by Dave Barry
Krane publishes an online arts and entertainment newsletter called The Blast, which is rich with information about Key West’s many cultural goings-on. Despite the impression you may have gotten from this chapter, Key West is not just people getting drunk and/or naked. There’s also a vibrant cultural scene—art galleries, literary events, music, dance, theater and more—although these things are generally overlooked by uncultured lowlifes such as I.
Ed Krane is a big promoter of the cultural scene, which is partly why he’s running for mayor. Our interview takes place on a patio behind George’s house. Krane, a trim, boyish man of sixty-three, is wearing jeans and a T-shirt that says ED KRANE FOR MAYOR.
Krane is originally from New York. He’s had a number of careers, including selling computers and managing hotels. He also managed nightclubs, and in the eighties was special-events director at the Palladium, the nightclub owned by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. He moved to Florida in the nineties and has lived in the Keys for over a decade. He has two opponents for the mayor job: the incumbent, Craig Cates, who’s a retired powerboat racer and auto-parts store owner, and Randy Becker, who’s a Unitarian Universalist minister.
Krane hands me a campaign flyer listing “some of my platforms.” These include:
Insure that Key West is known for more than our great night life and partying; with major focus on insuring promotion of the arts.
Clean up areas including Duval Street.
I ask him if cleaning up Duval wouldn’t hurt the Key West economy, seeing as how the businesses there employ bartenders, waiters, cooks and literally thousands of singers who sound like Jimmy Buffett.
“I don’t mean clean it up emotionally,” says Krane. “I mean clean it up physically. It’s disgusting.” He proposes, among other things, to “spruce it up with plants and flowers.” He says he still wants fun-seekers to come to Duval, but “we also need to market to people who appreciate the arts. We need both. Key West should be known for its cultural history.”
I wish him well with his campaign, but I am doubtful. I think the main result of putting plants and flowers on Duval would be that people would see them as a handy place to urinate. For most visitors, Key West is a party town. That’s its heritage. I don’t think it will change much. And, to be honest, I don’t want it to.
It’s another nice day, so I put the convertible top down for the drive back to Miami on the Overseas Highway. En route, George gets an email on his phone from a friend, sending him a link to a Miami Herald story about an incident that took place in Key West last night, while we were cruising around. George reads me the story, which begins:
“‘A retired Massachusetts lawyer vowed to make a citizen’s arrest on Wednesday against a Key West stripper when she would not have sex with him or return money he paid her, according to police.’”
This happened at a club called Living Dolls. The police report says that the lawyer became “enraged” when an officer refused to help him get his money back. He told the officer he’d return later to make a citizen’s arrest, then finally “stormed off with an unsatisfied attitude.”
It occurs to me that this incident will probably be viewed as another one of those only-in-Florida stories—Retired Lawyer Wants to Make Citizen’s Arrest on Stripper—that cause the rest of America to ask, “What is WRONG with you people down there?” But as I noted way back in the Introduction to this book, a lot of those stories—like this one—involve people who came here from somewhere else. They keep coming and coming, because it’s warm, because it’s wild, because it’s weird, because whatever. People keep coming to Florida, and things keep happening here.
And I love it.
That’s what I’m thinking as George and I motor toward Miami, with the sun glinting off the water on both sides. I love this crazy state. I loved it before, but now, having traveled around researching this book, I love it even more.
If you’ve never been down here, you should check it out sometime. Plan to stay a while, because there’s more—much more—to see than just what’s in this book. Get in a car and drive around. See the sights and view the vistas, the water, the sky. Watch the critters, and the people. Taste the flavors, smell the aromas, listen to the sounds, feel the vibes. Maybe have a few cold refreshing beers.
Take your time. It’s a big place.
And if you can’t figure out how to leave: Welcome home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Tim Dorsey, who knows more about Florida weirdness than anybody, for steering me to some of the places I visited in researching this book. I thank Jeff Whichello for his expertise on the dwindling but defiant community of Ochopee. I thank my smart and funny colleague Lesley Abravanel for enabling me to become the oldest living human ever to get into LIV. Thanks also to my cousin-in-law Ron Ungerman, who is always up for an adventure, even if it involves machine guns. And thanks to my friend George Pallas for sacrificing his time and brain cells to spend a day and night with me attempting to drink all the beer in Key West. We failed, but, dammit, we tried.
As always I am grateful to my amazing assistant, Judi Smith; any mistakes in this book are totally her fault. Thanks to my fierce yet loving agent, Amy Berkower, who should be running the country; and to my editor and literary mentor, the avuncular yet studly Neil Nyren.
I thank my amazing wife, Michelle Kaufman, for letting me traipse around Florida researching this book, and for not getting mad when all I brought her back was a sponge.
Finally, I thank my readers, who keep me from going sane.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Barry’s most recent bestselling books include Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster), You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty, Insane City, I’ll Mature When I’m Dead, and his Peter Pan prequels, written with Ridley Pearson. From 1983 to 2004, Barry wrote a weekly column for The Miami Herald that in 1988 won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He lives in Coral Gables, Florida.
1. Some historians believe it comes from the Shawnee expression “ho’o-sa’ars,” or “people who cannot explain their nickname.”
2. Mr. Ice avoided grand theft charges by agreeing to pay a fine and do community service. He said it was all a “misunderstanding,” and I, for one, believe him. Who among us has never mistakenly taken a pool heater? Many’s the time I have emptied my pockets and said, “Where the heck did THAT come from?”
3. It’s also the state where two men attempted to transport a live shark on Miami’s downtown People Mover during rush hour, but I covered that in another book.
4. I totally made this fact up, but I bet it’s true.
5. Assuming she is married. To a man. Which, of course, she does not have to be.
6. As opposed to the penis of the adult female elk.
7. “That spider is the size of a catcher’s mitt.”
8. To clarify: The settlers had the hoes. The alligators had machetes.
9. Probably laced with grapefruit juice.
10. Fact: In Cape Canaveral, coconuts fall up.
11. We are using “sleepy” in the sense of “not too bright.”
12. This fact is actually true.
13. Pronounced “Conchs.”
14. One of his tunes is titled “Everybody Fucks.”
15. Ha.
16. One such cocaine bag came down in the city of Homestead, where—this really happened—it interrupted a Citizens Crime Watch meeting being addressed by the chief of police. Another bag dropped from the same plane hit a church.
17. Really.
18 Yes, I have manatee experience.
19. I bet you forgot about the sponges.
20 It is the Route 19 of occupations.
21 John, Chapter 19, Verse 29: Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.
; 22. I am not making any of these sponges up.
23. According to Spongeorama Man, a loofa is not a sponge. It is a vegetable.
24 I’m afraid of lobsters.
25. The Wildwood exit is five miles past the Okahumpka Service Plaza. Really.
26. Yes, I am a white person.
27. The Federal Duck.
28. A mutant form of tennis played on a smaller court, popular with seniors.
29. If you don’t know it, stop reading this and go listen to that song right now.
30. One piece = .7 miles.
31. This is where, in 1987, backed by three other professional newspaper journalists, I performed “The Tupperware Blues” in front of a thousand Tupperware distributors. You missed it.
32. I am kidding, of course. Only if they come back a second time should we kill them.
33. No, I am not being sarcastic.
34. So to speak.
35. Yes, that was me, and I sincerely apologize, now that the Statute of Limitations has expired.
36. Thank you, David Grutman. If I ever own a hot nightclub, you are welcome as my guest anytime.
37. July 3 is also my birthday. Coincidence? I think not.
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