Restoring Key West

I took a few photographs wandering up and down and around following my dog who does not always walk in straight lines.  One of the last pictures I took of Duval Street before the lock down was a black and white photo under the colonnade in front of La Concha with  vendors looking for customers under threat of closure, which of course came to pass. And now the wheel has gone round and at least one is back to give a semblance of normal trade on a street that dealing with quite a few closed storefronts.

The thing about business closures in Key West is that they happen all the time. People come and people go and with them go their dreams, their jobs, their businesses. The damned virus has stomped on a greater number than usual I dare say but Key West is the island of dreams and hopes. So businesses come and go. I used to try to keep track of them but now I try not to act surprised when I see a new storefront. Because I am a police and fire dispatcher I like to have a mental picture of the addresses but sometimes I find myself losing track. Luckily we are fully computerized so as long as the power isn't out I have lots of tools to help!

There is always a spark I find in certain people, and I'm not one of them, that sees opportunities for business and Key West seems to fire them up more than usual. The thing is Key West is the kind of vacation town that makes the impossible seem possible. You might find Cancun delightful but setting up a business in a foreign country is only for the hardiest entrepreneur. Key West is Florida, the Sunshine State that welcomes every off beat and mainstream hopeful.

The funny part is once you've been here a while you can find yourself judging a new arrival's chances. If you look back over the years and I've been musing on this page almost daily since June 2007 you'll see I've noted that Key West seems to spit people out if they somehow don't manage to fit in. I can'rt exactly define the parameters but like the judge said in reference to pornography, I can't define it but I know it when I see it. 

I noted in reference to the closure of one business there were comments made  to the effect that the owner never made any effort to fit in and despite the eatery's apparent success no one expected it to stay. I never ate there and i doubt I shall look up any of his businesses in St Augustine next time I'm there. But some people take these things personally as though they had a stake in other people's business acumen or desire.

I have a line for prospective applicants for residence whether via a job or business which is to tell them to give up all ambition. If you're lucky and persistent you can make a go of it but the chances of you rising to the top is unlikely as not only are the best jobs and locations taken, any outsider exhibiting ambitious tendencies may not find the climate the most hospitable.

I knew a guy 15 years ago who applied to be a dispatcher and got in the training program. I really liked him as he was my age and had a similar sense of humor. When he interviewed for the job the boss at the time asked that interview question about where he wanted to be in ten years. "In your job!" he said brightly as he had life experience and had played the game in other business environments. I winced when he told me. Wrong I said, Should have told 'em you want to enjoy being a good dispatcher. Ambition is not a good thing. He looked shocked but in the end dispatching wasn't his thing and he left.

I have no idea how to run a business, nor yet how to run one without ambition, and even less how to run a business in this coronavirus mess but I have no doubt clever hopeful ambitious people will step and give it a try in the wake of the closures. My other piece of advice, worth what it costs to hear, is if you choose to live in Key West be tolerant. Don't thunder around trying to change what you don't like. It irritates your neighbors and things are the way are for reasons that may not immediately be apparent.Key West: the town of unintended unexpected consequences.  

Mallory Square

There were three or four large motorboats anchored off Key West and for some reason they like to disguise themselves as Christmas ornaments while they do it. It may not be immediately apparent  but  Rusty was not the least bit interested in the illuminations offshore and he is the arbiter of all things interesting.   

The barricades are gone, Mallory Square is wide open but this beautiful pre dawn morning was open as though for private viewing. No one was around. So we took advantage.

It occurs to me how far on the edge of reality I do live, down here. The rest of the country is caught up in the Black Lives Matter protests and  Key West had its own peaceful homage to the movement with a gentle amble through downtown. Despite all the rumor mongering online the protest in Key West was a civilized march led by law enforcement properly masked and in support of human rights and decency.  As it should be.

Key West is a complicated mix of social groups, more than black and white and to try to explain it is not easy as these subjects have so many points of view. I hated Venn diagrams when I was a child in math class but Key West is, in effect a Venn diagram of races, cultures and interests. People who have lived here a long time like to call themselves "freshwater Conchs" in a pale and unnatural imitation of people who were born here and have roots here. Conchs argue that being born in Key West makes you one but I, in my iconoclastic way prefer to think that graduating. Key West High School makes you a Conch. Thats where the connections come from and connections are what constitute life in Key West. 

Bahama Village has come under attack in Key West not from intolerance or violence but from the usual bugaboo in modern Key West: money. Gentrification is an avalanche that is overrunning many aspects of life in town and to live close by the heart of Old town is to invite people with money to turn your neighborhood into a winter playground. It's happening in Bahama Village but slowly. Goombay points toward the Bahamian roots of families black and white in the Keys. Loyalists and their slaves fled the US as the revolution took hold and set up shop in the Bahamas. After things cooled down families came to Key West maintaining connections to the Bahamas as they settled here.

Then there is the Cuban community which has its own bifurcated history. Some of the Cubans in Key West have deep roots from the 19th century a time of revolt and war in Cuba which produced its own exile community. Then there is the new wave of exiles from the Castro regime in the 20th century, though most settled with relatives in Miami. The Cuban connection gives Key West a particular  home grown culture which you could describe as ethnic in the sense that it's not Anglo American. Food art and music out of Cuba has a home in Key West quite apart from the Afro-Caribbean influences and mainland US imports that are part of modern American life here. 

Key West is by no means perfect but there are lessons the mainland could learn in terms of tolerance. Unfortunately a lot of Key West's history is ignored in the rush to get publicly drunk. though if you walk Petronia Street and happen to see Dupont Lane you now know that was the first elected black Sheriff in Key West and I dare say if not the first a rarity in the reconstructed South. Annual remembrances for dead law enforcement always pay respect to a Sheriff's deputy killed breaking up a drunken brawl in 1901 Key West. Deputy Frank Adams was also as it happens African American.

CNN ran a story about an all white town that gathered to join the Black Lives Matter protests by marking them in their town, as though somehow with Americans should not be expected to step out like that. I guess I am with those who hope that this is a turning point long sought that may set the notion of equality under the law in stone for once, which would be nice.  Maybe small town America can step up and teach the big cities that tolerance is an everyday struggle for some people and big bursts of protest must be followed by long months and years of chipping away at expectations.

Key West is a frontier town on the ocean, a place where foreigners come and go and wealth has accumulated through centuries of trade with very exotic places. It's a truth about this town, the across the sea connection, that most visitors can't seem to imagine even as they take a sunset sail and play at piracy for an hour or two. The most notable feature about piracy equally often ignored is that pirate chiefs were elected and if found wanting were voted out of office just as easily. Strategic decisions were voted upon and treasure was shared among the crew. Just as there were black cowboys whitewashed by Hollywood there were black pirates living equal and democratically controlled lives long before slavery was abolished among the respectable people ashore. 

Simple prejudice is hard to sustain in a town with roots all over the place. If speaking Spanish offends you Key West has roots sunk into the Spanish and Creole languages that go back further than you do in this town. If men dressing as women annoy you, same story oddly enough. If you don't understand instinctively why Black Lives Matter just as much as your life matters Key West may be the wrong place for you. People tend to be annoying but we are all annoying equally in our own annoying ways around here. And when you live in a small space you lose the plot easily if you don't understand and live by this simple maxim of tolerance. Very expensive homes do not necessarily have offsets in Old Town and neighbors of all stripes of rank and wealth live cheek by jowl. 

There's prejudice everywhere in all of us. and we can each of us take small steps to find our way past our own prejudices. But for government or organs of power to express that prejudice is when intolerance goes off the rails. To me that's what Black Lives Matters means. By all means despise black lives en masse on your own time if you must, but when you show up in society to do a job to dispense the law to be a neighbor, then you show up without your private prejudice. And eventually that private prejudice will get chipped away, but it does seem to take a very long time.

I hear a lot of people yelling these days about freedom, as though freedom is a certificate of merit awarded to those who choose to be free. I wonder how many free people who used to come to the sunset celebration know who Stephen Mallory was? Wikipedia knows and the ironies are amazing to me:

Stephen Russell Mallory (1812 – November 9, 1873) was a Democratic senator from Florida from 1850 to the secession of his home state and the outbreak of the American Civil War. For much of that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. It was a time of rapid naval reform, and he insisted that the ships of the US Navy should be as capable as those of Britain and France, the foremost navies in the world at that time. He also wrote a bill and guided it through Congress to provide for compulsory retirement of officers who did not meet the standards of the profession.

Although he was not a leader in the secession movement, Mallory followed his state out of the Union. When the Confederate States of America was formed, he was named Secretary of the Navy in the administration of President Jefferson Davis. He held the position throughout the existence of the Confederacy. Because of indifference to naval matters by most others in the Confederacy, Mallory was able to shape the Confederate Navy according to the principles he had learned while serving in the US Senate. Some of his ideas, such as the incorporation of armor into warship construction, were quite successful and became standard in navies around the world. On the other hand, the navy was often handicapped by administrative ineptitude in the Navy Department. During the war, he was weakened politically by a Congressional investigation into the Navy Department for its failure in defense of New Orleans. After months of taking testimony, the investigating committee concluded that it had no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

Mallory resigned after the Confederate government had fled from Richmond at the end of the war, and he and several of his colleagues in the cabinet were imprisoned and charged with treason. After more than a year in prison, the public mood had softened, and he was granted parole by President Andrew Johnson. He returned to Florida, where he supported his family in his final years by again practicing law. Unable to hold elective office by the terms of his parole, he continued to make his opinions known by writing letters to newspapers. His health began to deteriorate although he was not incapacitated until the very end.

We live in complicated times in a complicated place watched by the rest of the world which does envy us and were we to do more thinking and less yelling the ironies of being human may be more apparent and less threatening. I very much wonder what happens next. Whatever path the United States takes, as much as our opponents want to deny it, the rest of the world will follow. I hope we collectively make the right choices.

Working Duval

My bicycle needed new tires so at the ripe old age of 62, never much inclined to wield a wrench, I simply put the electric bike on the bike rack and I say that without fully expressing the effort required to lift that heavy lump of metal, and drove it to Recycle on Stock Island. That was an exercise in coronavirus management. I called and spoke by phone made the drop off without meeting anyone and walked next door to Shifting Gears to make a date for the Fiat which has a passenger window that no longer, after eight years, opens as it should. Then, finally Rusty got a walk at Little Hamaca. 

I was curious after all that good work to see how Duval Street looked on the first weekend after the roadblock came down. If you think of this as the quieter season, after the winter but before schools are out, then it looked pretty normal. On the other hand the reality is that bars only opened on Friday and not all stores are open and we are all hyper aware of the damned virus.

Looking up you can check the distance apart for the stools at the Whistle. This was mid morning so the absence of patrons is simply a fact of the hour not the shortage of people out bar hopping. Restaurants and hotels have occupancy limits, thermometers are in use and social distancing is still happening in the Keys. 

I have been impressed by the people I have met who are not wearing masks. I don't wear my mask on the street, in the open as I walk, but everyone who crosses my path. appears as conscientious as I try to be about avoiding the dreaded close contact. The occasional oblivious walker I avoid easily by stepping aside. I carry my mask in my pocket for emergencies much as one always carries a cellphone. 

I avoid Facebook controversies but I have been reading what the scientists have been advising us as they work on learning to understand the virus and from what I gather the surest way to transmit the virus is to be in a room with an infected person for a period of time longer than a casual encounter. Therefore indoor restaurants are out despite the distancing they practice. Outdoor seating is possible but you'd have to sit as far apart as Arthurian Knights at the Round Table which defies any idea of social intimacy. I wear my mask entering a business as required in key west and recommended in Monroe County. I no longer worry about touching objects but I do wash my hands and keep sanitizer in the car. Bear in mind my wife has no immune system and I cannot risk exposing her as she is locked down at home for now.

I found the idea of dropping in for an ice cream to be symbolic of the new world I want to live in and yes, had I been carrying cash I might have put my mask on and stayed distantly in line behind the customer already in there. Ice cream at ten in the morning was a bit too robust for me. I found the sign over the entrance to be ironic in these difficult times.

There is a common thread that runs through conversations among locals about driving downtown. Everyone hates and despises people who step off the sidewalk agains the light and risk getting run over by cars crossing Duval. Well guess what? After two months of having downtown to ourselves Rusty and I forgot all our rules of the road and stepped right off the sidewalk seconds after taking this picture. We were in no danger of being run down but I had to shrug apologetically to the driver who thought sounding his horn would  improve the situation. Rusty and I had a long talk about road traffic awareness after that. I think he ignored me. 

It was a funny moment for me as an hour previously I nearly ran over a pedestrian at Little Hamaca, actually two people and a dog. Believe it or not I was doing 20mph and as I came around a blind corner the two women were right there. Out of consideration for the innocent dog I stopped in plenty of time and the women stared at me as though I should have been ashamed of myself for not bothering to run them down...I didn't even tap the horn. Mistakes are easy to make as I found out later. What a good little adult I have grown into.

I drove home after noon with a tired dog on the back seat and while he snored I looked at a long, endless line of cars filled with holiday makers on their way to the vacation of a life time. May we live in interesting times. That is to say we are living in interesting times whether we want to or not. 

People On The Streets

The chamber of commerce told the paper that the return of people to the Keys amounted to a trickle.

When I drove home around 6 o'clock the first day of the re-opening I saw  large groups of cars on the highway driving toward Key West and each had more than one person inside, which is the usual sign of a visitors. Single occupant travel is the norm in the Keys for commuters. Not many people commute with kayaks on the roof either.

It may I suppose have been a trickle but after two months of empty streets it felt like a flood.

The official statistics are good too with only one person hospitalized at the moment and 110 cases reported throughout the Keys. 

I haven't been to check out the open bars but I plan to stay on the sidelines for as long as I can before  returning to normal. I find the level of certainty among amateur epidemiologists to be rather disturbing but I am keeping my fingers crossed for a vaccine. Then of course the anti vaccination mob will descend with fury I am sure. I cannot understand why anyone would run for public office. 

The van shop called and said the van is finished and should be tested detailed and ready for pick up sometime next week, We haven't got the final bill yet so the details are being polished I expect as we said we would be able to pick it up the last week of the month. They are a fussy lot at Custom Coach Creations as they don't like to hand over the vehicle until they are sure all details are correct and they won't send me pictures because they like a big reveal. 

We did get one picture as they wanted to make sure we are okay with the placement of the faucet...Looks okay to me as the idea is it will also work as outside sprayer for Rusty and so forth. 

I have a vacation planned for mid July when we want to test this mad retirement plan out. Suddenly traveling like this becomes an exercise in social distancing and self reliance in a way I had never imagined. Life really is becoming interesting.

Marathon

My wife has been locked down at home since the Ides of March and she hasn't minded at all much to her surprise. Teaching Adult Ed from home has caused some loud frustrations from the corner "office" at home from time to time as the computer system spat back predictably as the district gurus worked to redefine its purpose and use as a home schooling system. Apparently they have succeeded beautifully as she surprised me earlier this week while swimming when she remarked how very useful some particular Google school app is proving to be. For my wife at least it works smoothly and is integrated into her system. The future of teaching may be at home especially for teachers like her with immune issues. And only one more year to go till retirement.

So the news that she had to go to her classroom in Marathon to do some obscure paperwork surprised me but nothing loathe I agreed that getting an oil change for the Fiat would be a good idea. A former student works at a shop and she likes to stop by and see him from time to time. In the era of coronavirus I am  the one who shows up masked and goes face to face with an adult former student who cares not one jot to see me. Nevertheless an oil change is a Good Thing so Rusty and I dumped my adult ed teacher and headed over to meet the grumpy owner of the most grumpy oil change shop in the Western World - and his mechanic the cheerful former English language student who now speaks English but never does when Mr Grumpy is around.

After we had exchanged grunts, myself with Mr Grumpy, he being unmasked as you might expect from a man who makes my social ineptitude look positively gregarious, Rusty and I abandoned the car and went for a walk. It was as you can see, a gray Tuesday in Marathon. I think the only reason it didn't rain was because I was actually working my scheduled weird four hour evening shift and was not therefore a day off technically. The weather made up for the mistake by sending the mother of all thunderstorms Wednesday and quite putting Rusty off his food.

Walking along the sidewalk on the frontage road next to the Overseas Highway I could have tossed a pebble into tidal water as illustrated above. The north ("gulf" side as it's known to locals) is similarly close give or take a couple of blocks depending on the shape of the island. For a city of ten thousand there's a reason why Marathon is miles long as it is only yards wide and it's a collection of narrow islands not a wide short lump like Key West.

Compared to Key West Marathon lacks a "there, there" to quote Gertrude Stein speaking about her childhood home that vanished from Oakland. And like the second city in Northern California Marathon tends to end up playing second fiddle to Key West despite the fact that perception tends to cause annoyance. As though to prove the point we came across a block of wilderness a small spot of eccentricity in a town built to conform..

Rusty sniffed while I stood and looked, pondering my chances of getting wet...

The gray threatening sky contrasted with the bright primary colors on the ground and as we strolled back on the other side of the Highway I saw more colors and shapes to attract the eye. There is no doubt Key West has architecture and many more restaurants than Marathon, more theaters and movies and more offshore destinations among sandbars and islands, but Marathon, in a time of staying put offers its own retreat from the world. Not having a commercial airline at the airport suddenly seems like an advantage where travel seems to pose certain risks. I wonder indeed if movie theaters will even exist after all this with AMC going bankrupt.

They did a good job as usual at a reasonable price for synthetic oil and the ex-student gave me a secret smile to show he remembered to whom the car really belongs. Mr Grumpy avoided me while Mrs Grumpy took my credit card with her usual graceless fierceness, as though I had asked her on a  date rather than offering to pay what I owe. After 90 plastic dollars changed hands she glared at me like a lioness protecting her young and wished me a "blessed day." A reminder if I needed one that being blessed does not always lead to a sunny disposition.

I wore my new mask throughout the transaction of course and even though instructions on the door said to wear one neither Mrs Grumpy nor a bored dude on the couch, possibly a customer or family friend, were wearing one but as usual we have to fall back on the bromide that we live in awkward times and we do what we feel is right. I enjoy taking the car to a place where fake corporate customer service is nowhere to be seen and these unhappy people prefer to wear their grumpy hearts on the their sleeves and very much in your face. This isn't a namby pamby tourist joint but a hard core hard work oily working class shop. Take it or leave it. I love it and I find them refreshing though I am glad I don't actually have to live with them. Trust your car to them that's all the transaction is about and they will do you proud.

With the bars and theaters reopening today in Key West I fear the notion is now running rampant that the crisis is over and my wife and I still distancing ourselves will be considered to be living on the eccentric fringe, not alone but in a minority. I hope we really have seen the last of this blood clotting virus but history indicates it will probably be back. I can hardly wait.

Duval Re-Opened

Irish Kevin's sells food and thus has re-opened where other bars derive less money from food than drinks and therefore may not open until Friday. The idea is to allow less crowded activities as the city and county allow visitors to return after two months closed to outsiders.

On a first visit downtown I could see a complete change in atmosphere obviously with actual live people walking riding and driving but the sidewalks aren't yet crowded.

Masks, social distancing and trying to follow the rules is evident. My drive in to work has shown tons of traffic on the highway, a bit of a shock really after two months of no traffic at all. Fogarty's separated dining scene:

Some names didn't survive the shut down though whether they were thriving and simply ground to a  halt or whether they were on their way who knows...and who cares because the sense of normal life slipping away is only reinforced by the sight of empty store fronts.

Answering phones at the police department has been unusual to put it mildly. Mostly we have been getting administrative calls from people out of town wanting me, a police dispatcher, to tell them about the re-opening. Suggesting they call the chamber of commerce or gasp- try google! - is not a satisfactory answer so we have been telling people about the fifty percent occupancy rule, the masks and the distancing and on and on.

Most people are cool but you would be amazed by the occasional caller who goes off on the subject of being required to wear a mask inside. I'm not sure why they feel a need to berate us as far as we are from the centers of decision making but more than that I'm not sure why one would plan a vacation to a place that has, before you get here, made you annoyed. People are not always at their best in a  time of difficulty it turns out. Suffering does not ennoble.

Need a job? Apparently some people are hiring. I feel as though we are in a holding pattern at the moment caught between the shut down that was clearly delineated and the re-opening has all kinds of nuance and uncertainty. One has to wonder how much coronavirus has come into town but that won't be clear for weeks. We can hope summer will drive the virus underground but the future as Doris Day put it so  memorably is not ours to see. One day at a time.

Then Tuesday evening there was a peaceful march to protest the George Floyd killing. The police, Sheriff's department and Fish and Wildlife all marched with the protesters and yet the afternoon was filled with rumors and alarums about riots and and mayhem planned for the evening. Then people call the police to demand to know whats going on. No amount of reassurance that the chief and the sheriff are walking in the parade would calm the callers down. Facebook rumors ruled the city.

The march was entirely peaceful of course and went off without a hitch I am told. But the frisson of fear animated Key West for a few hours. And made my ear bleed with all the fear filled demands for information of which of course we had none. 

I look at my own pictures of key West coming back to normal and part of me rejoices and part of me sucks in my breath afraid for our own future. 105,000 dead and cases increasing in number, nationwide riots and an active hurricane season on the horizon. These are times that are sent to try us.

On top of all that parking rules are back and the parking control is out there ticketing and towing. Masks and parking meters! What a  town!

Duval Street has been repaved which is excellent but Simonton Street isn't  quite covered back up and some gravel was showing at the Caroline Street intersection.

The triangle at the entrance to the city may become a traffic slow down as the bridge into the city is operating on only three lanes at least into November so we shall see how that works out too as traffic builds. My wife and I will continue to order food to go to support our restaurants and now that we have people from distant places in the islands our own social distancing will have to be vigilant toi protect her own impaired immune system. 

I never felt able to encourage the highway to stay closed as my wife and I both have government jobs and too many people were hurting for money to be able to say keep the road closed with an easy mind. Now that things are going back to normal we have to hope that visitors will respect the rules and help keep the keys peaceful and as infection free as possible. I wonder how that will work out.