Dozing Key West

There is still magic in Key West, even though I find the struggle to find it harder and harder. I was glad when they tore down the former city hall that stood at Angela and Simonton, it was a mold riddled wreck, built in the weird avant-garde style of the 1960s cement block and pink paint then ravaged by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. It had to go.

The construction was protested by a hotel owner nearby who felt threatened by potential noise and dust because everything that changes wrecks somebody's view of themselves. And yet here we are, a new city hall, so controversial on White Street, and a fine new fire station on Simonton Street with ambulances and fire trucks at the ready and properly rested crews in comfortable quarters upstairs. Let's face it, old buildings are for reasons I cannot analyze more picturesque than new ones, reeking as they do of past glories and nostalgically better times. Modern boilings are clean and crisp and angular and reek of nothing quite so much as change and modernity.

 

So in order that I might wield my camera and pass my time with my dog in a. way that contributes to my own meditative well being I have to try to find something within modern Key West that evokes a positive response. 

It's there all right and just as well that positive vibe is out there on the streets because at four in the morning when Rusty and I are completely alone there is nothing else to look at, no strange people walking by, no color, no chaos, just silent streets. Shadows and light. The Key West of always.

There is a fundraiser underway for an employee of the Saints Hotel badly beaten by thugs who resented being told they had to wear masks. I find it hard to understand how such violence has penetrated the Keys, how the descent into madness I have watched Up North has arrived Down South. I am I suppose naive. I have been spending quite a lot of my time reading about the 1930s and the epic desire for autocracy and scapegoating and militarism that drove the world of my parents to immolate itself. It seems we are on the same path, where the Brown Shirts of those days are replaced by militia today, ready and abetted by some police to kill to further political aims. I find it unbelievable and I find my inability to figure out a response maddening. I always wondered why people stood by and let it happen and now, here we are again. 

If like me life puzzles you at the moment and the railway of ordinary living seems to have gone rogue on a siding to nowhere all I have to offer is pictures of a town immersed in the past, a time of silence and patience waiting for daylight to return so things may start up again. Perhaps we can hope for a reset next year. Perhaps not, perhaps we have to ride the rails all the way to the bitter end like our parents did before us and take everything down so everything can be rebuilt. I find that prospect, as I close in on my 63rd birthday, rather daunting.  Meanwhile Key West slumbers at the very end of the road, not immune but well on the periphery of whatever unpleasantness is to come.

Two By Two

I didn't intend to draw from Noah's ark for these photos but as I pulled them out of the cloud I realized they had something in common. William Fleming House:

And in black and white:

Two stained glass windows at the Southernmost Prayer and Faith Church on Fleming.  I never see lights on there so this was a treat for an obsessive like me:

I love noticing stuff like that. Check out these next two I spotted on a short walk:

The spiky no trespassing gate and the spikes of nature:

A Bicycle.

Many bicycles:

This odd sign on a. low wall on Southard Street near Simonton.

I saw these well worn steps near Solares Hill which put me in mind one of the other.

Key West, not necessarily filled with people but not totally devoid of interest.

Streets Before Dawn

I liked the strange swirls of the street cleaners shown here at Southard on Duval Street.

You know this on, below, is Southard looking east as you can see the cell phone tower which sits across the street from the AT&T telephone exchange.

This is Duval looking south, the giveaway is the colorful Strand Theater marquee now advertising Walgreens. 

Simonton Street was getting torn up for some drainage job. A great long stretch of Simonton is now beautifully paved and smoothed. I am told some other stand out streets in Key West are soon to lose their lumpy character. A smooth easy to drive Bertha Street anyone? Yay!

This is Southard Street looking east up the one way at the bright lights in the distance of Peary Court.

I can't remember for the life of me if this is William or Margaret. I'm inclined to think it's Margaret as I think I can see Mangia Mangia the Italian eatery with the upstairs white balcony on the left.  Just another Key West street at five in the morning... 85 degrees and sticky. No relief expected till November and now we have a couple of depressions in The Atlantic. Fun fun fun.

Appelrouth Lane

The former Strand movie theater, now a chain pharmacy is the rainbow lighting on Duval Street that marks the spot where Applerouth Lane,  a one way street connects Duval to Whitehead Street.

Appelrouth Lane was previously known rather more prosaically as Smith Lane until 1981. The street got a new name in honor of a Key West merchant Billy Appelrouth. His real name was William Herman Appelrouth and he belonged to the Jewish community which has thrived in Key West from the city's inception. He lived from 1924 to 1978 and is buried in the Jewish cemetery which is part of the main city cemetery in the middle of town.

I was struck by the mass of pipes and cables hanging off the side of Virgilio's restaurant which is a fixture on the corner of Appelrouth and Duval. Other businesses on this short street have come and gone. Mary Ellens was one I didn't expect to last but...as usual I am a rotten predictor of these things.

They have a reputation of making astonishingly good grilled cheese sandwiches and they have created a quiz night mystique which, as I think about it could make this my long sought replacement for Finnegan's Wake, the only Key West bar I ever really liked. Perhaps in a year or two (!) we shall find out. I do like the signage outside: "a/c eats" makes me grin each time I see it.

I like this view of Duval Street down Appelrouth. People often ask me if aI am afraid to walk Key West at night which question I find quite funny. If I were, I wouldn't do it I guess. On the whole I do find fear to be overrated and too many people indulge themselves in it too often. On the whole I like fear as it keeps people away from placesI like to go so yes, walking the streets of key West in the dark is terrifying.

Appelrouth used to be home to a sex club where Mary Ellen's is now and Leathermaster a fetish shop still has a home there. Actually Leathermaster promotes itself as a place to buy inadequate clothing and whips and stuff, like the wrong sort of masks for covid protection for instance, but they also do rather quality leather work on mundane items or accessories you might own. You could bring your leather jockstrap to be refurbished but a purse would get the same quality attention. Needs must to make a living in Key West.

The courthouse deli has been on the corner of Southard and Whitehead for ages too and I like the bench outside as a perch to drink con leche and listen to the so called sound checks, afternoon performances at the Green parrot across the street. That famous bar has no air conditioning but keeps its barn door windows wide open, letting in air and allowing the music to get out. I have always had an aversion to crowds, even before Coronavirus so taking in the music without the sweaty armpits of close contact has been my preferred approach.

These days the bar is open for limited hours for take out only which sounds weird to me. The whole point of a bar is to sit inside and talk to strangers but I guess to go is better than no sales at all. As much as I enjoy being apart I miss the activity, seen from a. distance especially. Key West is supposed to be the happy place  and this is not a happy time. I thought the colors looked good though.

White Crowned Pigeons

They are endangered I am told with shrinking habitat across the Caribbean and Florida but they seem to be doing quite well in my world. I have seen a few white crowned pigeons a cross the canal from my house but there are a whole bunch of them out in the seed filled trees where I walk Rusty. 

My goal is to get lucky and catch one of nature's living bullets flying past my lens. They are fast and dodge tree tops as they go, leaving you holding your breath as they dip out of sight moving so fast you aren't quite sure they were there. Somehow I saw three of them waiting for something in the trees and I contented myself with classic bird on a stick photos of these elusive creatures. 

The weekends see tons of car traffic coming into and out of the Keys as big city workers seek brief relief in these islands. This weekend especially many more cars have two or more occupants for the Labor Day holiday. Not a mile away I wander with my camera seeking my own relief from the day with my camera in Nature. I enjoy looking for anomalies in the  shrubbery. I think of my summer trip Up North and remember fondly the light and the shadows, the curves and the variety of colors and here we are. A shaft of light, strands of cobwebs, nuggets of green. 

IF I allowed myself I could drive myself nuts by thinking about the good old days, dinner out, friends, plays, concerts, movies but what would be the point? I have Rusty my camera and my wife and a comfortable home and even a canal in which to swim. Could be worse.

Public Breaths

The headlines I read have moved on from coronavirus coverage to other things. With two months to go as we approach a pivotal general election I suppose that's hardly surprising unless you are related to any of the 180,000 Americans who have died so far at the hands of the virus. Not to mention the survivors who are dealing with the several side effects attributed to coronavirus, the neurological problems, muscular weakness and so forth.

The rule in Key West is wear a mask. The only times you don't get to wear a mask is at home or when actually eating or drinking in a restaurant. Bars are closed by state order. And yet even when I set our in the early morning hours. five out of six people weren't wearing masks. I asked one guy why not and he said because no one's around. Oh I said, I guess I'm no one.

Bars may be closed by state order but I guess tasting rooms aren't. Sell food and you are more than a bar and can open, or I guess be a tasing room and you can taste alcohol. The issue comes down to an attitude. Mask wearing is an activity reluctantly agreed to and its not a decision entered into by most people who understand this is the best way to vanquish this wretched pandemic. As long as most people are looking fro ways to a void wearing a mask we can't do much about it.

The city s trying to enforce the requirement but its being treated as a speed limit that is too slow for the road conditions and as long as most people ignore it the net result is mask use is spotty and thus unlikely to do much good in terms of slowing the spread. I guess the hope has to be that tourists will take whatever infection they have or pick up and go home with it. Which to my way of thinking is pretty crappy. We really are not in this together.

I feel like a thief in the night, walking the streets not as I used to just for fun but now I take these pre dawn walks to snatch a moment in the city, to take back my streets and my photos from the unmasked hordes. My wife and I have been locked down since March 15th and it seems stupid to not hold out for a vaccine at this point. I wish masks were second nature, social distancing obvious and hand washing something everyone believed in as a matter of course. 

The last message I got from the Centers For Disease Control was to avoid sitting in a. room with strangers, as in avoiding restaurants, and not to fly in commercial aircraft. But virus fatigue has se in and the lessons on 1918 are lost and have bene lost for a while. Now we see people gathering to protest and masks as we have seen are no deterrent to gunfire. I feel in many ways that 2020 is replicating a combination of 1918 and 1968 all rolled into one. Fantastic and besides all that we have no certainty a simple calendar date will turn it all around. With only three months to go till the first snows drive people south I wonder how winter in Key West will unfold.  From a distance the social niceties are interesting but when you live them up close they become irritating and unnerving even. 

Fantasy Fest is canceled but will attractions re-open? Will cruise ships return? Will winter residents, elderly many fo them and infirm site a few of them, hunger to sit in restaurants and risk infection for a plate of elaborate food and conversation?  I will be watching and wondering and asking myself why I feel so alone in my social distancing.