The Key West Mystique
Key West Island News
Key West Island News connects Key West residents and friends of the island, fosters our One Human Family culture and advances understanding of shared goals for our island community
Linda Grist Cunningham | Columns and news analysis
Key West Island News editor Linda Grist Cunningham has written more than 4,000 columns — in print and on the web — since 1968. She hates writing and is compelled to do it anyway.
5 projects Key West’s new mayor can do without running afoul of state preemption
Though Sam Kaufman built his mayoral campaign on the need for change, his success is rooted not so much in change as in a return to pre-2024 sensibilities. Kaufman will face headwinds that Craig Cates and Teri Johnston could not imagine — and that Dee Dee Henriquez could not or would not navigate. Say hello to the 10-letter word from hell: preemption.
Worried about voting integrity in the Keys? Do this before November
Walk into any election polling place anywhere in the country and one thing is consistently true: There's a gaggle of gray-haired women -- adhesive name tags on their shirts -- precisely organizing unvoted ballots, paper signs, pens, giant notebooks and binders....
A 15-year-old roof could push wind insurance out of reach for homeowners, businesses
Wind insurance is gonna be the death of me. I've come to dread the annual July-August renewal dance I get to play with private insurers, my mortgage company and Florida's (expletive deleted) Citizens Property Insurance Corp. The ranger and I are now on year three of...
Key West chamber’s political picks: Are you really surprised they endorsed their own?
I don't give two conchs that the Key West Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors endorsed candidates in the city's politically fraught mayor and commission races. It's election time. That's what people do. Are we actually surprised they endorsed their own? I guarantee...
The Keys are built for the 1970s. We can’t handle 2026
Let's go out on this limb together: We're loving the Keys and Key West to death. I'd venture there's no one who believes we're good stewards of our fragile ecosystem or that soaring housing and insurance costs are a boon to the economy. Surely we don't believe we can...
If history holds, 5880 Key West voters will decide the city’s future
On Aug. 18 Key West voters will pick a mayor and three city commissioners. Unlike any city election for at least the past 50 years, this one could definitively tell us who's in charge of the island's future. Will it be the Conchs and their adjacents? Or will it be the...
Dear Connor is a collection of columns Linda writes for her grandson, Connor. Though he may never read them, they help her make sense of the world.
Baby boomer revenge | Rainbows, home rule and “me first”
OK, boomers: It’s 100 percent our fault that Key West and the world have gone sideways. We are the reason we’re arguing over rainbow pickets, morphing home rule into a historical relic, stalking the globe as a deranged, self-anointed emperor and chanting “we win; you...
Dear Connor | The American “middle” won’t tolerate extremes much longer
Dear Connor, Dick Grist, your great-grandfather, was a political junkie, a World War II vet and a voice of reason when your Ninny went off the rails over whatever outrage of the day sparked my ire. One of the things he counseled me often was big-picture patience: "The...
Hurricane Irma | In September 2017, Linda Grist Cunningham created and launched a Facebook Page that aggregated news coverage during Hurricane Irma. She was off-island at the time visiting her mother in Virginia. Her husband remained in Key West. Over the three weeks that she and her partner journalists John Teets maintained around-the-clock coverage, they reached almost a million people around the world. These are the columns she wrote each day. Hurricane Season is always June 1 – Nov. 30.
Key West City Commission voids agreement with ICE and reaffirms its status as a “welcoming city.”
In what is the most stunning vote taken by a Key West City Commission in recent memory, commissioners at 7:16 p.m., voted 6-1 to void the 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Doing so puts the city, commissioners and the...
Hurricane Irma | 5 years that changed Key West and the Keys
Once a month I drive to Marathon and back for a board meeting. I've done that since before Hurricane Irma clobbered Key West and the Florida Keys on Sept. 10, 2017. For five years that 100 mile round trip has been my gauge for our recovery from...
