Key West, Florida: The Sweetest Do Nothing Contrived.

"I never thought of like as being breezy. I never thought of time as time to play. I never thought that I could take it easy. But all those feelings changed for me today."

--Jimmy Buffet

It is 6:00 a.m. and we are awakened by the sounds of roosters crowing. The brightness of the morning sun filters through the cracks of the wooden shutters. Anxious to greet the day, we wipe the sleep out of our eyes and stumble across the street to Pepe's for fresh apple bread and coffee. After breakfast, we amble over to the docks to watch seagulls circle for prey, pelicans dive bomb for fish, and shrimpers head out to sea. Then we explore the neighborhoods off Duval Street, admiring the New Orleans-style houses adorned with big porches, shuttered windows, and verandas. We pass by several buildings with commemorative signs proclaiming "On this site in 1897 nothing happened." Before long it is time for conch chowder and a beer. Without saying it, we are all thinking the same thing. This is the life.

In the 1500s, Spaniards named what we know today as Key West, "Cayo Hueso," the Island of Bones. Historians speculate that if there was any truth to the matter, the bones probably were the remains of Calusa Indians, Florida's first people. In the 1700s, the British changed the word "Hueso" to "West." Then, in 1822, disenchanted with the heat, mosquitoes, and limited supply of fresh water, Key West's Spanish owners sold the island to an American, John Simonton, for $2,000. Soon thereafter, the Stars and Stripes were raised over Key West, and the Navy quickly established a base nearby to protect the southern flank of the United States from marauding pirates and other intruders.

Once the pirates were eliminated, hurricanes and reefs presented the greatest threat to the region. Hoping to profit from salvaging sunken ships, New Englanders and British loyalists living in the Bahamas moved to Key West, expanding the population from 500 to 3,000. With the construction of lighthouses in the 1850s, shipwreck profiteering was quickly replaced by sponge harvesting. Sponging was replaced in turn by cigar manufacturing, ignited by a rapid influx of Cuban immigrants in the 1870s. By the 1880s, Key West was the richest city per capita in the United States.

Unfortunately, the town's good luck was short-lived, and by the 1930s Key West had become the poorest city in the United States. The Navy and Coast Guard set sail, cigar manufacturing wafted away to Tampa, and the sponge industry had long since dried up. The town was now at the mercy of the state of Florida. On orders from the governor, the city's problems were assigned to Julius Stone, the New Deal's Federal Relief Administrator in Florida. After visiting the dilapidated town, Stone concluded that Key West's salvation would be tourism. He organized a volunteer work force to clean the place up, and he employed federal funds to subsidize air service and the renovation of houses and hotels.

Stone's efforts helped turn Key West into a popular vacation destination. Tourists poured in as the local Conchs opened up their homes to visitors. The residents prospered until the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 when the railroad linking the Keys with Miami was blown away. It was not until World War II that things began to perk up again, only to be followed by another reversal of fortune. The poet Robert Frost captured the seesaw effect when he wrote, "It is a very, very dead place because it has died several times. It died as a resort of pirates, then as a house of smugglers and wreckers, then as a cigar manufacturer, then as a resort boomtown." Signs of tourism's return were evident by the 1950s when buildings were razed to accommodate increasing demand for vacant lots. More and more people were finding life in the slow lane appealing.

Summer Without End

There is a magical allure to Key West. Poet Wallace Stevens described it as a "summer without end." It has attracted not only tourists, but also writers, artists, and musicians. It is, according to one local observer, "an ideal place for writers, and more arrive each season, some 50 by last count--seven of them Pulitzer Prize Winners--making Key West their home for at least part of the year." Among them have been Truman Capote, John Hersey, and Gore Vidal. By all accounts, Ernest Hemingway did his best writing here, churning out A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, and For Whom the Bell Tolls in a nine year stretch during the 1930s. More recently, country songwriter turned calypso poet, Jimmy Buffett, moved from Nashville to Key West, where he captivated the imaginations of people seeking their own "Margaritaville."

Artists continue to find inspiration in Key West, but today it is a primarily a tourist town. Its live-and-let-live atmosphere attracts people of all persuasions, and its tropical latitude lends itself to a laid-back attitude. While Key West's residents number 28,000, 1.5 million outsiders visit each year. They snorkel the reefs, fish the waters, lay on the beaches, tour Hemingway's home and President Truman's "Little White House," visit shipwreck museums, watch street entertainers while waiting for the sunset on Mallory Square, eat seafood and key lime pie, and hang out at bars like Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's into the wee hours of the morning. The Chamber of Commerce does its part by hosting a variety of celebrations throughout the year, including the Halloween Fantasy Fest, Conch Republic Days, and Hemingway Days, when droves of old men with white beards invade the island to vie for the coveted Hemingway look-alike title.

Key West is touted frequently as an alternative to the "rat race." Indeed, some Key West residents are tourists who never left. It appeals to people who want to leave the country without actually leaving the country. It is the southernmost outpost in the continental United States--the end of the line. After Key West, there is no place left to go. In The Mango Opera, Tom Corcoran describes living in Key West as an experience in which "you become lulled into the idea that you are removed from the real world, in both a philosophical and geographical sense." Others have described Key West as "an urbane, isolated, free wheeling, lighthearted, gossipy, and eccentric town. There is a sense of adventure here, of excess and individuality." It may be the perfect place for the harried individual seeking a respite from the pressures of everyday life.

If leisure is a comforting state of mind ... a relaxed attitude ... a snail's pace, then no wonder Key West is seen by many of its devotees as the epitome of leisure. To them, it is the antithesis of the "rat race," the "treadmill," the "squirrel cage." There is not much call for timepieces in Key West. Agendas are few and far between. Attention is centered on the here and now. There is ample time for people watching, window shopping, reading, and walking.

To its detractors, on the other hand, Key West is Sodom and Gomorrah, a hedonistic hideout for eccentrics, misfits, and outcasts from society who don't fit in the real world. It is a place to lick their wounds and take solace in the bottle. There is nothing worthwhile to do in Key West. Nothing productive. Just a lot of people sitting around, drinking, and talking.

Well, which is it? A haven for people who can't make it in the outside world, or a haven for people who have decided the outside world isn't worth making it in? Do the rest of us know something these Conchs don't? Or do they know something we don't?

Still, all is not paradise in Key West. Although tourism funnels millions of dollars into the economy each year, its exponential growth has resulted in many changes scorned by those devoted to preserving the island community's charm. As the local rags proclaim, "tourism is the talk of the town, debated on breezy Conch porches in Key West, on fishing docks and in dive shops, and up the island chain to Craig's Restaurant in Islamorada." But their concern is not new. In a letter to an acquaintance several years ago, playwright Tennessee Williams bemoaned that "Key West is becoming a big-time place in a small way. Holiday Inns and McDonalds." Others lament that "unwittingly, the golden goose of tourism is degrading the quality of the environment by using resources and triggering the construction of hotels, shopping areas, and other developments that erase more of the city's dwindling green spaces." Still others decry that Key West "has lost its backwater charm"--a charm that is now packaged for popular consumption.

Success Generates Problems

The tidal wave of tourism has created a dilemma for locals. It has always been difficult to make a living in Key West. Now, approximately 80 percent of Key West's residents work in the service industry earning an average of $7.00 per hour. Whereas a decade ago small houses sold for $30,000 to $40,000, today they sell for upwards of $200,000, making it difficult for natives to stay in the community they grew up in. As one critic puts it, "with cruise ships taller than the city's tallest building pulling into port and dropping off 600,000 people annually, and rented mopeds buzzing like incessant mosquitoes, the locals feel suffocated and fear they already have lost much of the serenity they had sought."

The success of tourism in Key West has thus generated its own set of problems. Hemingway foresaw them in To Have and Have Not in 1937 when he wrote:

   "What they're trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can
   burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town.
   That's what I hear. I hear they're buying up lots, and then after the poor
   people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they're
   going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists."

The economic boost that tourism brings to communities like Key West frequently has the unintended side effect of displacing low-skilled local workers who do not possess the financial resources to benefit from the expanding economy. This triggers an unfortunate pattern of invasion and succession. The "haves" drive the "have nots" out of their own community. At the same time, the "have nots" depend on the "haves" to make the local economy viable. This was the predicament faced by Hemingway's protagonist Harry Morgan in To Have and Have Not. How could he make ends meet in Key West when he was surrounded by hordes of wealthy outsiders? While Harry Morgan's story did not have a happy ending, city planners now proceed on the faith that contemporary tourism development in Key West will lead to a better life for Conchs and tourists alike.

What does the future hold for Key West? It's hard to say. Many old-timers, disillusioned by the changes occurring around them, are moving on to places farther south still, places like Costa Rica. To them, Key West has lost its essence, its aura of adventure and romance. They feel Key West is less authentic than it used to be. Others brood over the prospects of a post-Castro Cuba, only 90 miles away. Will there be a mass exodus of Cubans to Key West? If so, what might that mean for the Conch Republic?

Something Still Worth Savoring

It is only human to want our favorite places to remain just like they were when we first discovered them. This "last settler syndrome" belies the fact that our discovery most likely changed those places for all who discovered them before us. In a fundamental sense, we are all responsible for changes that others find unwelcome.

While the changes that have taken place in Key West over the years trouble many "old salts," thousands upon thousands of others still find something here worth savoring. There aren't many places left where you can wear short pants, polo shirts, and sandals all the time; where you can enjoy year-round warm weather without leaving the country; where you can escape the frenetic pace of city life, slow down, and inhale the fragrant sea air. To be sure, much of Key West's charm has been lost to commercialism and crowding, but there remains enough of what Wallace Stevens once called "the real thing" in Key West for it to lay claim yet to the title, "the sweetest do nothing contrived."

Key West, Florida is one of the best known tropical locales, famous as both a holiday getaway and as a haven for artists and eccentrics. But with rising popularity come the difficulties of managing growth, protecting the environment, and maintaining a small-town atmosphere. How can Key West welcome tourists and their precious dollars while solving these problems? Check out "Key West, Florida: The Sweetest Do Nothing Contrived," by Daniel Dustin, Ph.D., Alexis McKenney, Ed.D, and Robert Wolff, Ph.D., who serve in the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation of the College of Education at Florida International University.