Text size:

Discovering Key West's quaint charms and tropical trends

BY LISA ROBERTS | Orlando Sentinel

Key West never sought to be different. But by birthright, it simply was: a remote village with a defiant attitude and free spirit that attracted privateers, pirates, entrepreneurs, smugglers, craftsmen, pioneers, poets and writers.

It remains a place tolerant of idiosyncrasy. A place in which a soul can drop out, blend in or stand above. One that appreciates the old ways, revels in its difference and largely lets people be what they want to be.

Through the years, the dowdy little settlement that lured the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams and Elizabeth Bishop has become a dame that swaggers in 4-inch heels. She's a little Divine, a little Marie Osmond; at once bawdy and gracious, overbearing and sweet, party girl and society maven. She's equal parts Kmart and Neiman Marcus, Johnny Walker Red and Diet Coke, Park Avenue and Division Street.

In adolescence, Key West, conceived in the 1820s, suffered its share of growing pains and blemishes. Fires roared through the settlement, hurricanes lashed the island's shores, and mosquitoes ravaged its residents. Then, in January 1912, Henry Flagler è and his fantastic railroad steamed into town and suddenly accessible Key West was the life of the party.

Where mangroves, scrub and vines once grew thick, the modern-day world has sprouted and flourished like kudzu. The call of sea gulls has been drowned out by the high-pitched growl of myriad scooters; the scent of low tide replaced by acrid exhaust fumes. Tourists in SUVs have replaced the thousands of flamingos that once inhabited the island (and some here would argue that the tourists are the more colorful of the two species). Cruise-ship passengers, delivered by megaships, are more numerous than the depleted queen conch, once harvested by the thousands just offshore.

Buildings on Duval and other historic streets house highfalutin boutiques, gay cabarets, nouveau restaurants, kitschy museums and souvenir shops. Gingerbread-trimmed Old Town homes are marketed as "livable renovation projects" to buyers who pay $600,000 or more a pop. Dumpsters filled with debris sit at curbs crumbled under the weight of construction trucks.

In the island's midsection, away from the north Duval Street whirl, bungalows glow with buffed-up cottage charm, transformed into Better Homes and Gardens spreads with garden arbors, flagstone patios and rainbow garden flags. Waterfront behemoths such as the Doubletree Grand Key Resort and the historic Wyndham Casa Marina Resort have dug deep in the island's ancient coral crust. They offer pool bars, umbrella drinks and a slice of skin-deep island paradise. Guesthouses and bed-and-breakfast inns, fringed by lush gardens of lady palms, frangipani and bougainvillea, have taken root in Old Town, offering antiques, intimacy and sideboard-heavy breakfasts.

One wonders what Hemingway would think of the place today, with its T-shirt shops, "go cups" of alcohol and Conch Tour Trains.

In one long, breathless paragraph in his novel To Have and To Have Not (1937), Hemingway poetically described his adopted hometown:

"The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grits and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban bolito houses, shacks whose only romance was their names; .|.|. a filling station and a sandwich place, bright-lighted beside a vacant lot where a miniature golf course had been taken out; past the brightly lit main street with the three drug stores, the music store .|.|. three poolrooms, two barbershops, five beer joints, three ice cream parlors, the five poor and the one good restaurant, two magazine and paper places, our second-hand joints (one of which made keys), a photographer's, an office building with four dentists' offices upstairs, the big dime store, a hotel on the corner with taxis opposite; and across, behind the hotel, to the street that led to jungle town, the big unpainted frame house with lights and the girls in the doorway, the mechanical piano going, and a sailor sitting in the street; and then on back, past the back of the brick courthouse with its clock luminous at half-past ten, past the whitewashed jail building shining in the moonlight."

Neighborhood changes

Hemingway's Key West is still here, a hairbreadth from Duval and its tourism, palpable in such places as shabby chic Bahama Village, which creeps up on Whitehead Street from its perch aside the tony condos and homes of Truman Annex on the island's southwest elbow.

In the village, red-combed roosters and glossy brown hens scratch the dirt under glass-topped tables at Blue Heaven restaurant, where diners sit outdoors under massive oaks. Nearby, tiny white tin-roofed cigar-worker houses with louvered window and weedy lots shimmy up to narrow streets.

Afro-Cuban and Bahamian immigrants, who came to the island to make cigars and salvage ships wrecked on the island's coral reef, once lived here. Their ghosts may walk, but maybe not for much longer. Gentrification, having overtaken other Old Town neighborhoods, is slowly pervading this last outpost. Evidence is found in newly renovated bungalows and the new construction of Truman Annex, once a naval installation, now row upon orderly row of townhouses with tile floors and crown molding. Near Blue Heaven, the Lemonade Stand Studio has taken over a squat building at 227 Petronia, where walls hold clouded skies, surreal sunsets and angular portraits.

Still, at the Caribbean House bed and breakfast a few doors down on Petronia, guests can laze on the narrow pink-trimmed front porch and raise their mojitos to the fact that they're experiencing a little of what Key West used to be. Land of free spirits

Despite its trendy glow, Key West wears a historic rawness. It's still a liberal place, one that takes pride in leniency. The welcome mat is out: Come on down, and don't forget to bring your quirks.

The faces may have changed, but Key West's cast of characters remains largely the same. The band of revelers at Sloppy Joe's at Duval and Greene still raise cups filled with beer and hard liquor, toasting life, liberty and the pursuit of heavy libation. The resident "Conchs," bred and born here, gather in open-air bars on the historic waterfront, the Bight, cherished by poet Bishop. Better yet, they patronize places farther from the tourist crowd, such as the Hogfish Bar & Grill on neighboring Stock Island.

Free spirits are here in spades, sunbathing nude on Atlantic Shores Resort's clothing-optional deck, popping their tops for cheering Duval Street crowds, betraying themselves with the biting fumes of pot smoked on side streets.

Gay and lesbian couples walk hand in hand, embracing among the Old Town crowds, enjoying a game of bingo or a drag show that might feature Cher and Marilyn Monroe lookalikes. Many have made their homes here since the island surged into the gay limelight in the 1970s. And many, sadly, have died here, their names etched in the granite of the Key West AIDS Memorial at the White Street Pier.

During daylong port calls, Old Town becomes the shopping equivalent of a legal smash and grab as passengers pour off the day's megaship. Streets snarl with crowds; shops, restaurants and bars brim, cash registers jingle. Screeching laughter, whining scooters and pumped-up rock 'n' roll hang in the air above brick streets. They're here to par-TEE!, lured by the town's reputation as a whirl of every kind of excess, whether it be eating, drinking or shopping.

Festival of flavor

Dining is delightful, an indulgence, an adventure. There is chef Alice Weingarten's "New World Fusion Confusion" cuisine at Alice's Key West; "Conch Fusion" at Hot Tin Roof; "Floribbean" at Mangoes.

Off the beaten path, pulled pork melts in the mouth at Meteor Smokehouse on Southard Street. Family-run El Siboney on Catherine Street is known for Cuban food.

For drink, there are many places, some legendary, some hoping to be. There is the Hog's Breath Saloon, much touted on billboards on U.S. Highway 1's long, straight approach to Key West, and the Green Parrot, with its place in history as Key West's oldest continually operating bar. Sloppy Joe's lays claim to Hemingway, who did drink at Joe's, but not in its present location. That honor would go to a dark cave of a place on Greene Street, now Capt. Tony's Saloon, where women have been known to leave inhibition behind along with their bras, which dangle in C-cup testimony from its low ceiling.

Shoppers find unique jewels, adult toys and tropical-print fashions among chichi housewares, art galleries and shops selling fine wine. Cheap souvenirs are plentiful near the cruise-ship pier, where polished shells clutter waist-high bins; tiny plastic, bug-eyed fish swim in the blue water of snow domes; and glossy postcards display muscle-bound men in postage-stamp Speedos. It's the sentiment that counts: Don't you wish you were here?

Near Mallory Square, famous for its sunset celebration, tourists board caterpillar Conch Trains, which pull from the curb amid corny jokes and island history told over a tinny PA system. It is Key West, past and present, in a smattering of stand-up sound bites.

But in a town whose dead rest on hallowed ground pecked by errant chickens, where New Year's is marked by the Red High Heel Drop, where the lackadaisical Keys Disease strikes hard and fast, it is the voice of Jimmy Buffett, that poet of escapism, pouring into the street from a bar that best defines the Key West moment:

"Wasted away again in Margaritaville, Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt. Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, But I know it's nobody's fault."

Lisa Roberts can be reached at lroberts@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5598.