January 16, 2005 Key West

January 16, 3005
Key West Florida

Well I think Papa Hemingway must moan in pain as people walk into Sloppy Joes Bar and step on his face embossed in the dirty rug by the entrance. Perhaps he shifts slightly in his grave as people line up at his home for the tour? How big a cut does he get from all the t shirts sold to the multitude of tourists coming off the 2-3 cruise ships that dock for a few hours each day at the foot of Duval Street?
Driving down the Keys we were excited about spending a month or two here, even though the rv park was 3 times more expensive than any we had encountered before, (and we were to learn that anything else other than the space came with a price tag) making photographs during the day and working in the darkroom at night, having some leisure time on the beach, walking in the hot sun and exploring the old streets of key west in the evenings. Maybe even finding a local bar to spend the evening hours. And we did… Pepe’s on Caroline Street! Great food, great drinks and great people. Truly a local’s hangout and they loved having Henry dine with us. Our waitress even had doggie treats in her apron. Ate many good meals here.
Mike and Lorene arrived on Thursday and we’ve spent the last few days exploring together. Have had a good time being with them and will be sad to see them leave today but…….
What we found was that Key West and Santa Fe have much in common. A great history, lots of history and natural beauty but city fathers with greed in their eyes and hearts. Duval Street is more a circus than a cool historic street. Lots of T-shirts and trash that appeal to the tourists from the low end cruise ships. A multitude of open air bars offer up appalling loud live music that blasts out into the street and melt together becoming Hemingway’s scream as it pounds against your brain. Mixed among the bars and T-shirt shops are restaurants with high prices and not so great food as well as poster art galleries and stands hawking the tours you can go on.
In all fairness as you leave Duvall Street and roam the small backstreets that make up Historic Key West there are many wonderful old homes and small shops that make up the real key but your looking at $350.000 low end for a small 1-2 bedroom home with no land and it’s a fixer upper. Heading in the local paper “City to study dorms for local Workers”, seems that the support people can’t afford to live here anymore. Hello Santa Fe! But the small street are quite beautiful and years ago it must have been a great place to live.
Each night there is the Sunset Party on Mallory Square by the Marina. We did get to see the sunset- one night when the cruise ships weren’t blocking it. Quite a good gathering of street artists, performers and venders selling-for the most part local crafts.
Silverman, a self made mime was quite good and fun to talk to as well as the “Angel”.
Made good images of both. But then along came “The Ambassador to the Conch Republic” -self appointed I would assume. Dressed in a cheap suit and uncle sam hat. I asked, as I always do, but this time with a ten-dollar bill in hand, (as it was obvious he was pan handling) if I could make his portrait and got told quite rudely that I could not “he’d been ripped off too many times”. Now he didn’t seem to mind the multitude of people who approached and snapped his photograph without asking and then gave him a buck. The very first person that has refused to allow me to make their portrait the entire trip, a year and 40,000 miles ago. Perhaps it’s time for a new ambassador? But all in all the sunset party was a good time and the sunset we did see was spectacular.
Leaving downtown you’ll find home depot, kmart, boarders, and all the rest on Hwy 1. As with Santa Fe, the true local flavor has been diluted to almost nothing. Everywhere you go there is a generic melting of culture a sameness creeping across america . A greed and consumption that seems to swallow up the old and spit out generic high end shit. Onward toward Texas?

The Ambassador to the Conch Republic photo by Michael Kravit