Duval Street at Dusk

Snapshots: Key West, August '98

A favorite recreation destination of mine, Key West is not the wonderfully wacky hippie-haven it was when I fell in love with it in the Seventies. It's still nice, though.  Still cute, still quite friendly--though not like the good ol' days--and it's still a charming place with a great sense of humor, devoid of bustle and parking places.

These snaps are from my most recent visitation.  At left is the famous Duval Street at dusk.


Key West is noted for lots of things, including playing home to Ernest Hemingway while he penned much of his most famous prose.  Hemingway's house is now a museum, complete with many hard working cats - Ernie was a cat lover.  This cool kitty's watching out for business inside the Hemingway Museum Book Store.  Sorry, the cats aren't for sale.  Besides, nobody owns a cat.  It's not done.

While in Key West, after putting in a few hours slaving away at his immortal writings, Hemingway hung out at the now-famous Sloppy Joe's.  I squeezed off these shots inside the place.  It's a very friendly bar open to the air on two sides.  They cheerfully serve bottled water, Cokes, and juices, in addition to decent food, the fabulously greasey giant onion rings (delicious!), and stronger and prettier beverages.  Key West's climate is truly tropical, so extra liquids come in handy, alcoholic or not.

 The goodest of the good ol' days in Key West hark back to previous centuries when ships laden with the grandest of goods frequently crashed and sank on the coral reefs around the island. Intrepid adventurers salvaged the wrecks, sold the stuff, and profited mightily. To help steer ships around the reefs, the (meddlesome, said the wreckers) United States Light House Service put this lighthouse on Key West. It's opposite Hemingway's digs, about 14 feet above sea level.
Key West's first light house, further out, got lost in a storm like the ships it was supposed to guide.  This 86-foot one was built to last.  And it did.  Once an oil-fired giant lantern, it's still a working light house gleaming nightly, lately electrified to smell better.  The original portion dates to 1847; the top 20 feet chunk was added in 1894.  By day, tourists get to trudge up its steep spiral stairway and actually look  out through the top.  This porthole view is on the way to the top, where the walls aren't as thick as at the bottom, but still substantial enough to weather more than a century of  hurricanes and other annoyances.  From the top (huff, puff) there isn't much in Key West that affords a better view, unless it's some of the new ticky-tacky condominiums that have sprung up where once Mother Nature remained unobstructed.

The cool (it's airconditioned!) museum on the grounds beside the tower was built in 1887 as the Light House Keeper's residence.  It and other buildings on the grounds display some fabulous light house memorabilia, including a lens that's big enough to walk inside and take pictures looking out of.  The other picture here (you figure out which one) is taken from a stair landing near the top of the tower, looking down, down, down into the skinny roundness. 

The most interesting thing to do in Key West is watch the sunset at Mallory Square. It's adjacent to where the tour boats land and depart, in the midst of the most charming of the town's excellently charming historical district. This extensive daily block party is a long-standing KW tradition, complete with street musicians, jugglers, fruit juice peddlers (smoothies, yummm!), and a motley batch of vendors intent on separating the tourists from some disposable income--for such essentials as T-shirts (formerly tie-dyed, alas now mostly printed), jewelry, and some (formerly lots of) handmade crafts.  The Cookie Lady (alas, I have no picture to post here), another Mallory Square tradition, brightens even the cloudiest sunset.  While the festivities continue, local sailboat enthusiasts who hang out around the square take turns cruising by in their picture perfect craft so the tourists can get cool pictures.  Showoffs.  In exquisite Greek seafarers' hats, yet.

The largest of the sailing vessels--an impressive one!-- flies the pirate flag.  Key West is not noted for conformity, anyway.  It was known for a time as  the Conch Republic, having seceded from the United States in a dispute with the Bureau of Immigration, Discrimination and (Yeah Right) Naturalization.  Generally, Key West holds an unfailingly grand sunset, fluffed like a pillow of orange cotton candy across the crystal sky and refracted in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, both at the sam etime because they merge right there.  The water's so clear you can see the bottom, even read the labels on the beer cans the yankees toss overboard from the tourboats.
Alas, this August, the murk gremlins took over the sky's palette, and the best I could get was a drab Study in Imminent Rain Cloud.  Not a Kodachrome-worthy sunset in a whole August week.  Too hot, maybe.  This shot's beastly corrected to get it even this presentable. Oh well, the street party went on anyhow, and merry was made, drink was drunk, conch fritters eaten.  And so forth.
These days the Mallory Square music is mostly Cuban, Jamaican, and South American, but there are still a few jazz and classical riffs to soothe the soul.  This violinist has the nerve to play unaccompanied Bach amid the din.  Lara St. John, eat your heart out.  Not every town has a street violinist, though if they did the world would be much improved - far more habitable, and a lot better civilized.
 




I forgot where I took this picture--somewhere in Key West.  Maybe in the light house or its museum.  Whatever.



Key West's Kitty Kats