The greeter at the Blue Heaven led me through the open courtyard’s seating area toward the enclosed dining room.
The courtyard was crowded with diners. There was a wait at the bar for tables. There was a buzz.
But the dining room was buzzless. Some tables were empty.
Was I missing The True Blue Heaven Experience?
“Well, maybe,” the greeter said. “But some people don’t like the `too much nature’ thing–the chickens and the cats . . .”
Chickens and cats? Just walking around the restaurant?
Can there be a more Key West dining experience than that?
And I was missing it? Buzzless and cluckless?
Ah, but wait . . .
Soon after I was seated at an inside table, a solitary cat found my dining room and sidled up to a woman at the next table whose hand left her girlfriend’s long enough to give the cat a few strokes.
And at the dining room’s little bar, seated confidently on a barstool like a regular, a large black Doberman-like dog calmly lapped ice-water from a salad dish set in front of her. Alongside, also seated on a stool, was a man cutting into a steak.
They were a couple.
“She’s a Bahamian mutt,” the dog’s date said between bites.
Who likes . . . ice-water?
“She likes anything that’s not `doggie.'”
(Inspired in this Land of Famous Writers, I rush to scribble: Guy walks into a Key West bar with his pet. “You serve dogs here?” Bartender says, “Nope. Just grouper, snapper, mahi mahi . . . “)
Key West may not be exactly what it was. Hemingway stopped refereeing boxing matches in what’s now the Blue Heaven’s courtyard 70 years ago. Into the 1980s the town was still a haven for dropouts, dopers, artists and writers and the aggressively non-conventional, and that, in pockets, it remains.
But even here in the Blue Heaven–among the cats and chickens and slurping dogs and same-sex handholders–a symptom of change: a family of 12, all ages, all smiles, beautifully dressed and looking like something out of old-money Winnetka, is celebrating a birthday.
They may even be wearing socks beneath their flip-flops.
Key West, where change is as much a part of its history as pirates, smuggling and hurricanes, is at it again.
“We’re seeing a lot more families,” says Alice Weingarten, the ebullient, much-honored chef/owner of Alice’s Restaurant Key West on the quieter end of Duval Street. She first came here in 1979, opened her restaurant 10 years ago and has seen it happening.
“It’s gearing up toward what everybody says is going to happen in the next two years–that this is going to be like Nantucket, like little places where only the rich can afford to come play.”
Which isn’t altogether bad news for Alice Weingarten, whose dinner entrees hover around $30. It’s sensational news for people who not that long ago bought humble two-bedroom, one-bath “conch houses” for a few thousand bucks and now have them on the market for (and this is not hyperbole) a cool million.
Marginal hotels are being converted into luxury resorts. Rustic lodgings are being converted into luxury inns. There are strong rumors the town’s lone youth hostel is–like a lot of places here–headed toward condo-conversion.
“It’s different now than when I moved here,” says Ray Campbell, 47, a storyteller/guide/poet who leads tours at the Ernest Hemingway House, one of the few unchanged remnants of old Key West. He moved here only four years ago. “A place like this draws people with money that want to make money.”
Fortunately, it still draws people like Ray Campbell.
“I moved down here because I’d been here twice on vacation and just felt at home here, felt I belonged here,” he says. “So I moved down here without a place to live, without a job, didn’t know anybody on the island–and I’ve written more material and better-quality material in the four years here than in any 10 years in my life.”
For those who knew the Key West of yore, whatever yore is theirs, there are other bits of familiarity.
Sloppy Joe’s, the bar where Hemingway famously loitered, is still Sloppy Joe’s. Capt. Tony’s Saloon, which was Sloppy Joe’s before Joe (and the loyal and thirsty Ernest) moved a few yards away in a dispute over rent, is still pouring, though you won’t see any hints of Hemingway.
“Hemingway was here in the ’30s,” says bartender Nate Jones, once of Crystal Lake. “We don’t really care. We’re more famous for Jimmy Buffett getting his start here than Hemingway.”
Once, it was a short walk from Joe’s or Tony’s to the plain concrete pier that, some years ago, became home to jugglers and peddlers and fire-eaters who catered to tourists who gathered to watch the sunset.
It’s still a short walk, but the whole “sunset celebration” thing has been spiffed up and formalized. Cruise ships dock there. Seriously expensive hotel rooms overlook everything, and crafters and performers get their spaces now by lottery. It’s all . . . all so orderly.
“I don’t know where the old pier was anymore,” says Dennis Blankenheim, a youthful, tanned, bearded and long-haired 60, who has been living off his jewelry-making and wits mostly in Key West for 30 years. “I came into town [from Milwaukee] in a bread truck, and they said, `The streets are too small for that big truck–you got to get a bicycle,’ and I went, `Far out . . . ‘
“Back in the ’80s, that was the heyday. I mean, it was a party down here. We were making a lot of money, but we were putting it up our nose.”
Today, Blankenheim and his lady of 25 years own a place across the channel on Stock Island.
“Both of us appreciate that we can invest our money in land,” he says. “You got to acquiesce or die, y’know?”
Speaking of which: The chickens are feeling the heat.
Remnants of an age when islanders kept chickens in backyards and sometimes trained them to maul each other for sport, the fowl roam more or less freely around town. Over the decades they have become as much a part of the Key West ambience as, um, Canada geese on Chicagoland golf courses.
“Some people think they’re a nuisance,” says Kate Thompson, a “chicken lady” at the Chicken Store, a combination hen hospital and source for items like stuffed animals that cluck. “Other people who have been here for awhile, they like them because they’re fun to watch and they eat all kinds of bugs–scorpions, termites, big old cockroaches and things like that.”
City officials–fearing what one instance of chicken-related bird flu would do to local tourism (remember what SARS fears did to Hong Kong and Toronto?)–in mid-April approved a resolution ordering the poultry cooped. Exactly how that’s to be done, given the estimated 3,000 elusive, ownerless critters dashing about, hasn’t been explained.
One solution might be siccing on them the island’s loose and semi-loose cats. Most famously, 39–many with more than the regulation number of toes–currently loll about the Hemingway compound.
“The oldest ever was Ida Lupino,” says Williams. “She lived to be 24 years old. She’s buried at the end of the sidewalk in the cat cemetery with Frank Sinatra, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marilyn Monroe . . .”
So things haven’t gone entirely serious, nor stuffily upscale, in Key West.
One afternoon in a bar on Duval Street, the island’s spinal thoroughfare, an Elvis impersonator is crooning “Cryin’ in the Chapel” at a bar before an audience of four humans and a macaw named Malibu.
Performing down the street that night at the venerable La Te Da cabaret: one Christopher Peterson, who changes gowns onstage (only the wigs are switched in private) as he glides from being Julie Andrews to Reba McEntire to Bette Davis. His impressions aren’t dead-on–his Bette Midler sounds curiously like Vanessa Redgrave on helium–but his jokes are hilarious, none of which can be printed here.
Key West remains a gay mecca. There is no shortage of rainbow flags, and tolerance (evidently unless you’re an uncooped chicken) remains the rule here.
“But actually,” says Alice Weingarten, “Ft. Lauderdale is the gay mecca of South Florida right now. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”
Farther down Duval, two lovely, well-dressed young women–absolutely, they are women, I think–sit on a storefront porch and smile as a gentleman explains either lady is available for not-quite-specified duties at $150 plus tips inside, or slightly more at your place.
And a little farther down Duval: the Chicken Store.
Last October’s Hurricane Wilma, strongest of the seven hurricanes that hit Key West over 2004-2005, took out some piers, stripped trees of foliage and did its share of damage. But today, unless you know exactly where to look, there’s no ruin to be seen. Hemingway’s house was unaffected; Harry Truman’s Little White House (open for tours) remains White and not so Little; few restaurants and bars stopped serving. Days after Wilma passed, storm-weary Florida mainlanders were taking escape weekends here.
“It’s our lifeblood to get up and running,” says Jeff Brannin, general manager of the Heron House, a deluxe bed-and-breakfast a block off Duval. “We had to get it cleaned up and ready to go.”
Which, more than anything, is what Key West has become: cleaned up. Duval Street remains a pretty good party, and at the Green Parrot, not far off the main drag, music still stirs the soul.
But freshly painted charm has overwhelmed the back streets’ comfortable scruffiness. Shorts and sandals are still welcome at the finest restaurants, but more of the shorts are pressed and pleated these days and the sandals are Birkenstocks.
There’s a Denny’s on Duval, and a Hard Rock.
And if you can get a decent room on a Saturday night, be prepared to pay what, in his youth, would have kept Dennis Blankenheim housed, fed and wasted for a month.
What lingers, despite everything, is that indefinable essence that still lures to this place some of the planet’s most interesting people, as it has since Hemingway was here in the ’30s.
“Route 1,” notes poet/guide Ray Campbell, “ends right down here at Fleming and Whitehead. On one side of the street it says, `U.S. 1 ends.’ The other side says, `U.S. 1 begins.’
“For a lot of people, Key West is the end of the road. For a bunch of us, it’s the beginning.”
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IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
It’s possible to fly into Key West. American, Continental and United offer one-stop service out of O’Hare, the stop typically in Miami; figure on paying $450-$475 (subject to change and seasonal fluctuations; fares usually drop as the temperature warms). But most visitors with time will fly into Miami International Airport, rent a car and make the 140-mile, three-plus-hour drive to the end of the Overseas Highway (U.S. Highway 1). Round-trip fares in the Chicago-Miami market can be half Key West fares. Note that in either case, fares are higher and seats more scarce on weekends, when cruise passengers and packagers flood the leisure market. Note also that the drive across the Keys can drag and frustrate–so pack some music, mellow out and remember, there is no shortcut.
GETTING AROUND
Except in summer, when the heat and humidity can wilt a tri-athlete, much of the tourist’s Key West is walkable from any lodgings in the central Old Town. In truth, with attractive side streets and the show that is Duval Street, walking is a treat. Alternatively: Bicycles are popular, and some lodgings offer their own free; rentals, if necessary, run about $15 for 24 hours. Also available: motor scooters (singles about $45/daily; doubles about $75; there are rates for shorter terms) and a variety of modified golf carts (from about $90 for three hours, $150 for 24). Cabs, some of them pink, are rare, but they exist.
For a tour, two options: the Conch Train and Old Town Trolley. The two share price ($25 for the 90-minute circuit), route (mostly) and narration (also mostly); the Trolley has the advantage of on-off privileges and multiple boarding points.
STAYING THERE
Not cheap. Except for midweek in hot-hot season, anything less than $150 a night in Key West is either away from the action or, well, check the room first. Lodging is tight on weekends in all seasons, so book early. Nicest choices for the Key West-charm experience are in the smaller hotels and inns within easy reach of Duval Street. Sampling: A night at the lovely 17-room Gardens Hotel (800-526-2664; www.gardenshotel.com) starts at $265 in-season and rises quickly as beds go from queen-size to king. The Heron House, another attractive property (888-265-2395; www.heronhouse.com), gets $199 for a room with a double bed, minimum $249 for queen or larger. Same class, same neighborhood, similar pricing: the Marquesa Hotel (800-869-4631; www.marquesa.com). Bigger resort hotels near the cruise pier and Mallory Square (the Ocean Key, a Hilton, a Hyatt, the Pier House) have big rates to match; if you want to look at water, expect to pay $400 or more. Nearby but not on the sea, La Concha, a famous old hotel that’s now a Crowne Plaza (800-745-2191; www.laconchakeywest.com), will undergo major renovations over the summer; if you can handle a little dust, rates may be kind.
A mile or so south along Duval and Simonton Streets, near South Beach and some good eats, is another cluster that includes the Southernmost Hotel (which offers a wide range of styles, vintages and prices; 305-296-6577; www.southernmosthotel.com); and two humbler but acceptable options–with decent pools–that share an owner, the Best Western Hibiscus (800-972-5100; www.bwhibiscus.com) and the Blue Marlin Motel (800-523-1698; www.bluemarlinmotel.com). Midrange chains (a Hampton Inn, Courtyard by Marriott, etc.) create a third cluster along U.S. 1 that’s convenient to the charter fishing boats but beyond walking distance to the scene.
DINING THERE
While there is plenty of diversity (Cuban, Italian, Bahamian, Asian, Mexican, more), the dominant theme is fresh seafood. Expect almost every sit-down restaurant to feature fresh yellowtail snapper, mahi mahi, grouper and other local species grilled, blackened, fried, Cajun-style and/or sauced for your pleasure. Plus conch chowder and fritters (the once-native conch now imported from the Bahamas) and endless variations of Key lime pie. Sampled and enjoyed this trip: Alice’s (relaxed-upscale with wondrous combinations; 305-292-5733), Blue Heaven (an . . . experience; 305-296-8666), Alonzo’s Oyster Bar (especially the outdoor marina-view seating; but also check the menu at the upstairs, swankier A&B Lobster House; 305-294-5880 for either restaurant), the conch fritters at two restaurants open to Duval, Mangoes (try both sauces) and Willie T’s (dunk ’em in the curried Key lime sauce), El Meson de Pepe (Cuban specialties at two locations, one at Mallory Square; 305-295-2620 for the Mallory spot), Banana Cafe (terrific breakfasts; 305-294-7227) and Cafe Marquesa (beautiful room, in the hotel, with beautiful food; 305-292-1244). Among a bunch more recommended by people I trust: two Italians on Duval, Opera and Antonia’s; Pisces (seafood) and Cafe Sole (Provence goes to paradise).
INFORMATION
Key West Chamber of Commerce: 800-LAST KEY (800-527-8539), www.keywestchamber.org; or the Monroe County Tourism Development Council, 800-FLA KEYS (800-352-5397), www.fla-keys.com/keywest.
— Alan Solomon
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asolomon@tribune.com
