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.
Ranger Ed is on our roof playing whack-a-mole with the leaks in our solar panels. That's not a place people of a certain age ought be; yet, here we are. Living the dream of home ownership on a mystical, magical tropical island at the end of the road. A place where,...
Crikey! How could I forget the island's assault on our outdoor grills? But I did, as a dozen barbecuing cooks reminded me in short order. "Spot on," said a former Floridian, "but you didn't even get into the average lifespan of an outdoor grill." He wasn't alone in...
It doesn’t take a degree in demographics and a passion for data dumps to know when Key West’s snowbirds arrive. Lights in that once dark house come on at dusk. There are peals of laughter across the fence line and the rumble of interesting conversations of which I can...
What does Key West look like? And we answer it every time a proposed renovation or major development project drop its AI-generated drawings, “But that doesn’t look like Key West.” I’m of the mind that Key West looks exactly like what we are, a weirdly cobbled together accumulation of architecture that changed each time residents felt flush with cash and an itch to expand.
You can stick up all the signs you want, even change U.S. maps, and folks are still going to call it the way they learned it. Take that quarter-mile concrete pier at the end of Key West’s White Street. Rebranded in June 2016 as the Edward B. Knight Pier, it remains the White Street Pier. Humans ain’t much fond of changing up words just for the heck of it. So what do we do with Old and New Publix?
I promised myself I was not going to write about sargassum more than three times this season. This is No. 2. To the City of Key West or whoever posted the beach sign saying sargassum was nature's way of rebuilding sand dunes: Have you lost your pea-picking minds? Did...
We do incredibly stupid things with Key West trees. Like the mango tree in my side yard, which breaks all the rules for "right tree, right place." Plant 30 feet from your house and foundation. Mine's 6 feet from the kitchen door. Plant 20 feet from patios. Mine's IN...
You're forgiven if you think island time is all "toes in the water, ass in the sand, not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand," as Zac Brown sings it. Toss in some Jimmy Buffett "changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes" and a pinch of Kenny Chesney, Mac...
I'm declaring May 11 as the unofficial start of Key West's "big stink" season. For the next four months, "Land's sake, that smell" joins parking, traffic, drought, government ineptitude, rainbows and an invasion of Cuba as our go-to island irritations. Welcome to...
Humans have this quirky brain thing going on: It ain't real until we see it. It doesn't exist until we discover it. And for sure, history doesn't begin until we arrive on the scene. There's ample reason "the more things change, the more they remain the same" is a...
Oh, sure, I loved the IDEA of the vintage versions of the Key West airport. Stepping onto the sun-softened tarmac. Sniffing in that intoxicating, humidity-laden combination of jet fuel, sargassum, cigarette smoke, stale beer and whatever else was floating on the...
I almost scrolled past the comment with a simple "Not my monkey. Not my circus." I paused and backed up, mostly because the darn thing was written well, sans swear words and emojis and punctuated to an English teacher's specifications -- and about as divisive and...
Ranger Ed and I bought our Key West house in August 2008, just weeks before the Sept. 29 subprime banking fiasco tanked the housing market. The house, which was in foreclosure and had been listed at $1.2 million in 2006 at the height of one of Key West's frenzied real...
"Oh, Mom, you should see this." The 20-something's voice filled the late evening silence as she pedaled past my porch during Fantasy West week. "It looks just like Old Key West. These houses. Everything. Like Old Key West." I could hear her chattering fade into the...
Eureka! I found it. The gold standard for deciding who's a real local and who's a mainland transplant. No more arguing over how long you've lived here or whether you're a real Conch, freshwater Conch or a random shell bought at the souvenir kiosk. It goes like this:...