Key West Reality Check

We raised our glasses to say goodbye to a friend and I proposed the first toast: "To quitters," I joked, and it's a good joke because we all understood what I meant as we toasted her departure for greener pastures Up North. There was lots of laughter and some of it bittersweet.

One of the things you have to get used to if you live in places like the Keys and here perhaps in particular, is that everyone has an escape plan. Unless you were born here with family, or unless you have private wealth, your life in the Keys relies on the job. The job goes and so do you. and that's because there aren't  a plethora of life sustaining jobs around here. If you got one of the good ones you're lucky, as long as you keep it. So people come and go, sometimes thanks to the stress of living here sometimes because  family needs you (think elderly parents) sometimes because you blew it at work and you don't fancy taking up a career as a bar back.

On the subject of going away I got a story about packing up books and papers and shipping them Up North prior to leaving town. The Quitter (I'll call her that as she has now quit the Keys) was a teacher with many items suitable for a media rate which is very inexpensive but she said her heart sank when she went to the Pot Office to ship the boxes out. She got the difficult clerks and she knows them by name. Impossible they said, the boxes are too big. No the Quitter countered pointing out they were, all three of them well under 70 pounds. I don't want to deal with them the clerk said brazenly. They may not be media. I didn't tape them up the Quitter responded so you can check them. Humph the clerk said and started poking around displacing files and scattering papers. See?! she said triumphantly, this isn't media, its letters. No it's not the Quitter riposted, well versed in island etiquette for getting your way. I'm a teacher and I have files of papers not letters. Well the box is too big the clerk said. You need a smaller box. I don't care the Quitter said, still intent on quitting these baffling islands. You need tape the clerk said as she called Brian over to haul the boxes to the back, losing with bad grace. Can I have some tape the Quitter asked sweetly. Can't have none but I can sell you some. The Quitter was ready to pay for the tape knowing she had won as Brian approached noisily dragging a dolly over some other customers with slow reactions. And so the boxes got loaded, by the Quitter and her friend as Brian stood by and critiqued their style. 

I have heard enough horror stories about the main post office I never go there. I do my mail in Summerland Key which is a nice post office and I do my drivers license and vehicle tags in Big Pine where the clerks come from Marathon Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday, and are also very nice.

One of my colleagues got a new room mate recently and she was happy. The old room mate left under a bit of a cloud and the replacement was an older woman (less than 40! but I work with youngsters) who was brought to Key West to manage a branch of a chain store franchise. It looked good for a bit but then the stories started appearing at work. My colleague would come to work looking haunted. My roommate was waiting for me when I got home and wanted to hang out and chat she said. My roommate did my laundry and commented on my underwear. I feel like I'm living with my mother. I did not see a good outcome and i was worried she might give up and go back to her family in Fort Lauderdale but I discovered my colleague is made of sterner stuff. It was not enough that her roommate kept running out of money and needed my 26 year old colleague to help her make ends meet each month, a constant round of begging and paying back, the situation spun out of control when the roommate announced she was enjoying a man she had met a week earlier. Loneliness apparently was to be banished in the arms of a stranger. In the ordinary course of things my colleague would have been delighted to be relieved of this burden to her mental well being but that was not all. In defiance of all logic the roommate shared their house key with this strange man of unknown abode and no last name to allow him to come and go as he pleased in my colleague's house. 

The last I heard they are headed for a break up and my colleague's boyfriend, fearing for her safety has formally invited her to live with him. Not all stories have bad endings.

I congratulated him when another of my colleagues made good use of his inheritance and bought an apartment in New Town. He lives on the top floor and has a view, he has two bedrooms two bathrooms working plumbing and proper air conditioning and his mortgage is entirely manageable. It is you would imagine a perfect situation in Key West. It may seem unlikely but modern conveniences are not always available even at premium prices in the key West housing market. Even this paradise has it's serpent. Apparently across the hall there lives a neighbor and my colleague who is a mild mannered dispatcher in middle age was enjoying his television at home one evening. Thumping on his door produced the neighbor from across the street, a man of impressive proportions who decided he had taken a dislike to my colleague, the new arrival. Threats were uttered I am told reliably and the neighbor is known to be armed and not afraid to parade his weaponry. My colleague is thinking seriously about buying headphones to watch TV and visitors to his apartment are warned about The Man Across The Hall. Other than that, by Key West standards its not bad living. My colleague likes to cook and he has a full kitchen too in his home. Not everyone can boast that in Key West!

My right hand man at work, the guy who has shared my shift for years is a Conch. He grew up in a family well connected in the city and I have always found him to be well informed rock solid reliable and one of the nicest people you could hope to meet, older or younger than his 30 years. He lives in an apartment that he gets at a cheap family rate and I keep hoping that will encourage him to stay in town and not spread his Conch wings to see the world. However his situation is weird too even though he too has a proper apartment with fully functioning facilities... His neighbor has appointed herself block captain and spends much of her abundant free time yelling at people parking "illegally" at people across the street she suspects are peddling narcotics and at anyone who is ready to pick a fight. She like everyone in the  world loves my sweet young colleague even though she is his principal impediment to getting a  good day's sleep before he comes in to work overnight...That and the fact the walls are thin and his neighbor has a noisy and active sex life. Like I said, I hope he hangs in because I really like working with him.

Key West is a great place to work if you have one those decent jobs that by itself pays your way as I have. It's a  great place to live and work if you are allergic to snow, as I am. It is a great place to live if you have a relationship already functioning and don't come here in search of a mate, so far so good. But in the end a good living situation is also critical and how you define that is up to you. Rusty has won the lottery in that department but not every working class resident of Key West is that lucky. I know too because its a rare day that goes by that we don't get a call from some roommate situation, some eviction situation, that needs police intervention. Fining a good place and keeping a good place with all the temptations to squander money is no easy thing. Apparently. But for every Quitter heading Up North there is one Hopeful coming Down South. If you are one, don't say you were never warned.

Aedes Aegypti In The Keys

Just another great day starting out in the Keys looking out from Boca Chica Beach.

I get assaulted by mosquitoes here and  there are more of them per cubic inch than anywhere else. I like this beach but without repellent it's hopeless. I've even come out here in the middle of the night and been swarmed like it was a horror movie. This is a panorama of the beach:

The Zika mosquito has been in the news around the state, after symptoms appeared in Miami. I had long since wondered what effect this panic inducing mosquito might have on the vast majority of the population that is not getting pregnant. Microcephaly in infants seems bad enough but I wondered why I should be worried about the little black and white mosquitoes I see everywhere every day.

It turns out the estimable Tampa Bay Times (formerly known as the St Petersburg Times) has been looking into the mosquito population and the Zika virus and it turns out that adults can get a nasty wasting disease called Guillain-Barre syndrome:

Guillain-Barre (gee-YAH-buh-RAY) syndrome is a rare disorder in which your body's immune system attacks your nerves. Weakness and tingling in your extremities are usually the first symptoms.

These sensations can quickly spread, eventually paralyzing your whole body. In its most severe form Guillain-Barre syndrome is a medical emergency. Most people with the condition must be hospitalized to receive treatment.

From the Mayo Clinic which august source of information goes on to point out there is no cure but hospitalization can be palliative and usually symptoms clear up by themselves. Unless in rare cases where it seems paralysis and death are the outcome. Very very rare they say. Nevertheless getting a prolonged agonizing flu-like illness sounds no fun at all, especially with tingling, nerve damage, paralysis and death also on the cards. And the disease can be spread through bodily fluids by asymptomatic carriers who may not know they have the virus. Great stuff isn't it?

His and mine footprints.

The Tampa Bay Times magazine, Floridian has an excellent article including a  few actual facts about Zika, mosquitoes, DNA and the inability of people to think critically: LINK HERE. It's pretty merciless when it comes to ravaging opponents of Oxitec and its plan to introduce  modified mosquitoes onto Key Haven. the wealthy isolated suburban island that wants to have nothing to do with the plan.

The more I read and the more I ponder this Zika business, which incidentally was discovered in the 1940s, the more it seems silly to me to not attempt to eradicate the mosquito pest. A 99 percent success rate in an insect as prolific as the aedes aegypti probably means the buggers will come back but no one else has anything approaching a solution to this problem.

The other thing that disturbs me, apart from Zika and its symptoms, is the growing awareness that there are changes in climate, severe weather in line with climate change predictions and still half the population of the US isn't paying attention. The half of us that is can't do much and so we watch people in Louisiana drown and California burn up and Zika travel around the world and it's business as usual, science be damned.  It is cold consolation that I have no children. 

But facts, as stubborn as they may be, seem to count for less and less as we plunge collectively into a brave new future where things go wrong on a spectacular scale and yet still manage to take us by surprise.

The article in the Floridian clearly expresses the frustration of public officials in trying to make people aware of the risks, and what they get back are half baked conspiracy theories and junk science from the public they are trying to educate.

It's funny how things have changed. It used to be that government did things to people in secret for "the common good." One thinks of medical experiments, lobotomies and vaccinations and the like that were done in the name of science behind very closed doors. Nowadays in our struggle to maintain an open culture everything is explained and discussed, and still to no effect. 96% of disease spreading mosquitoes were wiped out in the Cayman Islands by Oxitec. Too bad they can't do it here. 

The city will hold an advisory referendum in November and I don't doubt the vote will be opposed to Oxitec and a majority of commissioners say they will abide by the vote. I am loading up with repellent and hoping for the best, whether I go to Boca Chica Beach or anywhere else.

(Photo Courtesy Chelsea Jaremko)

Homes

This essay was photographed on the Fleming and Southard corridor and it was prompted by this interesting way to store a strap: 

 

The neighborhood is full of architectural gems from another era:

 

Some are restored like this classic eyebrow home with the overhanging eaves:

 

And some are simply well preserved:

 

Some homes have quite the decorative motif:

 

The former Albury House is fully equipped these days with its own historic marker. 

 

This little church puts me in mind of the whitewashed chapels fitting the Caribbean: 

For me it's the architecture for Rusty it's... I'm not exactly sure:

Scoot commute:

The other you have to look for is the weird little stickers and signs which amuse me endlessly. 

Sunrise:

 

 More gentrification. Renovation doesn't come cheap:

 

The white picket fence life:

My favorite Harley, the 1200R Sportster, here being allowed to entropy into compost: 

 

Rusty seems to be incapable of relaxing when there is even the chance of a walk! 

 

We were at my work waiting for the ride home. 

Bicycling Crisis

The comment in the Citizen's Voice had it down pat, wondering why the state is offering Key West hundreds of thousands of dollars to study the state of cycling in the Southernmost City. It's a fair point.

The good news is the money is coming from Tallahassee as a grant, the bad news is it sounds insanely goofy to spend anyone's money to study bicycling in Key West. It's pretty obvious: narrow streets, no hills, no parking, great weather, lots of tourists, no bike paths. Thus Key West has the highest accident per capita rate for cyclists throughout Florida. There, can I have two hundred thousand dollars please? 

I don't think, as far as I can recall, that there is any Class One bicycle path in the city of Key West, unless you count the sidewalk along North Roosevelt which is a raised sidewalk with pedestrians and cyclists.  Not everyone is smart enough to use it:

Something like this exists nowhere in our congested city:

There are painted bike lanes on several streets, which makes then Class 2 lanes and they squeeze bicycles between parked cars with all the dangers of opening doors, and the traffic flowing past. Seen here on Fleming Street for instance:

Key West drivers are not the most cycle friendly you will come across either. There is a reason for that if you consider how narrow the streets are, how badly visitors ride, and how easy it is for cyclists to ignore traffic rules and thus piss off people in cars stopped at lights and signs. I find cycling in Old Town a tedious business which is why I rarely bring my bike to town anymore, as shown below:

I used to try  parking at work while using a bike rack to bring my bike from home. The trouble I found is that cycling is a high risk activity and not at all serene. I prefer to ride with a  motor or to walk.

There are tons of bike racks around Old Town.

Locking a bike to a tree or a city sign is technically illegal but you'd have to leave one there a long time, or block the sidewalk badly to get busted. But people do like to ride their bikes:

Bicycles in Key West are rarely used as status symbol and you will see most machines equipped with baskets and ridden by people in street clothes...

...which I find refreshing, as opposed to the spandex weekend warrior crowd who treat bicycles as sport, and whose attitude rarely seems designed to foster good relations with lazy neighbors powered by infernal combustion.

Riding two abreast isn't smart, let's face it, but I usually attribute it to thoughtlessness, not  malice:

Some cyclists stop at lights, which is nice.

And on the back streets I grant you a bike ride can be a serene and quiet way to get around, especially on those few times left in the year when the streets aren't crowded with cars.

Riding the wrong way down a one way is not legal even on a bicycle. And riding while drunk could get you a DUI conviction as well, which is worth noting.

 And it is legal to ride on the sidewalk in Florida as long as you yield to pedestrians. 

You don't need to own, you rent for well less than ten bucks per 24-hour day:

And a bike isn't limited to two wheels:

The thing is, to create better cycling conditions you'd need to make more one way streets which seems like a rational choice given how narrow some streets are but people lose their marbles every time motor traffic is limited in any way. I'm of the opinion that things won't change and one of the easiest ways to improve safety on the streets is to make traffic lights more responsive so running red lights becomes less appealing, then figure out how to stop people playing with their phones obsessively. And that alone will cost more than two hundred grand. The more things change the more they stay the same. A rule to live by in Key West.