The first few times I made the trip south from Miami was with Linda in 1978 and 79, late to the scene, but well before Key West became a cruise ship port o'call disgorging thousand of voracious tourists a day, and turning Duval Street into a tropical shopping mall lined with Tee shirt shops selling cheap shit from China and faux Hemingway hangouts selling expensive neon colored drinks to middle aged couples in search of authenticity. Not saying I hit the glory years, but in '78 and '79 Key West was still a raunchy sexually tropical wild west we were there, where after 3 or 5 cheap drinks all hell broke loose. Wasn't shooting much at that time, so the only photos I have are the ones in my head of Linda and I drunk and stumbling down Duval from one of the ubiquitous peep shows to the next, grabbing a booth, dropping in a few quarters and having a go at it along with the fellow travelers on the screen sharing our passions. That was then, and this is now...
The road from Miami to Key West is 160 miles. I know that because that's what it says at the Midway Cafe where we stopped for a coffee, but it was closed for the day, which is often the case for us...
But now I am an just another existentially attenuated old hobo seeking comfort in the past, seeing myself in the rest of the tourists wandering down a different Duval Street than I remember, and not liking what I see.
But as I always like to say, if you get even one good photo, its been a great day, so in addition to having a pretty great taco somewhere I can't remember at the moment, I got this nice picture of the Strand at the far end of Duval...
Pablo
