Well, first of all no one tells you about the bugs in your bed. Or the sinks that fall in, the porch that collapses because of termites, the iguanas that rampage through your landscape (and bathrooms) or the lizards and roaches that share your kitchen sink. Certainly no one tells you about routine water, electric and internet outages.
But other than that, living on an island is great.
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Let's talk trash. Specifically Key West trash cans. Live on the island long enough and your brain does this weird Photoshop editing thing. Voila, no more trash cans. Like with overhead utility lines and massive cell tower spires, your peepers no longer register those...
Last Saturday evening maybe 45 minutes before sunset I biked the mile of Olivia Street from Thomas to Florida. Nothing particularly unusual, except that about five minutes in it occurred to me that I'd been able to roll through the stop signs at Whitehead, Duval and...
Here we are at the top of August, hotter than Satan's housecat, hissing at anyone who looks at us cross-eyed and just waiting to whip out the claws for a social media shredding. If we're this tetchy in August, how're we going to make it through Grumble Season, which...
Nothing like watching the ginormous blob of sargassum 2025 floating not too far southwest of the island to get me scurrying for a leftover Covid mask. Because, my beach-loving friends, we're right on schedule for what the experts are calling a record-breaking Stink...
Y'all know I love listening to the folks who bike or walk past my porch. Snatches of conversations float on the breezes, partial observations that when taken together weave a passable research study on what visitors think about our island. Mostly these are happy...
Welcome to Triple XL Key West. I know we call the months between Christmas and Mother's Day "season," but I've arbitrarily decided to name them the Triple XL. And I've conjured six ways for coping with super-sized crowds. Sure, it happens every year and every year...
"It's the island," she said as she waited post-dusk for her dog to do its business outside my gate. "I think I need to live here. There's something telling me that. It's gotta be the island." She scooped the poop and wandered down the street, chatting on her cell...
Dang, it's hot. And humid. Welcome to Key West summer on steroids. It's a rare day there's not a heat advisory with numbers in the triple digits. Last week, as Tropical Storm Debby skirted west of Key West, there were about 15 minutes of blessed low-80s temps that...
"You need to come look at the bathroom sink," said Ranger Ed as he walked out on the porch. "The only thing holding it up is the drainpipe." Sigh. Oh, the joy of living in the Keys. The brackets holding the basin had rusted through and the whole thing collapsed. The...
Whew. Was that a wicked news week or what? Figured we could use a break, so let's talk summer in Key West. I stuffed in a pair of earplugs this morning before heading to the office. Because it's summer in Key West. The office is the corner of my front porch. From here...
Cliches exist for a reason. We humans cast about for a shorthand way to capture how we're doing at any particular time and we end up with a phrase or two that, well, just work. Take, for instance, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I can't...
Ranger Ed and I bought our home in Key West in 2008 when the world was hurtling into the Great Recession. We spent the next few years holding our breath as our Key West home value slipped below our mortgage, wondering every day if we'd made a really dumb financial...