Rockland Key Traffic Lights

The developers of a mysterious shopping mall planned for Rockland Key want a traffic light to control cars pouring into the proposed shopping center which rumor has it will be anchored by a Walmart.

 The idea would be that traffic leaves the 45mph congestion of Big Coppitt and bursts onto the four lane spaces of 55 mph (above) only to turn the corner and...

...bam! Meet a red light...So far the State of Florida has bravely said no way to a traffic light here but I don't doubt that the developers will make their political contributions count and business friendly Florida will do the right thing. Personally I'd make the buggers build a nice curvy bridge over the southbound lanes into the parking lot. You'd think Walmart could afford it.

Most recently this was a porn shop serving the nearby Navy base but count one for the Internet and it vanished only to be occupied by the garden store that expanded from its hidden location behind the former porn shop. Stop off for a potted plant and get a DVD...used to be the order of business. All this will be swept away by the new mall, possibly anchored by a large chain store. My wife would prefer Target and Trader Joe's but if it were possible one would as soon see nothing change thanks.

A traffic light here:

 A stop sign there. Paving Paradise always ends up in the same place: a parking lot.

Let's be honest its not that this exactly represents Paradise as most riders on the Conch Tour Train get to see it, but gravel, tow trucks and transportation are what keep the tourists supplied with all the stuff they think is necessary for a complete vacation.

Locals too see Paradise in Walmart's aisles, cheap stuff to make the cost of living in Paradise more affordable. Funny thing that, the drive to cheapen goods lowers wages and the spiral is only supported by welfare payments to Walmart workers. Capitalism supported by the government is socialism in modern American propaganda (though actually I think it comes closer to Fascism when you read Mussolini's description of the bond between corporations and the government). Whatever it is it doesn't seem to have done much good to other communities across America, does Walmart. Perhaps they aren't really coming here:

A mile up the road and the hump that marks the entrance to that other major local employer around here, the Navy Base hides the mall that is to come. I wonder what would happen if Walmart treated its workers as well as the military do, health care, child care, education, pensions, housing, paid vacations. What a wonderful world that might be. Better than food stamps to supplement your wages.

From here you will be able to pretend its not there.

Fog!

I came out of work yesterday morning and there it was: dripping and damp. Yuck! I grew up in places where fog represents cold and bone chilling damp, fogged up visors and all the hassle of no visibility, wet roads and numb fingers. I was ready to wail all the way home.

But you know what? Key West holds up its end of the deal. Fog in 70 degrees is no big deal true enough, but my visor got mucked up, moisture inside and out, and my glasses got damp too, but this was more like a nice damp sauna, not an ice cave. And Key West looked different.

I am not a great fan of the gray tendrils, the soft focus stuff because I like the primary colors of bright tropical sunshine...but even the boring modern parts of Key West, the bits that matter to locals, look somehow more gentle under the influence of moisture suspended in air.

A cab driver washing his ride in the fog, on Stock Island. I was getting gas, around $2:75 a gallon. Demand destruction is doing odd things to the price of oil, at least temporarily.

Then I was home and looking for my snoring dog. Blimp Road I said, I want to check out the fog on the water. We drove off for Cheyenne's morning walk. The houseboat planted off the launch ramp wasn't going anywhere. The islands usually seen on the horizon were long gone into the pea-souper.

In an effort to create destinations worth visiting I have decided to try geocaching as mentioned by the Fairbanks Blog, my inspiration. After daylight resumed and I could blunder through mangroves I could actually see, I found it, though I was half eaten by no see 'ums. All in a days nerdy hunt. No caches were hurt in this safari, though I was scratching my arms there for a few minutes. I am lucky in that insect bites don't do that much harm to me. I itch a little but that's soon forgotten and I get no welts, but I did get the geocache!

Yea, fog. We get that once a year in the Keys...no problem!

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Winter Sunbathing

Ah Yes, Christmas

The clock on top of Old City Hall showed five minutes before seven and the bell chimed the seven o'clock hour on Christmas morning. Confusing to a precision freak like me. My cell phone confirmed the bell was right and the hands were wrong.

Christmas is over for another year  -phew!- and we all survived the holiday. Now we prepare for New Year's Eve which in Key West is an opportunity to drink - no, really - and turn Duval Street into one long party zone. I work, naturally and I have yet to see Sushi drop in her show at the Bourbon, or the Conch shell at Sloppy Joe's of Evalena Worthington at her bar Schooner Wharf. So many midnights to mark, yet so much 911 dispatching to do.

The decorations are still up, and this is about as close to icicles as I want to get thanks, so we get to enjoy the festive decorations a while longer. More than that we have to now keep our Christmas promises to be nice to each other and all that sentimental stuff.

Sentiment is all well and good but coming to work last night on a cool breezy winter evening and looking for hot Cuban coffee to warm the cockles of my heart I found Sandy's was closed. The 24 hour coffee shop, the only one in town, was closed. They do this to me every year and every year I forget. I had reason to speak with a Sheriff's deputy at the jail and I mention Sandy's was closed and he lamented moodily with me about this crisis of caffeine. Well: I guess the Christmas spirit didn't last long, not for shift workers.

A shop inducing customers to buy had what I thought was a slightly incongruous display of Christmas yule themed decorations alongside summer t-shirts on display. People in Key West  don't usually own or wear parkas, snow boots or astronaut style mittens. 

More icicles:

Cheyenne found a tray of cat food for the stray cats lurking downtown. She marched in on a gaggle of chickens having Christmas breakfast and I let her snag a bit then dragged her off up the street. Actually she had had breakfast at home and soggy cat food was a token of her hunting prowess and not exactly desirable prey, so she came willingly. Some hungry creature would appreciate the food more than she did.

Note to self: remind my wife we need to see this. One of the best parts of winter in Key West is live theater and as long a sit isn't goofy musicals in drag I love to go. I've seen some really great dramatic productions here and at the Red Barn and I always look forward to more. Comedy works too, I'm just not able to stay awake through thinly veiled plot excuses for song and dance. . 

Mallory Square with flags half raised, presumably in honor of the recent law enforcement dead in Florida. A brisk cold north  wind was raking the square at 7:30 and we were alone except for another dog walker crossing our path briefly.

I have less than brilliant memories of cold nights and cold mornings on my boat at anchor out there. Heating a boat at anchor consumes massive amounts of energy and frequently, in a relatively mild climate like this one, hot tea and a blanket replaces central heat. There is a commonly touted solution among boaters of heating a  clay flowerpot on the stove top to radiate heat. I tried that and thought it was a waste of time and propane gas. If you leave the stove burning you end up gassing yourself to death. I definitely went the tea-and-blanket route on cold southern mornings at anchor. I wished them luck and turned back to Duval Street.

Some days you see the big picture and then turn your back and see the little picture, like grass growing on the skyline of a brick building at Mallory Square. When I realized it was El Meson de Pepe, it got me thinking about the end of the Cuban embargo which seems to be in sight at last, despite the last old timer hold outs scattered across south Florida with their political lackeys.

I had a discussion about Cuba post embargo with a European friend who imagines, in a rather European way that Americans who love their cars will want to drive down to Stock Island and take a European style hydrofoil ferry to Mariel. I figure they would rather fly to Miami and tkae  a 30 minute flight to Havana...which is when an American friend of mine piped up pointing out the Jose Marti airport in Havana is a tin shed and the toilets are old fashioned European style holes-in-the-ground...

...not ready for prime time as she put it! Indeed I expect Cuba will have some catching up to do before Americans will feel safe visiting godless communists on their island. I hold out hope trade will require truck bearing ferries between here and there,  high speed ferries with room for private vehicles. 

Meanwhile change keeps moving forward and Red Fish Blue Fish has gone (no loss) and something new will appear on Front Street no doubt.

The Bull was looking solid and festive, not that Cheyenne cared as she looked for something to eat.

I didn't care either. I had pancakes and mimosas at home for Christmas breakfast (not everything about this holiday needs to be abolished) followed by bed, sleep and work. Back to The Usual.

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Keys Christmas Card

How could I not love Christmas in the Keys? Lying on the deck in shirtsleeves scratching Cheyenne's tummy, looking up at a cloudless sky?

Happy Christmas to you all.

For The Rest Of Us

I am one of those people who grew up in Christmas filled with tension. So when my wife told me she was Jewish I counted that as a plus. Knishes I learned about later and count them as a bonus for marrying a Jew, but Christmas is a holiday viewed from afar for me. That Christmas can be celebrated on palms and look absurd is a plus, so I there's more to like about Christmas in Key West.

My holidays I count Thanksgiving and Independence Day at the top of the list. The problem with Christmas is the expectations gap - it's a consumer holiday and if you fall short in consumption you feel like you are letting your family down with all the negative consequences. Christmas freaks me out.

Of course with my literal mindset I find it impossible to reconcile reality with myth. I slept through the Greek mythology classes, and I'm guessing most Americans did too as my wife expressed astonishment when she found out I knew the story of Prometheus and fire. But Christmas is not a discussion of facts about the Roman Census and history. It's a winter holiday (holy day).

It's the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere so thinking of antipodeans enjoying an Australian beach on Christmas Day sounds crazy, so everyone yields to the King Wenceslaus image of cold and snow, Yule logs and all those pagan myths jumbled into the Nativity story in ways that make my autistic mind scream in confusion. Then I see everyone being stressed out at the happiest time of the year...

So what is Christmas? The way I figure it Christmas is whatever you want it to be. For me it's festive lights, friends round for dinner, a moment of no demands and no expectations.

The city looks prettier than usual and the wreaths on Truman, the lights here at Key West Bight they are all part if it. Good will would be nice but it seems in short supply when it's local equivalent -money - is scarce too. That's where the stress comes in.

I like a nice solid Christmas made up of absences: absence of gifts, absence of disagreements, absence of those people described so nicely in the Desiderata of our youth as "vexatious to the spirit." That's my Christmas and I wish you the same, in abundance.

I guess all that makes me a Festivus kind of guy. Happy Festivus everyone!

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