Dangerous Hitchhiker

Meet Samson Ramos  a bass player heard around Key West as part of a group he calls Cool Breeze.  

I met him at about two in the morning in the middle of a massive thunderstorm about half a mile out of Stock Island. It was raining cats and dogs so I had decided it was wet enough to justify driving the car to work for my overtime shift. I figured I would suffer unduly if I got a wet collar or wet socks on the ride in and had to sit for eight hours in damp clothes...anyway that was why I was on Highway One in the Fusion and not on the motorcycle in the rain. And which is why I met Samson. 

 All I saw was a figure in white hauling a huge black guitar on the shoulder so I stopped and he piled in full of gratitude and off we went. He was going to Sarasota (!) for a gig that night and his Key West ride had let him down, no surprise there I suppose. It seemed to me, as rain lashed the car that a ride to Cudjoe wasn't much good so I figured I'd take him to Big Pine but pretty soon I realized I had to get him across the Seven Mile Bridge. Big Pine at 2:30 in the morning has nothing to offer a hitch hiker and in Marathon he had a chance of getting to Florida City to make his back up connection to Sarasota. So off we went.

 It was a hell of a ride in the pouring rain, Samson filling the time with his stories of life on the road, making a living with a guitar, raising children, and grandchildren and chasing the gigs wherever they are, across the US or Europe. 

Yeah man he said, as we prepared to part ways at the Tom Thumb in Marathon shortly after three in the morning. I'm going to be back at Schooner Wharf in a few days, and then the Sunset Grille in Marathon and on and on. I plan to meet up again with him in the New Year.  

The ride home was an empty half hour by comparison, I listened to the BBC droning on the radio and watched lightning light up the western sky over the Seven Mile Bridge making night as day. 

A gypsy, a troubadour, a dangerous independent minded man doing his thing and making the world better one song at a time. No wonder they say picking up hitch hikers is dangerous: they are full of subversive ideas.

Harbor Walk

A pretty little cottage, relatively recently built in the Key West style:

I have no botanical knowledge but I did like the look of these trumpets enjoying the recent rains:

The Ferry terminal built to handle traffic to Fort Myers and Miami ( which latter didn't work) may also be pressed into service to get people too and from Havana. There have been noises about starting Ferry Service from Marathon and I guess Key West can't have that so now the competition is on. The biggest hurdle it turns out is accommodating customs and immigration services. Apparently they need offices in the million dollar range before Ferry service can even be contemplated which I find rather odd as cruise ships show up here from abroad with thousands of passengers and the customs folks walk down the dock to handle the flow on the ships. But there we are, and one day we can only hope things will change. I am hoping for vehicle transport as well so I can go for weekend rides in the Sierra Maestra. That would transform life in these flat islands.. 

A huge storm rolled into the keys last week out of the west bringing honking winds and slashing drenching rain. It was so bad I actually drove the car to work one night.

Beautification in progress all around Caroline Street. New paving landscaping and striping:

And Cheyenne goes and finds a corner of old Key West tucked away out of tourist sight:

She doesn't walk as much anymore but she likes a nice lie down to watch the world go by.

Sash Mill Cinema

I have been debating dropping my disc account at Netflix, because my wife has an Amazon Prime account so we get Amazon's free TV and movie service in addition to streaming Netflix. But I am having trouble dumping the compact disc delivery service as they have tons of stuff there and old movies are my pleasure at the moment. Afternoons when my wife is at work I exercise in front of the screen as I don't enjoy exercise and watching Bogart or Peck or Heston strutting about makes the medicine of weights and  stuff go down much more easily. I learned to enjoy old movies in my young adulthood in Santa Cruz California.

The Nickelodeon Theater was the mainstay of the University crowd when I lived there in the 80s and today the independent theater has grown to three outlets across Santa Cruz County. I was moved to reminisce about my young movie habits when I learned that "The Nick" has been sold to a southern California chain which promises to change nothing. 45 years of local ownership was a long run...And in those days the Nick as it was known had bought another little theater called the Sash Mill. I have hunted everywhere for a picture of the theater but I have none and neither does the Web apparently. I think the year of it's closure came well before the Internet so all I have left of the Sash Mill is memories. Nowadays it's a bunch of shops. Lots of University towns around the US had these repertory theaters changing films every couple of days, re-playing lots of them as we were barely learning about video tapes in those days which seemed miraculous but it took a while for Truffaut and Fellini to find their way into video stores. Besides we valued the full screen dark theater experience. It was at the Sash Mill I got my movie education and it was glorious.

The Sash Mill was as eclectic as its audience, though by the time I got there in 1982, enthralled by the silver screen, things had settled down a bit more than Marshall Motz remembers in the memoir titled The Cosmic Lady Was Right I had learned to enjoy movies at my English boarding school which had weekly showings of alternative movies (some slight nudity!) and black and white films too, but in Santa Cruz I got to see them all, as much as I wanted. My buddy Bill got me in for free often times, and sometimes as he ran the Sash Mill we would take beer and pizza and give ourselves late night shows watching films with just the two of us in the auditorium, or perhaps a couple of other friends. I got to see all the classics, Thin Man, Katherine Hepburn, Carey Grant, comedies, adventures, thrillers and film noire. It was an education.

Winters in Northern California I hated. And I still do, with lots of rain and temperatures down to the forties or worse. Lots of people thought I was crazy as they had emigrated from the Upper Mid West where winters meant snow and darkness for months on end. I found this picture of The Nick on a wet winter's night on the Web, and seeing the shiny slick sidewalk reminds me of those frigid nights taking refuge from the confines of my boat cabin where I lived by watching a  movie, or two.

Eventually Bill got me a job as a janitor and suddenly all the movie houses of Santa Cruz county were available to me for free. I had no TV on my boat, nor did I want it but now I could see anything anywhere anytime and I did. It was a great time, and i didn't limit myself to movies like Erendira, a gloomy Spanish film about loneliness and despair as only Garcia Marquez could write it. I cleaned the Nickelodeon which had four screening theaters, but my first love was the Sash Mill where the old movies went to be seen and enhjoyed by a younger generation.

I moved up in the world of theater janitoring and became a relief projectionist though I did not get into the union before running projectors became part time work thanks to automation. I found a segment of a book Aphrodite in Jeans which describes in some detail how to operate the old fashioned projector booths, a job I graduated to as relief projectionist at the independent Capitola Theater a few miles up the coast. I went through the same shenanigans switching projectors and so forth with the same satisfaction. Here's a picture of me in the mid 80's showing probably the Jewel of the Nile which came out in 1985 and which I saw half a hundred times:

I enjoyed the Capitola Theater where the booth was lined with steel to prevent the original nitrite films in the 1930s from burning down the theater when they frequently caught fire. The booth had a door onto the flat roof and in between 18 minute reel changes I could go out and stand on the roof and look at the fog descending on the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean and I could hear the crash of the surf on the beach, even over the traffic and party sounds of the small seaside town. But it wasn't the Sash Mill where I learned about movies. and which I miss to this day as I exercise and watch my Netflix discs, for which I am grateful -but they aren't the same. 

Key West Mobility

Wandering around downtown I was thinking about how people get around in Key West. Years ago I was getting on my scooter on Duval Street and some  loud person was telling out of town friends that all you need to get around in Key West is a scooter. Which strictly speaking is not true if you have any desire to go anywhere out of town...but there are lots of them parked everywhere and for free, so they are a good deal.

There are some people who pack their life onto a bicycle or onto a trailer and tow it with a bicycle. Bicycles are popular too of course on a flat island and as you can see pretty much ignore the traffic rules as often as they can.

There are bike racks all over the place and they are often filled with bicycles that to all intents and purposes appear abandoned, rusty, flat  tires, missing seats and stuff like that. And some sport fancy luggage racks, fresh from the winery:

I noticed fancy new street painting in front of the Half Shell Raw bar. Cheyenne seemed intent on inspecting it but that's just how she walks:

The other way to get around, nit surprisingly is by dinghy. For people who live across the water from Key West the dinghy docks at Key West Bight near Turtle Kraals are indispensable. They pay a small fee by the day week or month and have a relatively safe place to leave their boats:

Some people park them behind the mother ship:

Re-cycling at Key West Bight, a play on words when taking pictures of cycles...

Another Key West recycler, not as efficient as Cheyenne but still:

Like I said the bike racks get pretty disheveled in daily use:

Don't do what locals do, is what I keep telling visitors, as you never know what privileges they have that you don't. Case in point:

And if all else fails walk around key West and when at Publix you can get one of these oddities as you walk round the grocery store:

Frankly I think walking is one of the best ways to get around town as you will see more and be truly free of traffic constraints. 

Long Key State Park

First posted in April 2009 still worth a visit! And I drive by it quite frequently and don't take/have the time to stop! Silly me.

Were I to ask someone to name three state parks in the Florida Keys, I have an idea the answer might be, Bahia Honda, John Pennekamp (especially if they dive) and most likely Fort Zachary Taylor if they frequent Key West. I use the annual State Parks Pass to explore as many of the parks as often as I can as it allows free access. It costs something like $85 per calendar year for the pass while a day ticket for one person is $3.50 at the park entrance or $6 for a car. Ironically two people on two motorcycles thus cost more than four in a car!The Monroe County stamp on the pass is applied by parks in the county to allow free entry to the parks in the Keys because that stamp on the pass costs five extra dollars. If you have a parks card without the stamp you pay 50 cents to get into Monroe County parks. Aren't we special in the Fabulously Expensive Florida Keys!Long Key State Park is at or around Mile marker 67 just south of the City of Layton (see my essay of January 17th 2008, http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/search?q=layton), and it is in the pantheon of second class State Parks in the Keys just because they tend to be less well known. I like it a lot and on my first visit to the Keys in 1981 I stayed at a campsite on the beach, such as it is and used it as my base for exploring further. Probably one reason why Long Key suffers second class status is because it doesn't have a beach though it has a massively extended waterfront for a park a thousand acres in size.The park is long and thin like it's namesake key wedged between the Straits of Florida and the Overseas Highway. The park promotes birds as one its major attractions including "herons, egrets, willets, sandpipers, plovers, terns, and seagulls," which should be enough for anybody. Additionally there is canoeing on the Long Key Lake in the middle of the park and there is camping in the slice of parkland alongside the Overseas Highway next to the water:

The day use area has a small slice of sandy beach for people riding motorcycles or with picnics:Which was where I spotted a piece of artwork as I ate a granola bar and emptied a thermos of tea for lunch:For some people standing at the water's edge and admiring the view is an entirely satisfactory activity:For others the way to pass an afternoon is to stand thigh deep in salt water water to try to catch fish. This dude was quite a ways out proving that my little pocket camera has quite decent reach with the built-in telephoto, and also that the water shelves very gently along these islands:Some people enjoy cycling the roads inside the park, a way to enjoy pedaling and not get run down on the highway:For myself the plan was to take a walk as I haven't been out in the woods for a while, so I headed down the main road......to the boardwalk at the head of the main trail which heads towards the beach:I found a chair parked rather mysteriously in the shade as though someone enjoyed taking in nature's glories in comfort, so much so they dragged their own chair to that very spot:Along the way our thoughtful Park service puts up little notices describing flora, fauna and sights to left and right:There was also a sturdy observation platform built above the mangroves but the view was I have say, somewhat less than enthralling:My goal was the main circular trail through the back of the park on something they call the Golden Orb Trail which is named for a spider and is about a mile and a half long. The helpful signs suggest a leisurely hour long walk and even though I was wearing motorcycle boots and long pants I covered it in a little less than that.
The second half of the trail after I crossed the plank bridge shown above, is described as a hammock environment, which in South Florida means an area of raised dry land above the water level such that trees can grow in real dirt. Only thing was, this was the first sandy hammock I had seen. It reminded me of chaparral seen in western states:And I was not entirely alone. I met another walker, rather more suitably dressed than I, and we played trail leap frog, exchanging remarks while not willing to impinge on each other's privacy too much:She was a visitor to Florida and spent more time than I on the useful little signs along the way, though we exchanged a few comments as we passed each other.Closing in on the parking lot, where the Bonneville was parked in the shade, it being that warm, the trail started to get the mulching treatment a sit passed trough buttonwoods that look more like a "proper"hammock to my untutored eye.

Thence home, leaving unexplored the canoe launch and the Layton Trail, across the Overseas highway. The good thing about a parks pass is that it encourages return visits.