Be Good Do Good

We left Key West and while heading up to Homestead, we stopped for dinner at Snappers, a restaurant in Key Largo. We ate there last year and then the place was still reeling from Hurricane Irma. Only the deck was open for seating, the restaurant itself was still closed. Their food truck was serving as the kitchen. That was then this is now. They’re still wrestling with permit problems, but the restaurant is back open and they’re out of the truck. We ate on the deck again. Seated near us was a gentleman, who was telling his friends about his love life or rather the absence of such life. It was a sad story, but also familiar, where it was all his ex’s fault and none of women that he has dated since were much better. He sounded like one of the ne’er-do-well characters in a Carl Hiaasen detective novel, which we have taken to listening to while driving in Florida. It was disturbing though seeing something from these books leap off the page.

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Now on to weirdness in Key West from which this post’s title is derived. Key West is a party town. The rest of the keys look down on it for this, but also envy it for it too. Duval Street is party central. In the heat of mid-afternoon, we ventured upon it. Otherwise we tended to avoid Duval. We did buy a pair of matching t-shirts there. Paying Key West’s sky-high prices, they were $15 each. Anne got to talking with the proprietor, who was pretty tired, working 16 hours a day. You see the rent for their shoebox sized store was $15,000 a month. Rent goes up to $40,000 a month closer to Mallory Square. It’s the height of the tourist season and shops like this have to make even more money now, because come late summer the hurricanes begin and business drops off altogether. The real sunken treasure around Key West is the land.

Then there is the case of the hangover hospital. Which features Key West’s one and only MD who caters to over indulgers with a 45 minute IV drip. “Hangovers suck. Tomorrow morning doesn’t have to!” Yeah, it can get that wild. The Key Weird that I prefer can be found on its residential side streets. Represented by little bits of individuality. Like a sixteen stanza poem written on a picket fence, written one line per vertical. Or a full human skeleton, bent over stationary bike handles, in racing position, on the front porch. I can only guess at what their commentary is supposed to be about. The town has character, even if it is full of characters too. I love it!