Travels With Mike

Key West:The party they turned into a town

by Mike Rank | June 14, 2002 Notice the retards in the back who waited in line for ten minutes to take their picture. Don't they look stupid? Buy travel books and more! When Mike hits the road, there's bound to be problems. This last week was no exception. It started with delayed flights and progressed to rental cars with flat tires, hotels who lost my reservation, and rain. Buckets of rain. Big buckets. But why bore you with that when there's so little space to tell you of the wonders of Key West, Florida. For those of you who are as ignorant as I was, the land mass of Florida is encrusted with a small number of islands that house the rich people or party animals along its perimeter. Along the Eastern coast, you have to cross over bridges to get from the mainland to the beach, the interim liquid being a rather placid body of sea water where boaters and manatees hang out. Manatees are giant swimming creatures which look like a cross between Homer Simpson and a Hippo. They are stupid, prone to being hit by boats and they taste like Chicken (so I'm told). The Florida Keys are a smattering of small Islands (or Keys, hence the name) which drip from the southernmost tip of Florida like a string of snot. They are connected by a hundred plus bridges, some a few hundred feet in length and the most massive being seven miles long. That particular concrete behemoth was cleverly named "The Seven Mile Bridge". The Keys are also given interesting names including "Vaca Key" (A favorite for vacationing cows) and "Ramrod Key" (A favorite for vacationing gay men). Driving from the mainland to the final key takes approximately two hours under ideal conditions, taking you past Ocean so blue that you'd never believe I peed in it (again). The final destination was Key West, the Southern Most Point of the United States. In reality, it's less a Key or Island than it is a floating Party Bar. My hotel was conveniently located near Duvall street, a potpourri of touristy shops that are conveniently separated by bars. The most famous of these is Sloppy Joes, a conveniently located corner bar, which was the favorite hangout of Ernest Hemingway. Actually, his favorite hangout was the original Sloppy Joes, a half block away which is now known as Captain Tony's. It's a small bar complete with low ceilings and thick rafters, adorned with business cards from businessmen, pictures of their children they regretfully left behind and brassieres from the women they tried to sack in a sad attempt to regain their youth. Regardless of the time of day, you can find live entertainment somewhere on the main drag. In the afternoon I hit up some Kereokee, which was hosted by a large, sweaty mass who slightly resembled Satchmo. Like all Key West wage slaves, from the tour guides to the gas attendants, he too had a tip bucket and kicked it at me in disgust when it remained empty after he had serenaded myself and the crowd of drunken, middle-aged women with no financial compensation. I made an effort to tip all of the entertainment during the week except for, sadly, the one act I enjoyed the most, a guy in an Irish themed pub who performed for several hours with just his guitar, a microphone and an arsenal of sexual jeers he would throw at unsuspecting women who walked by the stage. No one was safe from his wrath, from the studly guys next to us whom he dubbed "The Spice Boys" to the patriarch of a vacationing crowd of elderly couples who he referred to as "Old Man River". All ages simmered together in a alcohol and insult based dish, singing along to rap tunes set to guitar, including a jam session with Old Man River jumping on stage to sing backup, drunkenly stammering out "...with my mind on my money and my money on my mind...". I was so enthralled with the crowd and the atmosphere that I failed to notice the guy next to me, who was trying to negotiate a kiss from my girlfriend in exchange for a set of beads. I sized the guy up and quickly assessed that he had at least a good half a foot in height on me. It was his good fortune that I'm a lover, not a fighter. Instead of giving him the pummeling he deserved, I grabbed the sides of his head with the Rank fists of fury, pulled him in for a headbutt and kissed him on the cheek. He stared at me for several seconds, visibly stunned, before pulling the beads over his head and placing them over mine. Guys dig me. During the day I entertained myself with snorkeling in the morning, parasailing in the afternoon and a big fat nap in the evening. Snorkeling is fantastic, as they have the worlds third largest reef just an hours boat ride from the coast. There's a large, painted hunk of metal commemorating the point on the Island where you are officially at the Southern Most Point. There was a line of retards who were waiting to have their pictures in front of the thing. Taking a cue from my mother during her photo excursion in Hawaii, I stood just to the side of the thing and had my picture snapped immediately. I've attached it for you, showing my tribute to the retards in the background who wasted valuable time of their life waiting for the same stupid picture I took without the wait. Retards aside, there are two types of people in Key West; those who are on vacation and those who came down on vacation and never left. Those who never left found their niches as diving instructors, musicians or artists. The artists are the most annoying of them all. The streets are littered with idiots who were led to believe fashioning hats and potholders from palm fronds is a respectable trade. The smart entrepreneurs have taken to filling coolers with beer and selling it. It seems to be a sellers market out there, as the relaxed atmosphere has permeated the brains of the legitimate shop keepers to the point of lethargy. We were hesitant to enter one store as the sign read "CLOSED" although it was one in the afternoon. When we informed the shopkeeper of the sign, she looked up from her magazine and remarked that something should be done about that. Yes, something should. But instead of doing something, I left. It was time. In order to make it to the Gator farm first thing in the morning, we stayed in Key Largo, the first of the Florida Keys. We stayed in one of the worst hotels ever, which advertised a tiki bar that consisted of a cooler full of beers and some picnic tables covered with palm leafs. Dinner was at a Mexican restaurant across the bridge where the waitress didn't understand English or Spanish very well. Walking home, we were assaulted by mosquito's which attempted to suck us dry. Two weeks later, my legs are still scabbed and welted. It was a classic end to a great trip.