Summer Atmosphere

A still summer evening, plenty of insect repellent applied before I left home, and not a ripple on the waters of the salt ponds surrounded by mangroves.

Overlooking The Airport

Rusty is a dog who knows his own mind and he knows tis part of the Little Hamaca City Park does not interest him. Boo hiss, because I like to wander around here at the very end of the road.

Rusty wasn't with me on this lunch break so I decided to wander where he doesn't like to go. Good job I did too as I haven't been here in a while and probably won't again for a long while.

This area of Little Hamaca was transformed into an industrial landscape by the placement of Hawk Missile Batteries during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that fiasco blew over the missiles left and the battery sites were abandoned to revert very slowly to nature. Below we see the Salt Pond condos at the eastern end of Key West:

One of the things they left behind were these tall piles of rock and gravel which were designed to limit damage in the event the Russians or Cubans landed their own missile here to blow up the Hawk missiles. These berms would have limited the blast and thus the effectiveness of an attack.

In the flatlands of the Keys these protective walls give an ardent photographer  a leg up on the surrounding scenery. It's not often you can climb a dozen feet in the air in the Keys and look around at the flatlands.  Above you can see the remains of Bravo Hawk Missile Battery.

The berms give a view across the salt ponds between Little Hamaca and the airport. The waters are very very thin but kayaks and paddle boards can wander pretty much at will as long as they fon't get too close to the airport.

Time is passing and the shrubs out here are inexorably starting to cover the path that has formed on top of the berms. Seagrapes provide food for birds and the Australian pines  provide shade.

I was quite surprised how many planes were coming and going from the airport on the other side of the pond:

A lot of engines revving and taxiing going on.

The city used to have a paintball field here but that rather fun use of the open space ended and now there's nothing much here except odd piles of discarded dirt and some grass.

There's that nice view of the airport.

And in the far distance the surreal vision of a control tower wrecked in Hurricane Irma in 2017 and never rebuilt. There is a "temporary" control tower in a trailer on Government Road that appears to my jaundiced eye to be rather permanent.

And the planes they come and go. 

For me the fact that the paintball field has gone is good but I don't see this as the best possible use of the place. I wish Rusty would come out here and give me time to scramble up the berms and wander around aimlessly.

I ran out of time waiting for the damned plane to take off picturesquely through the trees so I barely caught it as it lifted up into the sky veering north toward Atlanta (maybe). 

I had a made scramble to get back to work on time. Much slower than an airplane.

Little Conch Baseball

Little Conch Baseball League is organized and ready for another season in the numerous diamonds lined up between Kennedy Drive and North Roosevelt Boulevard. 

Clayton Sterling the complex is called and each diamond has a name attached to it to remind Conchs of the glorious past. There are a few rules here but they pretty obvious. It may surprise you, as it did me, that they boil down to nothing more than the requirement to be kind to each other.

The teams that play here go by names that might be familiar in other settings, Ramona's Conch Creations, Certified Appliance Repair, Town N Tavern, Hurricane Hole or Key West Firefighters. 

Baseball is a big deal in Key West and as you might expect parents have been known to get a bit more passionate in public with louder voices than their progeny. 

The businesses that support the teams get photos of eager young conchs in their red and white uniforms on the walls of the business.

As you can see, all the support they get is put to good use with nice facilities for the youngsters to play on.

Hot dogs and sodas and so forth are also sold here to raise money for the sport:

And past players are memorialized.

Familiar names spring out, especially familiar if you grew up in Key West:

Buddy Owen may have sold you a fish sandwich on Caroline Street and Boog Powell made the big leagues playing for the Baltimore Orioles. He wasn't born in Key West so locals will tell you you can't be a Conch, but in my book most people are formed in High School so to me a Conch is anyone who graduated Key West High. Being born here takes no act of will but surviving high school is definitely a life marking experience for most Americans.  These days I believe he lives in Sarasota. But he started here!

Field of Memories.

Duval Pocket Park

There is a certain carelessness in the way Key West maintains its public spaces. It used to bug me to see decay ignored, an absence of care, and now that the city is moving faster and faster to fulfil the mayor's vision of a genteel upper class tourist destination, I see seaweed rotting on the beach and feel relief.

Slabs of cement mark the southernmost end of the "world famous" Duval Street, the heart of tourist Key West. The unsightly lump works for the seagulls.

This cheerful sign addresses an issue I had not previously considered to be a problem. I hope the pelicans know not to dump around here.

Conversely this slab of horizontal cement is a pier thrusting out into the sea, a photo opportunity with no sign of where or what this place might be. "Yay! Key West!" would be a nice background for those endless selfies taken at this spot, instead the background is a sign covered in scruffy stickers. The pier itself is about as inviting as a loading dock.

They come, they go and zip through the new pocket park built to replace a few seaweed covered parking spots that used to live here.

This is as it was:

This is as it is, so urban renewal is not out of reach:

The surrounding architecture should inspire.

Cruise ships are still in the news. The city is struggling to override the Governor's mandate that cruise ships are not subject to local control, but the latest news from the cruise ship industry is that Carnival has dropped Key West from its ports of call. According to the paper there is no reason given but that's a loss of several ships a week from Key West. 

Score one for the Mayor in her running battle with the Governor. Whether the loss of income will affect Duval businesses this far south from the bars at the top end of the street...is pretty easy to say. These places don't get many cruise ship visitors and in the past have complained about the discrimination. Nowadays Upper Duval is a mess of closed cruise ship centered businesses but down here everything looks normal and people are working:

In other news Florida's governor has promised to appeal another loss this time in Federal Court in Miami where a judge ruled Norwegian Cruise Lines can require passengers to show proof of vaccination. It would be odd if Key West did trump Tallahassee but there is precedent:  David did wallop Goliath...