It's time to reflect on character Duval Street should reflect
It's too bad we can't
simply appoint Tony Falcone as the Czar of Duval Street.
The owner of Fast Buck
Freddie's, who has been in business on Key West's signature street for
three decades, virtually embodies the character and spirit that the city
is struggling to define and maintain on Duval.
The city commission
recently held a workshop to hash out some of the issues facing Duval. It
may seem silly to spend hours arguing about palm weavers and street
performers and drag queens handing out postcards, but this is an
important issue for the city. Duval Street is, for better and worse, the
public face of Key West for many of our visitors. Its attractions and
its problems are what they remember about our island, the image they
will carry back with them and describe to friends.
That's why Falcone's
Fast Buck's is such a great model for Duval Street. The institution
occupying the old Kress building at the corner of Duval and Fleming has
evolved with Key West, going from a hippie shop to an eclectic emporium,
with elegant clothing and upscale housewares — but keeping its cool with
toys and T-shirts and funny novelty items. The store windows are in
themselves an attraction, one that entertains locals and visitors,
doesn't cost us anything and isn't in our faces, shoving a card at us
and demanding that we shell out our dollars.
Toward the end of the
commission's three-hour-plus Duval Street workshop, Falcone rose and
spoke eloquently about Duval Street. He was particularly concerned about
the hawkers, a problem the city tackled more than a decade ago with an
ordinance governing off-premise canvassers. Falcone spoke of a walk with
friends that began at La Te Da on Upper Duval. By the time they reached
Mallory Square, they had been yelled at or handed cards by 22 people.
Anyone on Duval
Street, whether they're a resident or a visitor, is assaulted, Falcone
pointed out — and it's not just hawkers. Noise assaults. Neon lights
accost you. Cardboard boxes and garbage are piled on the sidewalks. In
many cases the city has ordinances governing these issues — which are
sporadically enforced and sometimes openly defied.
The commission, along
with the Resident/Visitor Planning Committee, is right to tackle these
issues head-on. From offensive T-shirt slogans to piles of garbage to
drunks blocking the sidewalks, our signature street is sometimes sending
an unpleasant message to our visitors — that this is a place where we
encourage the vulgar, rude or just plain idiotic.
And the backlash is
unsettling. Citizens at the workshop made some alarming comments,
including publicly posting signs warning visitors against providing
money to panhandlers and scolding the compassionate programs that feed
the homeless, even if some of them do struggle with substance abuse.
Some thoughtful action
now by our commissioners — and our community, including business and
property owners along Duval — is in order before the street either veers
into full-on vice city or whiplashes into Disney World. Neither one
represents Key West's great heritage of individuality, tolerance and
creativity.
At the workshop,
Commissioner Ed Scales warned his colleagues to be careful about messing
with Duval Street, or more specifically with its zoning district,
calling it the city's economic engine. That's true enough — the
businesses on Duval that are raking in truckloads of cash from the
tourist trade are paying some of it back to the city in the form of
property and sales taxes and utility fees. But the city would be wise to
undertake a true cost-benefit analysis and look at what our current
"anything and everything goes" attitude is getting us — and what price
we are paying.
— The Citizen
Key West's Duval Street cleanup long overdue
It was around 15 years
ago, as urban renewal hit Duval Street from the bottom up, that the
sleazeball merchants hit the street. Several things distinguished these
rip-and-run operators from the intimate, small boutiques which were
making Key West a shopping Mecca.
First, all the newer
shops sported much of the same merchandise, cheap goods manufactured in
sweat shops around the Pacific rim. You could walk from shop to shop and
see nothing interesting, nothing new.
Some of the stores had
just cheap beachwares while others had back rooms that displayed
electronics, cameras, lenses, woven rugs, and highly polished samovars.
Let a sales person get you into one those back rooms and you could
abandon all hope. The wearing apparel was of the cheapest variety, and
in fact could be seen in many beach stands in the Carolinas and Georgia.
Not only were the items alike, most were identical.
The personality of the
street began to change. More and more people were getting ripped off by
hard-driving and rude sales people willing to do anything for a sale.
The music emanating from the stores got louder. Rents soared and one
store became identical to its next-door neighbor. Tourists were getting
cheated in all sorts of ways and there seemed to be no official body to
which they could complain and get satisfaction.
A customer entering the
store would be accosted by one of the sales people, who then explained
the pricing system. The customer could buy a certain number of unadorned
T-shirts for a somewhat reasonable price.
But, wait. You could also
buy decals and transfers to put on the shirts and this is where it got
really slimy. Clerks, ignoring Key West's custom apparel ordinance, did
not quote prices for the extra work, which turned out to be most dear by
the time it got through the cash register. Sometimes in the thousands of
dollars. Clerks crowded in on the marks, tugging, nudging, pulling until
the customer was embarrassed and humiliated.
But that is not all. The
messages on these shirts and in the windows were filthy, crude and only
rarely clever. Anyone walking down the street would be embarrassed for
themselves and anyone else on the same stretch of pavement. Nothing was
in too bad a taste.
For years the city fought
these particular merchants with sporadic harassment and an occasional
arrest, but it did little or no good until several businessmen to whom
Mayor Jimmy Weekley is close began to get in his ear.
"Clean up Duval" became
the battle cry, and the mayor thought that was just fine; good urban
policy and good politics just months before an election.
The mayor and code
enforcement took to the streets, and they began handing out tickets to
rank offenders.
They first went after
stores that displayed too many gay pride flags. Then talk turned to
cracking down on the outdoor conveyance of alcoholic libation.
After 20 years of getting
its head beat purple, the city has jumped into the fray with serious —
if not slightly off-target — purpose.
Starting with flags is a
puzzlement, though, as they are neither a source of public outrage nor
threat to public safety. And many upstanding citizens seem to think the
ability to walk down Duval Street with a drink in hand is part of the
laid-back tropical ambiance of this southernmost of U.S cities.
Nonetheless, Mr. Mayor,
press on with all the vigor you can muster. But please don't lose sight
of the real wreckers of Duval.
— The Citizen |
