Thought I Could Escape Myself By Just Not Getting Dressed

I have a job that sends me to various conferences and seminars that are supposed to make me a better, smarter, more productive employee. Like most of you, I find these meetings generally make me a more slovenly, drunken, likely-to-pull-off-a-strippers-pasties-with-my-teeth kind of employee. I am reasonably sure that is not why my organization sends me to places like Key West, but they did. Before we get to the things you need to know about Key West, I’ll raise a question that’s raised at almost every warm-climate seminar/retreat/meeting that has ever occurred: why, if we’re meant to be focusing on work and concentrating on bettering ourselves, are these meetings held in warm, sunny, beautiful climates with literally thousands of more fun things to do than attend meetings? Seriously, you want me to focus on the importance of Web 2.0 to advance grassroots outreach when there’s three-quarters naked women five hundred feet away and 200 bars within walking distance? Not to mention golf, snorkeling, and fishing? Really? Yes, by all means spend over $1,500 in company funds to send me to that. Good planning.

Anyway, here are some important things to remember if you plan to go to Key West.

1) There are roosters everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I had been to Key West before but don’t think I realized just how many freaking roosters there were. There is a big difference between Key West roosters and the kind you find on a farm – farm roosters seem to have some semblance of a sense of time, i.e., they crow primarily at dawn. Key West roosters are apparently, like the rest of us on the island, very drunk. They crow at all hours. I was fortunate to have a hotel room that overlooked the beach; those with a room overlooking the city were awakened at all hours by the horrendously loud screeching of intoxicated roosters. The worst part is walking home from Duval Street to the hotel at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and seeing them scurry across the street, sometimes two or three at a time, and crowing from behind fences. Muggers and rapists I can deal with. Chickens frighten me.

2) There are cats everywhere. You all know the story of Hemingway and his six-toed cats, and how they’ve basically inbred like Winchendon schoolchildren and have essentially taken over the island. Hemingway’s house itself still has about sixty cats on the premises, but strict measures are taken to ensure they don’t breed. Not so much for the hundreds of other ones that run around the city. Points one and two should lead to an obvious question – why don’t the cats eat the damn roosters? No one could give me an explanation for this, beyond one local who said that a full-grown rooster could easily kill a cat by methodically pecking it to death. I was seriously hoping they had a bar exculsively for cat/rooster fights, but ironically, that's apparently the one fetish they don't cater to in Key West.

3) Hemingway’s house is bizarre. For one of the most popular tourist attractions in southern Florida, its curator appears to be a seventy year-old kindergarten teacher, judging by the way things are randomly and haphazardly stuck to walls, thrown in display cases, or framed and put on historic pieces of furniture. A good example – a display case that purported to contain Hemingway’s boots and saddlebags contained only a large photo of two unidentified children. However, a small placard still sat on the case that read “BOOTS AND SADDLEBAGS,” leading a colleague of mine to say “wow, those are HORRIBLE names for children.” You get great Hemingway stories from the tour guides though – right near the $20,000 pool that he never wanted (the house itself only cost him $8,000) is a fountain that is clearly made out of a urinal. Legend has it that when Sloppy Joe (more about him in a second) was renovating his bar, he threw out the urinals and Hemingway took one, saying that he had flushed so much of his money down it over the years that he had more than paid for it.

One final note about the Hemingway house – they don’t like you to take pictures of Gumby next to the cats. This will make sense when I actually post the picture of Gumby on the couch with one of the cats. The cats, in most cases, are treated infinitely better than the tourists.

4) There are lots of bars. Here’s how to tell a respectable city from a plain ole drinkin’ city. Where do you go to drink in New Orleans? Miami? How about Key West? Odds are you said “Bourbon Street,” “South Beach,” and “Duval Street” relatively quickly. Now, what about Chicago? Orlando? See, the good drinkin’ cities have designated places where you just know to go. The good thing about Key West is the best bars on the island (Sloppy Joe’s, Hog’s Breath, and Irish Kevin’s) are within about four blocks of each other on Duval Street. So are the crappy bars and strip clubs. Most of the restaurants too. My personal favorite eatery was called "Crabby Dicks," and we were sure to tell our cab driver we wanted the restaurant, not the medical condition. There is an unmistakable laid-back quality to Key West bars as well – on a normal night on Bourbon Street the police presence is unmistakable. In Key West you never see a cop because it's impossible to be in a bad mood with incredible sunsets and beautiful blue water, and if you really need to take out your aggressions on something you can kill a rooster.

5) Frozen Key Lime Pie Dipped in Chocolate On A Stick. I capitalize it because it is that good. Last time I was in Key West we went with the Blonde Giraffe, which is fanastic. This time, however, the locals turned me on to a place called Kermit’s. Now, I consider myself something of a culinary expert, especially when it comes to food that is frozen, dipped in chocolate, and served on a stick. However, I admit that I have not tasted all of the world’s finest cuisine. But now I don’t need to. I can say, even without having sampled all the evidence, that man has achieved no greater accomplishment in the advancement of food than Kermit’s Frozen Key Lime Pie Dipped in ChocolateOn A Stick. There is simply no way that anything could exist that is better. If food is hardworking, team-oriented linebackers, than Kermit’s is Tedy Bruschi.

Unfortunately, the conference I was attending will be in Tampa next year. Fortunately it will be three days after the Super Bowl, which means I’ll be finding a reason to get down there early. Field research or some such crap. Now THAT will be a blog entry.