This past summer I got a phone call from a customer who lives up north in a tourist town. She said her business was decimated by the pandemic shut down. She told me she thought it was a hoax. She did not know anyone who had caught it or died. I told her it was real - that my niece died of it in May and that a friend from the Midwest passed that same week. She questioned me to ask if I was serious. I was, I said.
Living in Key West during the lock down brought back memories of old Key West before the huge surege in tourism in the mid 1990s. I remember driving south on Simonton Street around 4:00 PM one day. There was not one car from Truman where I turned east until I neared Reynolds Street. That's about ten blocks or so. The tourists returned and so did the golf carts, motor scooters, and Conch Trains and Trolley Cars. I remember driving down Duval Street where I observed more tourists not wearing masks than those who wore them even though mask wearing is required to enter any business.
Because the Covid 19 pandemic is raging out of control across the country and especially in Florida, the City of Key West adopted an emergency directive for a curfew in order to avoid a public health emergency during the New Year's holiday.
