Key West Real Estate Throwback Thursday No. 36

From June 19, 2011

Ï Hope You Are Not French!"

Outside my kitchen window last year - hoping I'm not French

 Many of my readers and customers who send me emails know that I have a terrible sleeping problem which stems from a fall I took a couple of years back while showing a bank owned property in Key West. I ended up in the Lower Keys Hospital with a concussion. I'm okay, now, but I did take a big spill. Damned cheap banks that don't take care of their bank owned homes! Anyway, if you have ever suffered a concussion you know that one of many symptoms can be a sleeping disorder. That is my long term and seemingly ever-lasting legacy of the tumble. For a while a would go to sleep around 6:00 to 7:00 PM and then wake up at midnight or shortly thereafter. Now my sleep is finally getting back to normal but I continue to have regressions to early evening beddy-bye. But I guess I am doomed to be an early riser forever. Last year I awoke way too early. I had already had coffee and decided to make breakfast at a time some Key Westers were probably getting ready to go to bed. I went back into the kitchen and saw the frog shown above. He was clinging to the outside of the kitchen window watching me. I found my camera and took his pic so that I would not forget him. 

A few days ago I was again awake way too early for any sane person. I had left the kitchen door open and a frog had found its way inside the kitchen. He saw me and jumped onto my stove. He was a bit too eager to be eaten in my opinion. Were I French, he would be history. Instead, I decided to ignore him. I poured another cup of coffee, turned out the lights and left him. The next time I returned, the frog was gone and all I had were memories of the tiny creature. Frogs are strange creatures. I guess they are always here, but unless you have a murky pond or needy pool, you just don't see them and certainly don't hear them. But they reappear annually in late Spring. If you are an early riser like me you can hear them croaking come May. I don't recall how long they stay because they just stop their noise and disappear into the flora and fauna only to reappear the following year.

An iguana inspecting my pool

 

I don't want to scare any potential buyers by reporting on the little animals that live here. My experience have been harmless. A few years ago I was having some work done at my house. Two of the workers were from Nicaragua. They saw a 3 foot iguana walking around in the backyard where we were working. They tried to catch it. They couldn't. The lead carpenter was from England. He picked up a large 6" x 6" post and hit the beast on the head, killing him instantly. The time was 11:45 AM. He took the Iguana home at noon. He returned at 12:30 and announced he had thrown the Iguana into a pot and was making Iguana Soup. I wasn't home at the time and would not have allowed that to happen.

Later that day after everyone had left I saw a baby Iguana about 12 inches long walking by my pool. He wasn't even afraid. I thought buddy, you better move or you could get thrown into the pot with your dad. The next day the carpenter retold the story of his slaying the Iguana and reported on what a tasty tail the beast had. "Best Iguana I ever ate", he said.

I live in the Casa Marina area of Key West. My house is four or five blocks from the beach. It's an easy walk or bike ride for me. One Saturday afternoon several years ago I found a large blue crab swimming in my pool. I found an old five gallon bucket and scooped the crab out of the pool and thought the poor thing was lost. So I rode my bike with the bucket-o-crab back to the ocean where I returned him to the sea. Later someone told me the crab was probably horny and was walking around looking for a mate. He said that crabs leave the ocean and move inland when they want to do it. Little did I know I was messing with the crab's sex life. 

One Saturday afternoon I was taking a nap. We had left two packages of baby back ribs on the kitchen counter to defrost. I got up and decided to get them into the oven for a long slow bake. But when I went into the kitchen there was just one package. I looked everywhere. I remember having seen two packages on the counter. I looked in the freezer and the refrigerator. I looked in the oven. I looked high and low throughout the kitchen. I even went outside trying to figure out where the second package could have gone. I could not find it. Our baby back rib night was less filling than planned. Maybe a week later I found the opened cryopak in the back yard. Something had made its way into the kitchen and stole the package and took it outside where it opened the package (taint easy either). The meat was 'all gone'. Nothing left inside the package. The store label identified the package as my stolen dinner. I don't have a dog or a cat. The carpenter that ate the iguana and the Nicaraguans were no longer working at my house. We do have some homeless people that walk the streets from time to time, but they don't come inside my property and surely none of them eat raw pork. I did see a raccoon in my yard once. Maybe he was the culprit. No way to know for sure.

I have a small apartment at the side of my house. A few years ago a really sweet young couple (Sean and Jen) lived there for nearly five years. There was a fish pond near their entrance and that had some creepy fish that lived inside. I decided to clean up the pond, buy a new pump, and make the pond look even better by adding some large Koi. I went to the pet store and bought three good sized Koi and some small feeder fish. I introduced them to the newly cleaned pond and felt proud of myself. Note to self: don't feel proud of yourself because vanity will do you in. The next day I was driving home from work and saw this big egret walking around at the corner. I never see egrets walking around my house. I got worried and ran over to Jen's apartment. She came out and said "Gary, they ate the fish!" My three Koi were gone. I had not created a place for them to hide. Little did I now that egrets had such good sense of sight or smell or whatever it was to find fish in one day. If you are looking for a place in Key West and are up for a little backyard adventure or two, CLICK HERE to search the Key West mls database. See if you find a place that interests you. If you do, please consider contacting me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642. I am a buyer's agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Coastal Realty, Inc. in Key West. I am not French, and I don't eat frog legs or other living creatures that I have found in my yard.

Jail Happenings in Key West

The late night comics, the press, the pundits at FAUX NEWS, The Twitter-verse, and TikTok Creators poke fun of the crazy sh*t that happens in Florida, Last week they took aim at the Key West county jail. Our real jail a few years ago below.

FROM  THE SMOKINGGUN.COM

Florida inmate charged with assaulting his roommate told cops that the victim “farts too much stinking up the cell” and fails to “give a courtesy flush” after using their shared toilet, according to an arrest report. Investigators allege that Christopher Callen, 33, pummeled Amado Dominguez-Quevedo, 57, during a confrontation Thursday night inside their cell at the Monroe County Detention Center in Key West. Callen (seen above) has been jailed since his arrest in late-September for failing to register as a sex offender with Florida officials (he was convicted of a sex offense in Colorado in 2012). Dominguez-Quevedo, locked up on $40,000 bond, has been in custody since his February arrest for aggravated battery and indecent exposure. During an interview at a hospital emergency room, Dominguez-Quevedo said he was cleaning the toilet when Callen grabbed him by the shirt and began punching him in the face and ribs.

Amado Dominguez-Quevedo above.

Readers may recall my recent blog about the County Sheriff letting inmates go free. If you see either the inmates mentioned on the streets of Key West, avoid either at all costs. You may get your face punched or your teeth knocked our or both.

 

ROE v. WADE, FOSS DRUG, and My Former Roommate

It was lunch time in January 1973 when I walked into the Foss Drugstore in Golden, Colorado and learned of the ROE V. WADE decision by the United States Supreme Court. That day was one of those days I will never forget. I knew how controversial the abortion issue was. And I also knew it would give women a safer way of dealing with pregnancy. Today's blog is not to re-litigate the decision but to share a real life story that could have had a different ending were the decision rendered sooner.

I had just passed the Colorado Bar Exam and was waiting to find my first job as an attorney. I was and had been the legal staff assistant to a judge at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Golden. Two years earlier I shared an apartment with a guy I will call Ronald. We were students at the University of Denver Law School. Ronald was pretty good looking. He came from money. His parent s bought him a 1970 Mustang. He always had cash. He had two girls he saw regularly. One girl was kind of frumpy. Ronald told me they had meaningless sex to take care of his needs. He often made derogatory remarks about her but not to her. And he got her to clean our apartment on alternating weekends. I cleaned it when it was my turn.

I will call the other girlfriend Nancy. She also went to DU where she was an undergraduate. She was the daughter of a very prominent trial lawyer who was also a bigwig in the Democratic Party. Really big. Nancy was very sweet, very pretty, and very important to her father and mother.

Ronald and I met at some Democratic Party event in 1966 and became friends. We moved in together in 1969 when we entered DU. The apartment building was located in the Capital Hill area of Denver. It had an indoor pool, sauna, and was very nicely furnished - all for $200 per month or $100 each. We lived there for one year and decided not to renew our lease for a second year. We remained friends. I could not stand how he used people. 

Ronald and I got together sometime the next year when he told me that he and Nancy found out that she was pregnant just a couple days before she was to fly to Paris to attend the Sorbonne. Nancy decided to stop in London before going to Paris where she had an illegal abortion. It went horribly wrong. She ended up in a real hospital. She could never have children. Her parents flew over to comfort her.

Ronald told me Nancy's father met with him and told him he would never practice law in Colorado. I don't think I ever saw or talked to Ronald after that. Nothing judgmental on my part. It just did not happen.

I Googled his name and learned he got a job at some government agency in Washington D. C. I checked back a couple of years ago. I saw where he used to live in Virginia. I say used to live because by then he had passed away of so disease. 

Ronald was an okay person in some ways, but he was mostly a user. A taker. He took Nancy's life without killing her. Things might have been different if ROE v.WADE had been decided earlier. 

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Key West Real Estate Trivial Pursuit - Part Two

Think back at these older  pics of  Key West. Where is/was the house or building located?

EDIT: Since nobody played I will give you the answers.

Number 1 720 Waddell Ave. Casa Marina. Photo taken after Hurricane Wilma - not Irma.

Number 2  1400 Whalton St taken in 2007 the large green lawn is now gone. Two new houses replaced the decades old grass lawn obliterating a Key West landmark property. Shame on HARC.

Number 3   1100 Flagler Avenue  This photo is at least a decade old.

Number 4  1025 Johnson St. Formerly a one floor mid-century modern owned by Aldous Brown. When his life passed away, Aldous came out as gay at around age 88 or so. What a gent he was.

Bonus Points if you know who lived there before...

Number 5 626 William former home of Broadway impresario Jerry Herman (Hello Dolly!) who renovated this home and others together with his partne.

Number 6   418 William Street

Number 8   1012 Southard Street  photo taken 2011 or 2012

Number 9  Gordon Food Service mall at 2508 N Roosevelt  Put the two store signs together to form a single phrase.

I had to stop my car, get out, and photograph this sign.

Number 10   405 Frances St  the site of one of my Key West Real Estate Horror Stories

Number 11   319 Grinnell St. Bank foreclosure with several illegal units including first floor rear that had been "remodeled" and included a totally exposed toilet in the kitchen. Kid you not. During the renovation shown below the house was burned. The fire damage was repaired.

Number 12  Former hospital, then law offices on Eaton Street. I sold this property shortly before Hurricane Wilma. This building is now a part of The Saint Hotel. This was probably the toughest deal I ever did.

Number 13     916 Fleming Street during renovation a decade ago.

Number 14  The Key West trailer was owned by the Catholic Church and located at the corner of Simonton and Virginia. It was populated by big shady trees and some shady people - and nice Key Westers.

Number 15

1212 Olivia Street as it appeared a decade ago. It was the carriage house adjacent to the larger estate next door to the east. It was sold off then foreclosed upon. It appeared in my blog the day it was listed for sale as a bank owned house. A lot of offers were made immediately. Local designer Ben Teague did the redo of this home which subsequently appeared on HGTV.

Number 16

720 Eisenhower Drive photographed in 2006 or 2007 while the old house was being renovated.  The house occupies the entire north side of Petronia Street.

Number 17

The corner of Duval and Petronia Streets. I took the photo in 1985 or 1987. This is what much of Duval Street looked like back in the day. We had lots of Conch cruisers as compared to the SUVs and luxury imports all over the island these days.

3529 Sunrise Drive, Key West, Florida

The lovely home at 3529 Sunrise Drive in Key West was built in 1963 and incorporates many of the styles and trends of that era. I pulled out the WayBack machine and recalled these events that occurred in 1963: the Beatles record their first album Please Please Me in a single session; Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique which re-launched the women's movement; General Hospital and The Outer Limits debuted on ABC and My Favorite Martian premiered on CBS, Leave It To Beaver ended - The Beav grew up; Martin Luther King was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for parading without a license and later issues his Letter From Birmingham Jail; Gary Thomas saw President John F. Kennedy in Berlin; the US, UK, and USSR signed the nuclear test ban treaty; Martin Luther King delivers his I Have a Dream speech from the Lincoln Memorial; instant replay was used for the first time during the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia; John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and three days later Lee Harvey Oswald was killed on live TV.

Events, styles, trends, fads - they all last for awhile and some impacted our lives for years or decades into the future. When you are young, you tend to live in the moment. As you get older, you learn that not everything in the world revolves around you. As you get much older, you may learn that what you do or say or think is of no consequence to anybody else. When you get even older, you disappear. That's sort of what happens to styles, trends and fads-they get ignored or displaced or even replaced. Styles that were hip become passe.

If you are old enough to remember the 1960s you will recall the space race and the New Frontier. You will remember the forward thinking we embraced. Our TV, our culture, our furniture and home goods, and our architecture reflected the hopes and dreams as aspirations of that time. Some homes built then still have fallout shelters a sad reflection of our mass paranoia of that time.

The home at 3529 Sunrise Drive incorporates many of the features found across America in the early 1960s including multiple living levels, large rooms, vaulted ceilings, and large outdoor living areas. But since the house was built in Key West, it has a large pool, tropically landscaped yard, and parking area for the family boat.

The listing Realtor describes the property this way:

"Walled for privacy and lined with lush landscaping this oversized corner lot hosts a 5 bedroom 2 1/2 bath home, large pool, several outside covered seating areas and covered parking. Also room to park your boat and located just down the street from the local boat ramp. Inside you will find vaulted ceilings, many rooms with tongue and groove ceilings, over-sized windows, a family room and den. Plenty of room for entertaining both inside and out. Come add your personal touch and have everything you need in Key West living."

This home is Key West suburban living at its best. This home was built by the lifelong resident of this property. It has been lovingly maintained for decades. You enter in to a formal entry which leads to the formal living area with vaulted tongue in groove wood ceiling the follows through to the sunken formal dining room. I showed this home several times a few years ago when the house was for sale. Potential buyers go distracted by the older style furniture and the animal pelts and heads. Those will disappear and a new owner will have free reign to create a new interior pallet.

When the owners updated the kitchen they kept some of the classic features of the past including the rotary phone and wall radio. They bought a new coil cook-top to replace the original. Of course a new owner could put in a new kitchen with white cabinets and stainless steel Viking appliances. You could. But you don't need to. The family room is a step-down from the kitchen. There is a bedroom and bath beyond. The door at the rear opens out to covered under house parking. Glass sliders in  the kitchen and family room open out to the pool and patio.

This 3,378 square foot home has five bedrooms and three baths on multiple levels. It sits on a large 137.5' X 65' corner lot just a few blocks from the eastern end of the Island of Key West. The houses across the street are located on Rivera Canal and sell for a bout a million dollars or more than the asking price of this property. That is because they are located on the canal. There are umpteen other owners in the area who use the nearby boat launch.

CLICK HERE  to view the Key West MLS datasheet and listing photos of 3529 Sunrise Drive Key West and then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to schedule a private showing. This home is offered for sale at $1,170,000 or $346 per square foot. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.

That Time I Went Postal

It was the summer of 1965 when I went postal when I screamed to high heaven and cried out.

The above photo has nothing to do with me or that era. Obviously. I was a summer employee at the United States Post Office in Boulder, Colorado thanks to the patronage position I got from US Congressman Roy Romer. Earlier that summer I worked as a lineman at the Jefferson County Airport. I fueled small general aviation airplanes. My job paid $1.00 per hour. I had a uniform. That in itself was a first for me. I respected my uniform and was appreciative to have a good paying job for that time. Earlier in my youth I sold all occasion cards door to door; sold Spudnuts door to door; and delivered furniture for Look Furniture Company in Denver. My pay ranged from free merchandise for selling cards, seventy-five cents for selling twelve dozen Spudnuts, and an eventual dollar an hour for delivering furniture.  My job at the airport paid $1 per hour and was a lateral move during the summer before I started college.

Denver experienced the worst flood in its history for four days in June 1965. Several helicopters flew out of the Jefferson County Airport (Jeffco) where I worked. Jeffco was a county airport located about twenty miles northwest of Denver. Several helicopters were using Jeffco for fueling during those four days. I remember the late afternoon when I drove my fuel truck to the helicopter, fueled it, set the brake in my truck, and returned to the office. Shortly thereafter three or four of us in the airport office collectively looked east and noticed the fuel truck had rolled down a slight embankment and struck the helicopter. My heart sank.

We all ran over and I told whoever went inside the truck to check the brake. The emergency brake was set but did not hold. One of the helicopter blades was badly damaged. Later I remember the pilot looking at the damage. I know he blamed me. The only mistake I made was not taking the truck back to where it belonged - maybe a couple of hundred feet away. That is my defense and my excuse. I was not fired.

But I quickly accepted a higher paying job at the Boulder Post Office when it was offered a week or two later. I think I made $2.64 per hour. That was a lot of money then. Do the math. If you ever worked an hourly job, cents matter. I have never forgotten the value of cents.

My job was simple. I picked up canvas bags of envelopes, dumped the contents onto a stainless steel messing table where others workers liked me flipped the mail right-side up and moved it toward the cancelling machine all the time placing the stamp in the lower left hand corner. Later when I was skilled, I got to operate the cancelling machine. I would moved pieces of mail one-at-a-time into the cancelling apparatus which would grab the mail, affix the day and time, and send it on its way. Some other people sorted the mail into outgoing containers. Others sorted local mail for delivery. My job required no skill. I guess I failed at that too because one day, just around noon, I got one of my fingers caught in the cancelling machined. I screamed out in pain. The machine grabbed my finger and would not let it go free.

My supervisor was a short red haired man in his fifties, He ran over, shut off the machine, and got my finger dislodged. It wasn't cut off. I wasn't even bleeding badly - if at all. I don't remember. I was in shock. But I vividly remember my supervisor telling someone to sign me off the clock as we headed out the back door to go to the hospital.

My finger was okay. Nothing was broken. I returned to work the next day and stayed at the Post Office until the week before I entered college. I think that was the last hourly job I ever had. I really liked the men I worked with. They were happy with their lives. There was no muss or fuss or any commotion. Simple routine jobs. 

One final comment about Hurricane Dorian. CNN and the national media has once again scarred the hell out of 20 million people in Florida and their loved ones and others across the world. They all need to chill and wait to go postal about a storm when there is actually a storm coming our way. Twenty million people cannot get in a car and evacuate. Scarring people is not the solution to dealing with bad weather.

527 Fleming Street, Key West - Transient Licensed Property

 

Just Listed by Preferred Properties Key West - 527 Fleming Street, Key West. This historic property is located in the Historic District just one-half block east of Duval Street. While it is referred to as a "mixed-use property" which includes retail space on the first floor, an apartment on the second floor, and a guest cottage with a valuable Transient Rental License at the rear, it has been "home" to the current owners for more than thirty years. If you are a buyer and get a chance to see the inside, you will appreciate the care and attention to detail the owners have put into this property. I say "chance to see inside" for good reason - I expect this property will be purchased within a couple of days of hitting the MLS.

I dug down into my old shoebox and found the three black and white photos above which show 527 Fleming Street in several decades ago. The top photo was taken in 1965.  It shows the house when the second floor front porch was screened. The middle photo was taken in 1940 from the La Conch Hotel looking eastward down Fleming Street.  The bottom black and white was also taken from the La Conch Hotel looking down Fleming in 1965. One of the two houses to the west of 527 Fleming Street was relocated to Key Lime Square in the 600 block of Duval Street.  The eyebrow house presumably relocated to another location. Fausto's Grocery appears for the first time in the lower photo.

The street presence cannot be understated. It is magnificent. This Revival style home is the archetype would-be buyers aspire to own. The first floor has been a needlepoint shop for several years. The interior includes Dade County Pine walls, high ceilings, and two-over-two windows. The original interior staircase was removed years ago. The owners occupy rooms at the first floor rear including a bedroom with French doors that open out to the pool. An exterior staircase was added on the right side of the house which provides access to the apartment on the second floor. There is an interior staircase in the apartment that leads to the third floor bedrooms and bath.The previously screened second floor porch is now open. The first and second floor front porches provide lots of people watching opportunities.

The property across the street at 532 Fleming Street was originally the Louise Maloney Hospital. Folk Artist Ronny Bailey created the artwork featured above depicting the building in earlier times.  CLICK HERE to read my blog about that property.

I was simply awed the first time I entered the second floor apartment.  It's sort of a throw back to the the interior renovations made during the 1980s and early 1990s - a time before quartz counter-tops, vessel sinks, and designer this and that. The original Dade County Pine walls have been white washed or painted and framed by custom trim work, crown molding, and high base boards painted crisp white.

I checked the Historic Sandborn Firm Maps to determine the age of the building. The 1889 map showed a grocery store was located at the corner of Fleming and Simonton Street. The black and white photo shows a gas station at that location in 1965. Today that space is a Chinese restaurant. 527 Fleming Street remains in place and looks better than ever. CLICK HERE to view more photos of 527 Fleming Street Key West.

 CLICK HERE to view the Key West MLS datasheet and listing photos of  527 Fleming Street, Key West, offered at $2,675,000. Then contact me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to arrange a personal showing. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.