streets. Blue Heaven is always written up in tourist guides to Key West which point out the funky Caribbean atmosphere, the free range chickens in the open air dining room and the place has thrived. It's a bit pricey for my tastes but they do fine without me, a romatic place to eat al fresco and know you are in a classic Key West eatery. Mango pancakes, when on the menu should not be missed even at something crazy like fifteen bucks. The coffee, priced separately, is too strong and bitter for me but that's me, weak and watery. I like coffee that tastes like tea! On the subject of weak and watery check out this soup take out:

Finally it seems proper Vietnamese food has arrived in Key West. And when I say proper I mean the US version of noodle soup that has grown in popularity by leaps and bounds recently across the US. There is one place on Southard Street that has failed to enchant me, frankly. It's been a while since I went to Kojin and I found it over priced and not inspiring. Blue Heaven is, by contrast, expensive but inspired to my way of eating even though they are two completely different kitchens.

On the Vietnamese front: Sister Noodle House struck me when I walked in, as being as close to a street noodle stand as the health department would allow.  It's family run in the style of a cheap and cheerful Chinese eatery, not designed as haute cuisine or a romantic rendez vous. I was buying food to go so that suited me just fine. Dinner for two filled the front seat of the Fusion and attracted Cheyenne's interest.

Sister Noodle House is not downtown and is thus not seeking the tourist trade. It's an undistinguished store front in an unremarkable strip mall that goes by the name of Conch Plaza and is anchored by Gordon Food Service, the closest Key West gets to a warehouse type store.  That puts this eatery two miles or more from Duval Street, but I know it has already generated a fair bit of interest among locals. When I placed my order for two soups I asked if they were related to Tong's Garden, my preferred Chinese eatery and they smiled. How did I know? Key West is a small place and the word is out...Apparently this is a new venture by family members branching out. Good for them.

I bought two small soups, pho pronounced pha we are told, as the word is derived from the French "pot au feu" as the original broth is believed by some authorities to have been developed from recipes taken to Vietnam during the French Colonial era. Luckily for us the authors of this deliciousness are patient and asking for pho will get you excellent pha. And get this, with two ten dollar soups we made two meals for my wife and I. Inexpensive, filling and delicious. 

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Key West Cemetery

The problem with the Key West  Cemetery is that its so picturesque you can hardly move there without tripping over a picture. Including of course the iconic monument to the sinking of the USS Maine... 

...the event in Havana harbor that at the time was viewed as sabotage and an invitation to war.  Key West took care of the sailors wounded in the coal explosion and buried some members of the crew in the city's cemetery.  From the Key West City website:

The U.S.S. Maine Monument - On February 15, 1898, the U.S.S. Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, killing some 260 American sailors, a disaster that led to the U.S. declaring war on Spain. Two dozen of those dead are buried on either side of the central copper statue. Also in the plot are other Spanish-American War veterans, Civil War era markers, and veterans of other wars including two British airmen, a Brazilian sailor, a woman, and a baby. The iron fence and gates were manufactured by a foundry in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Navy maintains the plot. 

The inquiry into the explosion was also held in Key West even as the US invaded Cuba to liberate the island from Spain (remember the Monroe Doctrine!) and took over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines as a precaution. 

I was greatly impressed to see a traditional Armistice Day Poppy planted at the two foreign graves, airmen who died in the 20th century and were buried here.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

One cannot help but wonder what kind of stewards we have been of those principles espoused by President Lincoln at Gettysburg considering the monstrous corporate expense of the last election, a modest mid term, with relatively little legislator turn over and a pathetically small voter turn out.

Mario Sanchez, Key West's most renowned folk artist has a freshly refurbished marker with his iconic signature embossed on it, as well as his own commentary on his art celebrating daily life in early 20th century Key West: I know my art isn't great but people like it, right?

And then there are the Cuban martyrs, honored by the exiles in Florida for their struggle to free Cuba (from Spain) and honored in Cuba for their struggles also (against foreign Fascism). 

 Scattered throughout are the markers of a different era,

 ...a different struggle, now relegated to history.

In Key West's own burial style.

And outside the gates the daily search for meaning as fascinating as that found inside the gates. Key West chickens, always a source of wonderment observed on the street. Life goes on in a tourist  town.

"...and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions."