After The Storm

A strange week of weather these past few days. Winds blowing from the wrong direction, west not east, north not south, bringing cooler air and heavy rain. 

Key West looked bedraggled if you could see past the bright splashes of color:

Puddles breed mosquitoes and being in the back country after heavy rain is an invitation to be eaten alive.

A briskly walking man brought a splash of color to a gray  morning.

The tree commission in Key West is a lightning rod of disaffection . Arguments rage in the newspaper over decisions made to cut down trees with both sides sounding a  warning of imminent disaster should they lose the debate over the next tree to be offered up for removal. This one, from Wong Song Alley, lost:

A  scooter with one mirror coming and one going, clearly a well-loved and well-tended machine:

Rain accumulated at Higgs Park:

I posted this picture on Facebook  wondering why this dog walker thought she was exempt from the stricture imposed by the sign:

The bocce courts were full of water too; they put me in mind of chicken swimming pools.

Free range chickens (and roosters) seem to be multiplying. I am not a great fan of these noisy messy birds but they are a tourist attraction.

The newspaper reported five inches of rain and major downtown flooding, as usual. No word of massive flooding on North Roosevelkt Bouelvard so I have high hopes the reconstruction did its job.

As an aside the paper also reports there is more alcohol consumed in Monroe County than in any of Florida's 67 counties. Big news, that, and I hope they spent a lot of money figuring that out.

Wet At Last

Heavy clouds, dark skies, sudden cool winds blasting down the street: it all adds up to summer.

In winter, rain comes rarely and lightly, usually with a  cold front but in summer its heavy and prolonged and I like it. I waited for the rain to pass, the sun came out and the combination made for a nice ride. 

By the time the streets had dried it was hot and muggy again. My kind of weather. California can keep it's drought, thanks.

A reminder: the Travel and Safety podcasts are up and easily accessible these days on Stitcher or iTunes at travelandsafety.com/ Thanks for listening!

Drinks In Key West

Downtown Key West is safe again for a while until schools get out and there is parking available with no lines in restaurants and the simple pleasure of an ice cream at dusk without elbows poking as you wait in an interminable line of people not used to being offered tropical fruit ice creams- cause for indecision. My wife is part of a cabal of teachers who miss Michael Robinson's skills in the administration at the School District but he is enjoying retirement. Much of his enjoyment in Key West he explained in my interview with him ((LINK) and the rest of his pleasure is on display at the piano in the Gardens Hotel on Angela Street.

It's an interesting venue, not only because they offer wine by the glass in a self pouring bar but also because you get the visitor's eye  view of life in Key West. I must say it does look quite decadent doesn't  it? 

The  wine bar concept is really quite smart, with a self service dispenser offering a quarter glass, a half glass or a full glass of wine from a  machine (I forgot to photograph!) that keeps the air out and allows partial pours without spoiling the contents. The hotel sells cards which you charge from your credit card and with glass in hand you help  yourself where and when you want.  This allows you to taste a variety of wines with a very small commitment. I think its brilliant.

My wife likes sushi, which fact is a burden for me as I am indifferent to the whole concept of paying large sums of money for raw fish. It's not that I don't like sashimi, its more that I don't like paying a lot for it. I suppose its petit bourgeois of me and a terrible thing but there it is. However in the spirit of compromise I figured my long suffering wife deserved Japanese to close her work week and she proposed we eat cooked food. Compromise indeed.  

People that know say Ambrosia is the best of its kind in Key West and it is quite charming as far as modern airy decor goes. The food is beautiful and of course it is nicely done. We selected appetizers and when you get duck presented like this all will be well:

For pudding we decamped to Flamingo Crossing and I realized as she chose something to share that I have fallen hard for that restaurant habit that Key West  seems to require of people. You go to one place and eat your favorite dish and never vary your choice and repetition becomes a way of life. I need to figure that there is quite possibly ice cream as good elsewhere and I should hunt it down. But I like my tropical fruit flavors...so I keep coming back.

The thing is, Flamingo Crossing at Virginia Street on Duval has easy parking if you have a car and more importantly for those of us who don't, is the view. I like sitting up on the porch looking at the passersby. It makes the ice cream taste better.

Then the ride up Duval in the  twilight. My wife riding pillion had not previously seen the transformation of Fast Buck Freddie's a particular local department store into one more national drugstore, bright, white and bland. Its what makes Key West special.  

The Tropic is the other movie theater in Key West, the one where real food and decent snacks are offered alongside beer and wine in the lobby, the theater where movies can have subtitles and where summer means fewer annoying old snowbirds explicating the plot to each at the tops of their voices. Of course  summer is the time when less money comes in...can't have it both ways. 

And then home to herself. Sleeping.

I ponder sometimes the value of living in the suburbs half an hour out of town when so many people prefer living within a few blocks of where they like to go for an evening out. It remains for me a question that is hard to resolve definitively but I like the peace and quiet and easy access to the water of suburban life. I don't mind the commute but sometimes the prospect of having to drive to town for entertainment kills the project, especially if I have to plan to go back for work later. Lots of people don't want to drive 20 miles for a  dinner party so that can create a one way friendship. But waking to a silent neighborhood, no fear of petty theft from the yard, my boat in the canal at my dock, and all the off street parking I need for half the rent of a similar homes in the city...it all adds up to my preference. And my wife's too apparently which slightly surprises me.

Cheyenne

Cheyenne hasn't been in many posts lately. Time to remedy that. Out walking, at home, I'm always looking round for my shadow. I think sometimes I annoy her with too much fussing. 

 It's summer so Cheyenne goes looking for water to cool off in. Mud will do.

She has two perfectly comfortable beds located strategically around the house, but she usually prefers the tile floor or at best the carpet. I suspect her life before her stint at the pound got her used to discomfort. I really need to stop fussing over her. 

Checking Key West

I went to the Red Garter once and I wondered what the fuss is about. Sad eyed Eastern European women walking around an improbably decorated room pretending to find the patrons fascinating. I stood there with some grossly overpriced drink wondering where they found so much blackness to decorate a room. They've hung a sign on the front door which seems less than likely to work

One isn't allowed to take pictures to preserve the sensibilities of the bourgeoisie but Google is your friend in these difficult circumstances once again. Gay Paree at the turn of the century it ain't but it's the best that 21st century straight Key West can manage. Drop off your husband here, have no fear and go shopping. I like to think the darker recesses of the 801 further up Duval show gay men a better time but I'm not going to hunt for images of that glory hole on the Web.

I am certified to dive but I gave up diving as a bad job owing to all the paraphernalia required and in the end I'd rather go ride a motorcycle and risk dismemberment than go floundering around underwater and risk blowing up a lung. But having spotted this delicious looking dive tank I may have to reverse course. Do people really dive with pink tanks? Great stuff., I'm jealous.

I am not looking forward to the next year and a half of planned road reconstruction between Big Coppitt (Mile Marker Ten) and Key Haven (Mile Marker Five) when the state is planning to repave the four lane highway. Apparently the engineers came to Key West to plan the two-and-a-half-year wreckage that was the reconstruction of North Roosevelt and when they drove the four lane highway they were appalled by what they found. It is a nightmare of pot holes and torn asphalt, worthy of a forgotten African highway in the early stages of self destruction. So I'm glad it will get rebuilt but it means more road works for ever and ever Amen. The Boulevard work seems to have been brilliant mind, with properly timed traffic lights and no flooding yet in the mild rains we have had so far. I have high hopes for the next round of work and look forward to a billiard table smooth highway out of Key West. Next year.

Meanwhile downtown Key West has been torn up for much of the winter for sewer work or some other thing. I have to say it was bizarre seeing the streets in the busiest part of town at the busiest time of year closed off for construction work and now the city is not completely saturated with people the machinery has moved out of Duval and Eaton and Simonton Streets. Judging by the picture above it would seem it is now Greene Street about to be torn up.

The sign above amply expresses the lack of giving a toss that exemplifies the mass tourist economy. I know that running a business costs money but a lick of paint would work wonders for a lot of the tatty smudged and grody downtown businesses. And the duct tape (or more accurately boat tape) to "clarify" the sign just looks like shit. I mean if you are going to overcharge people couldn't you at least do it with style and grace?

So I close with a few early morning street scenes, the time I like best in Old Town. The streets are dirty because the cleaning crews haven't got here yet and drinking from nasty plastic cups and throwing them in the street is the kind of tourism our civic leaders are eager to promote. But if you look beyond the signs of the night's excess the city retains its small town charm, its tropical warmth and bright colors and its variegated roof lines.

Some people can already be heard moaning about the summer heat that can be felt during the day. I love it. I sleep in air conditioning but I have shady areas outside my house to sit with my dog and read ( I read she watches the world go by) and I enjoy the lassitude of being in the heat without the need for doing.Dry heat makes my skin itch and renders my hair like straw but summer in the Keys is an invitation to enjoy the shade, go swimming and to go for moonlit walks with your dog. I hope the snowbirds never figure out how lovely Key West is in the summer. I've been in Kansas in July and I cannot imagine the attraction. July in the mountains....well that's different.

I like summer in Key West and if I can find the time to blast up to New England this summer once again for a few weeks away I wouldn't mind. Luckily summer lasts easily into October here and swimming season usually ends near November with the second real cold front. I have a busy summer ahead so I may have to stay close to work in Key West but that will be okay too.

Doug Bennett of blogging fame enjoys his retirement in Key West, always a cheery greeting for passersby from his Caroline Street home. Check him out when you stroll by.

Check out the Travel and Safety podcasts this WEEK and listen to Brady Steffl tell tall tales from his motorcycle saddle. Thanks for listening.

Posted with Blogsy

Key West Bight

In an effort to put lipstick on a pig the city has paid a sum of money for a study and decided to rename the Bight as the Historic Seaport and bugger me if it doesn't have it's own webpage! Historic Seaport. And look what I found on their website, a depiction of Key West as a working port, a place where rough people gathered and some people made money.

Not all boats in the Bight are sleek or home to the wealthy. Western Union, the former cable laying ship is now floating after a massive refit in 2011, Key West Diary 2011 operated by a local non profit after Historic Tours abruptly decided to get rid of the boat and unceremoniously had the crew walk the plank, as it were.

I am quite surprised how much the boat has deteriorated since 2011 and now it needs more work and thus more money and is currently out of service. This may be a losing proposition.

The Bight these days looks less historic but it bustles with tourist traffic nonetheless. Hemingway wrote about the Bight and the more or less unhappy people living on boats there in 1937 but those passages from To Have or To Have Not are a bit long to excerpt here. His description of a nighttime bicycle ride home is quite evocative from that period. And all one sentence too:

 HE DID NOT take the bicycle but walked down the street. The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grits and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, interbreeding and the comforts of religion; the open doored, lighted Cuban bolito houses, shacks whose only romance was their names; The Red House, Chicha’s; the pressed stone church; its steeples sharp, ugly triangles against the moonlight; the big grounds and the long, black-domed bulk of the convent, handsome in the moonlight; a filling station and a sandwich place, bright-lighted beside a vacant lot where a miniature golf course had been taken out; past the brightly lit main street with the three drug stores, the music store, the five Jew stores, three poolrooms, two barbershops, five beer joints, three ice cream parlors, the five poor and the one good restaurant, two magazine and paper places, four second-hand joints (one of which made keys), a photographer’s, an office building with four dentists’ offices upstairs, the big dime store, a hotel on the corner with taxis opposite; and across, behind the hotel, to the street that led to jungle town, the big unpainted frame house with lights and the girls in the doorway, the mechanical piano going, and a sailor sitting in the street; and then on back,past the back of the brick courthouse with its clock luminous at half-past ten, past the whitewashed jail building shining in the moonlight, to the embowered entrance of the Lilac Time where motor cars filled the alley. 

Nowadays its  a cruise ship towering over this little town, the smoke stack visible right across town if you have a tall enough vantage point. The romance isn't quite the same, mass tourism versus Depression era poverty.