This Week on the Island: This Week on the Island 04/24/2016

‘This Week on the Island’ is written by Doug Bennett and is an update to friends about happenings in Key West last week. Everything is true except for those parts that are lies.

Weather: Same as last week and the week before and the week before that. Beautiful all week. Nice.

The book this week was ‘Zero Duval’ by Elizabeth Hilleren.

I was sitting on my tricycle on Duval listening to Woodstock style music coming from Willie T’s. The guy took a break so I rode down Applerouth Lane and notice a building missing. I don’t even remember what was here next to Leather Masters.

While we are speaking of things missing, I also noticed that Crawl Off Duval on Southard next to Bank of America is no longer here.

CONCH REPUBLIC DAYS

On April 23, 1982, Key West seceded from the Union and formed the Conch Republic. The U.S. Federal government had used the Border Patrol to block US#1 at Last Chance Saloon at the end of the mainland and the start of the Keys. They said they were looking for illegals and were searching all vehicles leaving the Keys. The tourist were afraid to come to the Keys and the town of Key West was losing lots of income. We seceded. We threw stale Cuban bread at the Navy guys that had been invited to the announcement, surrendered to those same guys, and asked for $1 billion to repair our war torn country. For the next 10 days we will celebrate the forming of the Conch Republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch_Republic

We kick off the 10 days of celebration by the 'Raising of the Colors' at Ft Zack on Friday at noon.

Drag Races on Duval Saturday. The drag queens seem to be having a great time. This is a picture from Saturday. There was a big crowd and I couldn’t get any closer.