2022-03-24

Hello Key Biscayne!

It’s one of those weeks where nothing happened in the news, but rest assured there’s a few musings in here to entertain you on your bathroom break.

First order of business: if you don’t get a perfect score on this arbitrary test you’re not a key rat or something. 🌎

O, Miami celebrates their monthly poetry festival in April, and every year they have their ZipOdes, where they encourage people to write odes to their ZIP code. The format is simple. Each ZipOde is five lines long. Each digit of the ZIP code determines how many words per line.

Judging by the letters sent into this lowly publication, it’s clear most key rats can barely read or write, much less contemplate abstract thoughts as might be required for a lot of poetry, but we’ll give this a shot one more time. We’ll get you started with an example:

3. An island paradise
3. they call it.
1. But,
4. If we’re in paradise,
9. why do so many key rats decide to leave?

Hopefully you can come up with something a little less dreadful. If you do, reply to this email and we’ll run it, send it directly to O, Miami, or do both.

I was going for a walk the other day, as one does (we all know most of you wouldn’t be caught dead walking anywhere if it wasn’t for some instagrammable exercise regimen, or to watch your dog take a dump, but entertain the thought for a second) when I ran into a key rat who I’ve known for thirty years or so. We’re not best friends and we never hang out together, but we definitely could hang out if we saw each other at a party or got stuck in some post-apocalyptic scenario.

For many of you, this is a social situation which you clearly have not learned to handle; the art of saying hi to someone without getting into boring small talk and feeling awkward. This is a fundamental skill to have in a small town.

It’s simple: first, don’t stop. If you’re at the Winn Dixie or on the sidewalk, you’ve got a purpose and this interaction isn’t part of it. Alright, you can pause for a split second as you say hello and possibly shake hands, but right after you start inferring movement with your body once again, and then you slowly get going.

If the person is a chatter, they may try and bring up some dumb thing to talk about, and at this point you can kind of turn your head to not completely ignore them, but keep up with some of that movement. By now, if they’re not completely witless they should have figured it out. If not, go back and slap them.

So back to me on the sidewalk there. What ended up happening? We’re both pros so we both did it without even thinking about it, managed to get in a little family talk on the walk away, and walked off into our respective sunsets. The acknowledgement and the respect was there, perfectly in sync, without anyone being held up.

Obviously, if the person is a true friend or they actually bring something up that needs to be talked about, this flies out the window. In that case don’t be a psychopath and just talk to your friends, for pete’s sake. Good luck out there.

P.S. Was this something already written about in the Rag? Can’t remember.

On time changes and other changes:

My job does suck and don’t see daylight, but I welcome the non change and sticking to Atlantic time. But 100% right on the current population issues; greed and stupidities have turn this quaint island into just another mini city full of people who don’t care.

Cheers Commodore Stickney!

-RL

Thanks for sharing the link to Tim Stickney’s interview.

When did KB go from being “A great place to grow up” to a place where kids are viewed as a threat to New Yorkers’ peace & quiet during their spring break?

Maybe we should go full-Tequesta and claim the island back. Just a thought.

-JM

Did you like this? If you did, please forward it to your friends and tell them to subscribe at The Tropical Rag.

Read past issues in the archive.

Questions, comments, tips, or to open a poetry book store called ‘Haikus by Lu’ together ✒️, write to hi@tropicalrag.com.

Ultra is this weekend, but sadly not on the Key anymore. 😉 Watch out for event traffic all over town this weekend.

The Tropical Rag goes out every Thursday and has all you need to know about the going-ons of Key Biscayne. Sign up below and never miss an issue.

We don't sell your email to anyone. Read our privacy policy.