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I've never been to the Keys before but I have been to South Florida on vacation. I'd imagine the Keys to be a beautiful place but not somewhere that I'd want to live, even if I did have the money (the Keys are very expensive from what I hear). They're just too isolated for me, and I'd get bored I think. Nice to go fishing at or take a relaxing trip, I would love to see Key West especially because I'm an Earnest Hemmingway fan and I hear that Captain Tony's is the best bar in the world. But no, I wouldn't live there, especially due to hurricanes, it's a long drive back to the mainland if a storm is coming.
The Keys kind of reminds me of Hawaii, both tropical paradises and beautiful. But both very expensive and isolated. I couldn't live long term in any place like that. Just my 2 cents, not hating. Everybody has their own opinions.
This is true for most people - which is why so many people move to the Keys, and within 2 or 3 years, most of them move back out.
For me personally, the Upper Keys are a good compromise. You are still around an hour from Miami, a major city with plenty to do and a wide variety of people. You can still get to better hospitals and a wider variety of specialists if needed. If you need to evacuate because of hurricanes, you can get there much faster and easier than from further down on the Keys. (It just so happens that some of the worst damage previously from hurricanes has also missed the Keys, so one shouldn't assume that just because they are the furthest South and in the middle of the ocean, that they are regularly decimated - you're way more vulnerable, but it just depends on which way the storm turns, and many times it misses completely.) Also, a much larger portion of the Upper Keys is above-flood land, which is important for surviving smaller storms with minimal damage, and for safe evacuation before the bulk of something hits, as well as easier rebuild if a storm causes serious damage.
For me, I probably would prefer Hawaii, because of its mountains, climate, and culture. But, having a highway to drive to the mainland makes all the difference. Also, while the Keys are expensive, they are not as expensive as Hawaii - especially when one factors in the costs of shipping all your belongings to move, trying to travel from one island to the other, and traveling back to the States regularly for visits to family and/or friends. It adds up quickly.
I have lived a lot of my life in big cities, and part of me still craves that excitement, diversity, and constant opportunity. But a big part of me also craves a chance to slow down and be outdoors and just enjoy life - the Upper Keys (provided you have a stash of cash or a job capable of supporting living here) seem like a good compromise to me of a very natural place that still has some action going on and a small-town-like population with stores and lots of tourist stuff, yet at the same time is very close to a major metropolitan area. They're not as remote as say, No Name Key. But they're also not as exciting and unique in culture as Key West, either.
To me, the biggest drawback is being at the bottom of a very long peninsula state. Florida takes nearly a full day to drive through, and until you do that day's drive, you can't get anywhere else - no other states, no other cultures - and no other escape if a big hurricane is headed toward the whole state. People are trapped, culturally, and physically, in the state of Florida - which makes all of SFL very isolated anyway. There are no spur-of-the-moment day trips to other states, as there might be living in most other states of the country. If you want a day trip, it will be somewhere in Florida. And because FL is narrow, it will be somewhere you've already been multiple times because there are not a lot of choices. You can't just drive in any direction you choose, because most directions end in the ocean! And if you don't feel like visiting GA or AL this time, tough luck, because you'll have to drive through them any time you're on the road and you want to get out of the state. If you want to take a road trip around the country, you'll have to budget pretty much 2 full days just to driving in and out of FL before you even get to the rest of the country.
This means a much heavier emphasis on flying to get anywhere versus what I'm used to. It's less spontaneous, and more expensive. There is also no good rail system, and very little public transportation in all of SFL. If you don't own a vehicle in the Keys, you're going to have a very tough time.
Fortunately for me, I feel like I have pretty much everything I want right here - I'm surrounded by water and wildlife, nice people, and can get all of my needs met. But for every 10 people who decide to move down here, probably only 1 is really suited to living here long-term. Even I wouldn't enjoy it if I couldn't leave from time to time to travel. The Keys don't have great ethnic restaurants, good produce or as many options at the grocery store, they have diversity of people but not a huge diversity, and they are lacking in things many people enjoy like current movie theaters, top of the line electronics, and high-level arts. If you're cool with community theater productions, fairly slow and antiquated Internet and cable, very limited restaurants, and very limited social opportunities, then the Keys may be perfect for you. If all you care about is snorkeling, or tending to your boat, you won't even miss the other stuff. Right now I feel like I'm learning every day - it feels like I'm living on a completely different planet - so I am completely satisfied. Every day a new bug, a new plant, a new fish, a new rain pattern, a new kind of sunset. I don't know if that will be true 20 or 30 years from now, but who can ever know that anyway?
For most people who like tropical weather and water, and watching sunsets, the Keys are a great place to visit as a tourist. But they don't make a good full-time home. Fortunately for half the residents here, they have so much money they can afford to own a house or condo here as simply a vacation home, or even one of several vacation homes they have around the country or the world (often boght in cash), while they actually live full-time somewhere else. Maybe that will be my lot in life someday, but I'm not there yet. So I'm here for the long haul right now. Fortunately, I really like it.
I think I would enjoy living in the Keys very much. I've spent a lot of time in the Keys over the past 26 years, so I think I'd be prepared for what Keys life really is. I wasn't able to find a job down there, so I accepted a position in Miami and bought a house as far south as I reasonably could to be closer to the Keys. What I wasn't ready for is what life in Miami would be like. Not being Latin American, I feel very much out of place in Miami. I haven't made any friends and I don't enjoy going out to Miami bars. When I have time off of work, I usually head down to the Keys, where I feel more like I fit in. This will probably be my life from now on, an old salt, stuck in the bad traffic and rude people of Miami, just waiting for my day off so I can head down to the Keys and enjoy the sand, sun and water.
I think I would enjoy living in the Keys very much. I've spent a lot of time in the Keys over the past 26 years, so I think I'd be prepared for what Keys life really is. I wasn't able to find a job down there, so I accepted a position in Miami and bought a house as far south as I reasonably could to be closer to the Keys. What I wasn't ready for is what life in Miami would be like. Not being Latin American, I feel very much out of place in Miami. I haven't made any friends and I don't enjoy going out to Miami bars. When I have time off of work, I usually head down to the Keys, where I feel more like I fit in. This will probably be my life from now on, an old salt, stuck in the bad traffic and rude people of Miami, just waiting for my day off so I can head down to the Keys and enjoy the sand, sun and water.
If you go to the Miami forum, you'll find hordes of people like you, trying to deal with the surprise that Miami is not what they thought. I like a lot of things about it, but ultimately it was not for me either. I do like though that I can visit from time to time from here.
Many people commute from the Upper Keys to Miami for work. It's easier of course if you can work from home a few days out of the week, but a lot of times the commute is not really worse that within Miami itself - for instance, I used to live in Kendall and the commute East took me an hour. Now driving to Miami takes me about an hour also, except I am usually moving a lot faster. Miami's traffic gridlock is generally West to East in the morning, and East to West in the evening. Not as many people are going North/South from the Keys during weekday rush hours - the worst traffic North/South is actually during vacation times and weekends, when people are visiting the Keys for fun. So it's not great, but it's not so bad. The worst part of course is the possibility that there will be some block on US-1 in extreme Southern Dade and you'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere forever waiting to get by on the single lane road, making you very late for work or late for home. Of course, the people who have the best commute that way are those who live in Northern Key Largo like Card Sound, or southern Homestead/Florida City, shaving a good 15-20 minutes off the total time. I'm not that far North, but I figure I have a better view for some of my drive that makes up for the extra length.
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So I looked it up, and although it does not cover all the weird sounds I hear, this does cover one of them!:
The more I learn about SFL, the weirder it gets every day. I don't even know where a peacock could fit in the direction I hear it - which is across water on narrow strips of land touching canals and bay. It would have to be living on someone's roof, or being kept as a pet, because the lots in that direction are very small and surrounded by water, with very little vegetation. Then again, there are a lot of people with large decks on their roofs headed that way - maybe someone keeps one up there for the novelty, which would not be impossible here. Numerous people also have pools underneath their homes where they can swim right up to their stairs, scuba tanks as mailboxes, pirate flags in their yard with waving pirate statues, and other things that scream - "Look, I live in an exotic place!"
I obviously like it, but it is such a weird place to live...
It's been a very interesting week. I learned that the lack of serious mosquito problems I had noticed in several years of visiting the Keys was not related only to proximity to heavily wooded areas, but also to wind direction. I learned this because we had our first major rain of the summer - several hours' worth - and then an onslaught of mosquitoes like I have never seen in a residential area in my life. I have been in mosquito-heavy areas including rainforest in Central America, the Caribbean, and Ethiopia, and I have never in my whole life seen vicious swarms like this.
They swarmed around the door so much all day long that I could not go out for 3 days. Many got in the house and I don't even know how, because I have screens, including a screen drape over the doorway that closes right behind me. I put a high concentration of DEET on - something I rarely do - and I swear they were actually attracted to it, as the higher the concentration I applied the worse the biting was. I stepped out and was literally covered on every part of my body at the same time, with easily 80 mosquitoes on me at the same time, plus several swarming around my head, trying to get in my ears, flying in my mouth, and flying straight into my eyes so I couldn't even see. Granted, I am one of those that has always attracted them more than anyone I know, since I was a toddler. But this was almost unbearable. When I finally did venture out, I found that high concentration DEET lotion worked much better than spray (I had to order permethrin, which I had run out of from my travels - so it did not arrive in time to try it yet). But even so, they were such greedy hateful b@stards that they bit everywhere I did not put the lotion - the bottoms of my feet, my eyelids, my ears, the palms of my hands, and they bit right through my clothing... wow. Not cool, mosquitoes. Not cool.
My neighbor told me he owns a Mosquito Magnet, which apparently costs some $1500 and attracts and kills mosquitoes, and he urged me to get one. I can now see why some people might find this worth the money, to my surprise. But for now, I am trying much cheaper remedies.
Thankfully, the wind changed and after 3 days pretty much locked in the house, they decreased significantly back to normal summer levels. I still can't get any work done in the yard without slathering myself with DEET lotion, as they are still out there all day long and very blood-thirsty, but at least now they only try to bite me at about 2/minute, rather than about 80 sitting on every limb of my body all at once like some kind of science experiment.
Not surprisingly, the swarm made the local news: Everglades mosquitoes swarming the Keys, especially the Upper Keys | News | KeysNet
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In other news, the first hurricane of the season - Arthur - swept by and we were very lucky to only get the crazy rain and mosquitoes. I took a close look at the damage that happened on the islands in North Carolina to get a sense of what a Cat.2 might do here. Fortunately, everyone there is ok. There were reports of flooded homes and some lost roofs though, as well as a lot of downed trees. From the pictures, it looked like the stilt houses were very necessary - they looked as though a storm with any higher storm surge would have resulted in even stilt buildings being flooded. I assume the wind damage was individual to houses being more or less wind resistant, as well as of course their location. Here in the Keys I am told that evacuation is decided on a storm by storm basis, but that generally speaking anything Cat 2 and up requires mandatory evacuation. In some cases a Cat 1 may require evacuation orders also, or even a tropical storm, if the flooding is expected to be exceptionally high. In one June decades ago, two tropical storms back to back dumped some 21 feet of rain total, causing major damage even though there were no very high winds. So something to be prepared for.
It occurs to me that my A/C unit is elevated some 5 feet, but not to the height of my house - in a bad flood, I would lose the whole unit. I might need to find out if that can be raised.
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4th of July was this week, with tons of traffic and tourism, as well as events on every island. The fireworks were decent for a small town, and in fact I was able to see them right through my windows, as well as from my balcony. I did notice that prices in local stores went up a bit, and the grocery store removed all of their sales entirely. But, at least in my area, one could get around and there was not total gridlock - just busy traffic.
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For those considering living in Key West, this change gives you an idea of the crowding issue there: Key West tightens residential parking rule, further restricting spaces | News | KeysNet
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Still so glad I moved. But this week was yet another learning experience - I never really fully have living here figured out, and thus my daily routine is frequently affected by the surprise of wildlife and climate here.
This week also, a new phenomenon keeps me from sleeping - alien frogs! I'm not exactly sure what they are, but it's some kind of long alien rising and lowering sound, coming from the lot next to mine where they are building. It's so loud it comes through my walls and my earplugs to keep me up! I recorded it on my phone for kicks - it's a very freaky sound. I assume it's frogs, because it is a buzzing/humming sound but much more melodic than cicadas, which we have here also buzzing like a lawnmower during the daytime.
There is also a screaming bird that I can't figure out. As soon as I identified the peacock sound, it ironically stopped completely. But this other sound is still going - will have to hear it again to be able to describe it. Lots of songbirds still here, which is nice - I never saw them in Miami, even in the winter when they migrate down. But there are a ton here. And also a lot of woodpeckers trying to kill my coconut palms.
So now that summer is here, the rain has transitioned to arriving almost once a day - late afternoon so far. Sometimes it is a heavy but fairly quick thunderstorm, sometimes it's more like a sprinkle.
Baby iguanas were born to the huge orange-spiked iguanas who hang around my dock. The babies hang out inland in my yard, away from the water, eating every expensive plant I just put in the ground. They love the leaves off of things that eventually would bear fruit if they don't kill it first. Two little guys kept hanging around near me, and seem not to have learned to fear humans yet. One actually let me come all the way up to him and pet him. I am conflicted about the iguanas, which are invasive and not natural to the Keys and harmful to the local environment. I think they're fascinating to watch, and generally speaking they don't hurt people or pets unless you harass them, but it would be a lot better for the environment if we killed them all. I am a vegetarian, and not much for killing things either, but it seems to me we could solve this problem pretty quickly if residents were encouraged to BBQ these iguanas up for a free meal, and perhaps even make iguana one of the exotic things on local menus for tourists, like Conch fritters which is another local favorite. I hear they're pretty good eating. I like them, but I know they're not supposed to be here, and make it difficult for native species of plants and animals to survive. They would be really easy to catch, because they are everywhere, and all you need really is a cage and some fruit or red flowers like hibiscus.
Aside from the iguana encounters, cicadas are out everywhere. I find their creepy empty shells on a lot of my young tree limbs.
I didn't realize that they outgrow this and crack out of it and fly away. Now I know. They are loud like lawnmowers everywhere, but especially around mangroves near the ocean, which I was surprised by.
All the plants here are growing rapidly like weeds now that it is hot (average about 91 degrees) and the rain is so frequent. I went out to try too hack at some of the growth in my yard, which is getting extremely jungly, and found my first live scorpion. It was about 3 inches, and when I picked up an empty plant bag I had left in the yard, it crawled out from inside it and into a pile of leaves. Apparently, the 3 or 4 varieties of scorpion found in FL out of a total of about 90 worldwide, are not fatal to humans, and generally not fatal to pets either if you get them veterinary care. It is just a nasty sting. I'm fortunate I didn't get one, but it's a reminder that I should be wearing gloves at all times when touching anything in the yard. I believe what I saw was called a bark scorpion, and it was hanging out at dusk near some dead wood near my dock that I haven't removed yet. I learned too that scorpions glow in the dark if you have a black light, so if you happen to have one that is portable for some reason, you can find them pretty easily! One positive about scorpions, is that apparently they eat cockroaches!
I also ran into my first snake since I moved here. I don't know Florida snakes, but it was really fast and whipped through the grass in front of me into the bushes, black and about 2.5 ft long, narrow all over. It appears to be a black racer. Apparently they are not poisonous, but might bite people or dogs. They eat mice and things so can be helpful and people here don't usually kill them, but I don't want it to get a lot bigger and bite myself or my dog, so I will see if it becomes a nuisance and I have to help it off my property or something more drastic. For now I plan to just leave it alone.
In better news, my passionfruit vines are flourishing, and I have flowers of multiple species, and finally found my very first little passionfruit growing on one today! I also found that there is a vine of local very tiny passion flowers growing that I didn't even plant, that may be passionflora lutea, or yellow passionflower.
The water is warm, and of course the best thing about summer in the Keys (or anytime in the Keys) is taking a swim in the ocean.
I have a very long way to go in learning how to identify all the local fish here, but I saw a school of what I think are young lane snapper in the very shallow water, as I walked out nearly a half a mile from shore trying to find water deep enough to swim in. I've seen these schools quite a few times in shallow water off the Upper Keys and also Miami. I also saw some anemones, and sea grass patches here and there, but in that spot it is generally too shallow and warm for much reef life. I also saw a deep hole go into the sand underwater maybe 8 inches around - the water there is super clear and not wavy, so you can see everything - and I narrowly missed stepping in it! I don't want to even begin to imagine what might live in there!
I found out today that one of the perks of being a local is there is actually a sunset cruise company that gives a free locals' cruise once every month - I'm going to give them a call this week, and be on the very next free ship out! That is too sweet a deal to pass up, especially since I don't have my own boat or even kayak yet. I am still perusing the extensive craigslist boat ads here, trying to decide on a dinghy or canoe or kayak to buy to get started. Several of my neighbors have been so kind as to offer to let me borrow their kayaks and other small boats, but I don't want to have to find them to ask them every time I want to take a spin in my backyard, so I'll have to get my own, and my own life jacket and other basic gear.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about living in the Florida Keys is the people. I am still trying to adjust to the very strange mix of small town life, with big city-type events in the news. Deaths here are rather common for a small town, through water sports accidents (people having heart attacks in the water or not using proper safety measures when boating), or rather sensational incidents (like a well-publicized death of a man in custody of Key West police during a traffic stop). People also die routinely on the highway, both in the day and at night, from various types of reckless driving. I haven't heard much about too many intentionally violent crimes though. There are lots of large theft rings - especially of dive equipment or fish hauls, attempts to violate environmental laws to make a lot of money like in poaching lobster, and also drug and scamming rings. There's certainly no shortage of excitement here, and I can see why they are now filming a new TV show about life here with Sissy Spacek in it - not sure what the show will be called.
There is a lot of drama around things that don't seem to need drama. Like, there is constant drama around the way the highway construction is being handled to create a sewer system in the Keys, which is only in the last 2 years weaning itself off of septic systems. There is a lot of sense of intentional govt. targeting, in the fact that the Keys has harsher treatment around flood insurance and below-flood property restrictions than other flood-prone communities in the country, and also in a new sweep of FDOT seizing parts of business properties near the highway that were always their land, but was allowed to be used by businesses for parking or signage for decades with no repercussion. Things that would be simple elsewhere, are handled in a completely incompetent manner here - like there has been a big fight over a crosswalk that was put in, inexplicably in the middle of 45mph highway, about 300ft from an actual traffic light. Since the crosswalk is in the middle of very busy nowhere, rather than at the traffic light where any normal city would put one, cars going 50mph are not likely or even able to stop in time to not plow through pedestrians trying to cross. There has already been a 4-car pileup because people can't see that someone is crossing and they need to stop mid-highway until it is too late. Fortunately, no one has been seriously hurt. But still, they can't figure out what to do with the crosswalk - it still has not been moved to the traffic light. And a bus stop was put in, to shelter and provide seating for people in the hot Keys sun waiting for the only bus we have, which runs from Miami to Key West several times a day. When vagrants were found to be sleeping and loitering around the bus stop, which cost 20k to install, it was decided to remove the bus stop and leave just a sign -punishing local law-abiding citizens - rather than to have police patrol past the stop a few times a day to keep order. The same thing was decided for a popular boat ramp that gets many people both from the Keys and Miami using it - it got messy with trash, so instead of adding some garbage cans and someone to enforce law, they closed the entire area to everyone. God forbid the local police should actually have to patrol anything locally.
Living here is exactly like a mix of Mayberry with 1920s Prohibition-gangster-era Chicago. It is a weird mix of the big time, and the small time. Often when a local person gets arrested, they'll publish their picture and where they live and details in the local paper (and all the people who actually know that person will write comments below the article), which is shocking to someone like myself used to living in a city. When something bad happens to somebody local, there is often a lot of local support too, a story on them in the paper wishing them the best, and all their friends posting in the comments afterwards. You have to be very careful what you do, because the people in power are few and everybody knows everybody. Usually the powerful people are in real estate or development, and there is all sorts of intrigue, cases of embezzlement and drugs and even murder-for-hire going on behind local appointments. It's quite a place.
I'm still pretty much an outsider, I don't know the whole story of everyone who lives here and who did what to whom. But it helps that most of my neighbors are newcomers too, so we all are learning how things work here, and who the important people are in town.
One thing I notice, while there have been no more boat dumping problems, is that there are a few noise issues. There are planes and helicopters flying multiple times a day right over my house, so low and loud that the house shakes. I don't know yet, but I assume these are rich people paying for tours, and maybe small pilots who are pulling some stunts and violating air traffic laws. The other thing is there is now a boat that careens around my neighborhood, which juts out into the ocean, every single night at around 10PM for over 2 weeks - I am not right on the open water so they are the equivalent of maybe 2 blocks or more away from me in distance out in the water, and still it is extremely loud. Clearly they are in a speedboat going for some kind of record at a time when local water enforcement is not in the area. I might have to make a call about that if it persists, as well as the planes, which I am worried one day are going to mess up and crash into the house.
In other news, the Keys just made the news as the first county in FL to allow gay marriage! This is big tourism news, and points to the idea that although the Keys are small town life, no one here cares what anyone does in their personal life as long as you're a good neighbor!
There is never a dull moment living here in the Florida Keys. And I still would not want to be anywhere else!
Last edited by StarfishKey; 07-26-2014 at 08:55 PM..
Reason: half was missing
So life here is unique and wonderful, but it's not all fairytales and rainbows!
Definitely!
I try to post the information I wish I could have had access to before I moved. I wanted to move here for so many years, and then seriously researched it for 2 years before finding my house. But even during the research period, I couldn't find a lot on the internet or in books specifically about what it felt like to live here. It's such an expensive place to try to survive, and so many people want to move here, it seems like there should be more information out there than just where one can rent a paddleboard. And realtors never want to tell you the tough side of things.
The Keys are such a mix of wonderful and terrible, such passionate living in a culture not really like anything else, anywhere else, in the country, that I think it is best for people to have as much information as possible before they decide to move down. For the average tourist, they're not going to encounter many of these creepy-crawlies because they only hang out in the low-people areas, and they're not going to even notice local politics or care how the economy works here. But when you live here, those things become part of your daily life.
It's not all-vacation-all-the-time here. But it's also not all-work-and-misery either, like some places can be closer to. To do well here, I think you have to be good at balance, which I think is hard for anybody and especially hard for the type of people who move down here. Can't drink yourself into a stupor every day without end, can't work 4 jobs and never go outdoors just to afford the rent either... you've got to find a way to live in the middle, with some fun and social time, and some hard work, every day. Surrounded by all this, many people go a little crazy in the beginning and spend everything they have and party 'round the clock, and then by the time next month's rent is due they're already broke and selling everything they own on craigslist to try to pay their way off the island back home. You need a Zen-like balance to make this thing work for the long-term, and a lot of patience with the unique things that come with local island life that may not happen anywhere but here.
Key West is definitely a drinker's paradise.
....like 9am and ppl are there drinking.
.
LOL...
Each island specializes in its own thing. Although drinking is everywhere in the Keys, most islands are just some casual beer drinking under a palm tree on a weekend afternoon. Key West specializes both in partying, and in local history. In Key West, drinking is more of a sport.
Without getting into every island's speciality, by contrast...
No Name Key's specialty is remote nature.
Islamorada's specialty is deep-sea fishing.
Key Largo's specialty is snorkeling and diving.
No other island in the chain parties like Key West. It is the New Orleans/Las Vegas of Florida. A novelty to visit, but I would think personally a headache to live there. Not to mention of course a good way to go bankrupt while you kill your liver...
They do have AA meetings in Key West, but I can't even begin to imagine how challenging that must be to keep people on the straight-and-narrow (plus they also have other drugs there). Drinking and drugs can be found elsewhere in the Keys too, but not as much, and at least there is more of a balance of activities so if you want to stay clean and sober you could spend your days diving, or fishing, or swimming, or paddleboarding, or sailing, or hiking the local parks, or kayaking in quiet and serene places where you see and hear no other humans. Key West has outdoor activities of course, but with the crush of people and traffic and noise, it is not as easy to commune with nature as on other Keys.
I would really love to go to the Dry Tortugas though, and have not had an opportunity yet... Looking forward to taking the ferry, and potentially trying the overnight camping. THAT is decent solitude... and I would imagine some incredible views of the stars.
This is the hell truth about the Florida Keys, especially Marathon where I live. I visited Key West years ago andbeen wanting to move so bad ever since my first visit to the Keys, so when the opportunitycame at work I requested the transfer and jump on it. Then reality struck. Trafficis awful. Thanks God I do no have to drive to go to work as I live next door towork. There are lots of rude people, I believe due to overpopulation. It is verydifficult to find a job. At least once a week the canals/harbor stink like babydiapers. The heat is unbearable 10 month out of the year.
It is very difficult to find a place to live. Thankfully mycompany provides me with a generous allowance for housing. Mosquitoes will eatyou alive. Some folks have rat’s problems thankfully not me as I live in a secondfloor Condo. Living in the Keys is expensive. Not many stores to choose from. Mostpeople shop online most of the time. If you need workdone on your house that you can not do yourself, it will not get done today, itprobably won’t get done tomorrow, it might get done this month or maybe not. Don'tforget, most people are on "Islandtime". To get to Key West is 1 hour drive from Marathon.Key Largo is 1 hour and 30 minutes. Islamorada/Tavernieris 1 hour and I like to speed.
Coming here for the Winter doesn’t make you a local. Everyone is different; what is very important to some may not be important toothers at all. Still I like it here, but if you plan to move to the keys thinkabout it very carefully. Not everything that shines is gold.[/SIZE][/font]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE]
This is the hell truth about the Florida Keys, especially Marathon where I live. I visited Key West years ago andbeen wanting to move so bad ever since my first visit to the Keys, so when the opportunitycame at work I requested the transfer and jump on it. Then reality struck. Trafficis awful. Thanks God I do no have to drive to go to work as I live next door towork. There are lots of rude people, I believe due to overpopulation. It is verydifficult to find a job. At least once a week the canals/harbor stink like babydiapers. The heat is unbearable 10 month out of the year.
It is very difficult to find a place to live. Thankfully mycompany provides me with a generous allowance for housing. Mosquitoes will eatyou alive. Some folks have rat’s problems thankfully not me as I live in a secondfloor Condo. Living in the Keys is expensive. Not many stores to choose from. Mostpeople shop online most of the time. If you need workdone on your house that you can not do yourself, it will not get done today, itprobably won’t get done tomorrow, it might get done this month or maybe not. Don'tforget, most people are on "Islandtime". To get to Key West is 1 hour drive from Marathon.Key Largo is 1 hour and 30 minutes. Islamorada/Tavernieris 1 hour and I like to speed.
Coming here for the Winter doesn’t make you a local. Everyone is different; what is very important to some may not be important toothers at all. Still I like it here, but if you plan to move to the keys thinkabout it very carefully. Not everything that shines is gold.[/SIZE][/font]
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Welcome!
We've never had anybody on here from Marathon since I've been here! It's great to have a Middle Keys perspective. I hope you'll post a lot more, and start threads of your own about Keys life. We are trying to add enough new threads to get a Keys-specific subforum, like Miami has.
I haven't updated to this thread in a long while, but I am still living in the Upper Keys, and still enjoying it.
What you said about the house repairs made me laugh though, because it's so true. My neighbors and I all laugh about how long it takes for anybody to call you back, if they ever call you back! Everybody here complains that they can't get a job or enough hours to support themselves, and then when you call them to give them work, they ignore you. Consequently, the few responsible and responsive people who do any trade - A/C repair, landscaping, general contracting, plumbing, tree trimming/removal, etc. etc. are usually booked up for months, especially the very few who are good at what they do and charge reasonable rates.
One thing I did learn that is really interesting, is that after we have lots of heavy rain, an algae forms in the salt water that looks like human excrement and smells like it also, but it is actually algae. If you poke at it with a stick, it explodes, which is the disgusting way you can verify what it is. Between this, and low tides around mangroves, we get a lot of stink. Thanks to the frequent seabreeze though, and of course the tides, it keeps the smell to a minimum! Such is the life of living in a coastal community.
I am surprised that you are dealing with a lot of rude people. Everyone I meet is extremely friendly. Or crazy. Or both. Pretty much everybody in the Keys is abnormally friendly, crazy, or friendly-crazy.
Traffic is bad though. 2 more people died this week on the Overseas Hwy. It is a very dangerous road to be on.
But the weather is unbelievably gorgeous now, and one thing I don't think that's been mentioned on this thread yet is how great it is to be able to see clear skies and a lot of stars at night! The nighttime skies blow me away on these islands, especially in the Winter when there are fewer clouds/storms.
Living here is somewhere between a hellhole and wonderful. It's both at the same time, a lot of the time.
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Hell Paradise
