The Best Key West Imaginable

For the past week - since meeting with The Restaurant Store's Richard Tallmadge - I have been going over and going over over the idea of our forming a cooperative, the Waterfront Market Co-op. And when I look at the challenge *this* would be, it looks to be a life direction for me. And it scares me!

Commitment is something with which I am comfortable. But categorization, less so. Am I "the grocery man" type? How long could I manage under the pressure of that role?

I have been testing the waters - "feeling out, " as it were - the idea of what it would mean to fine-tune the direction of our movement to keep Waterfront Market open towards another clear goal. That is, keep Waterfront Market open...for another generation.

[Wow.]

So what I am asking is , Am I able to work with the number of people that is necessary to keep Waterfront Market open for another generation? And more to the point, How long do I want to stay on Key West?

These are the questions that have kept coming back to me this entire past week.

But in the final analysis, I have one answer. It is that I am responsible for my future. And in my future, I want there to be a Waterfront Market for all the reasons I want there to be a Waterfront Market now.

And they are:

1) Waterfront Market is a local home-grown business and success story.
2) Internally, WM provides livelihoods, as well as real careers, for over forty individuals. That's a lot of healthy self-respect being transmitted down the line to a whole lot of families and friends. That's important to me.
3) Externally, WM supports any number of local producers ranging from Linda who makes the humus, to Lee (and others) who provides the lobsters/shrimp/fish, to any number of successful craftsapersons who manufacturer actual local goods and commodities for sale. This continues on acup the Keys and into lower-Florida, as WM buys and re-sells regional produce.
4) Forty of our Island's best restaurants, restaurants for which our Island is famous, use and require the particular quality of produce Waterfront market provides.
5) Waterfront Market is the sole provider of an assortment of essential material goods for a variety of lifestyles.
6a) Water visitors - including powerboat racers, sailing racers, yachties, and transient boaters - rely on our being able to supply them which is why they come here. This is conjunction with...
6b) ...the immediate residential neighborhood requires that grocery store.

Of course, there are more - such as, Do we want that space empty? Do we want a big box retailer in that location? Do I want my neighbors to have to give up real careers for jobs at MegaCorp, Inc? (No.) - but when I look at these core questions, I am certain that I have but a single ethical course of action. And that is to step up and do my part in order to insure Waterfront Market stays open.

What I have learned in this lifetime is there are moments that we look back and we either made a difference when we could, or we look back in shame with our heads hung low. When the Nazis came into power, all sorts of people put themselves out there to impede their rise to power. And those people - both the ones who died and the ones who lived on - have something I want. They have their pride.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. stood up before the world forty years ago, he did it for us. And so at this time I have to pledge myself to keep a grocery store open - so that we have something to look forward to tomorrow. And that is a life worth living.

When I hear Raymond Archer make excuses as to why Key West is unable to live up to the standards of the rest of the modern Western world, or when I read Jim Scholl tow the company line in an editorial in our Island's main newspaper on a subject which he is unknowing, I am demoralized. But the sins of the fathers shall not fall on the shoulders of our sons and daughters any longer.

Because whatever has paved the way for the inept and the insufficient to come to power must be way laid in order that our sons and daughters may have a future here. And not only the sons and daughters who are born here, but the generations of others who have yet to arrive on our miraculous piece of earth in search of the place where there is a place for everyone. It is our duty to take care of Key West so that people who come here looking for something special find it when they get here - just as all of us did and our people before us did, as well.

And if that means making a stand to keep a blessed grocery store open when and where we need a grocery store, well then that's just where the line is drawn.

As was on the issue of annexation of Wisteria Island, so to now let it be with the Waterfront Market:

I say to all developers, politicians, appointees, and hirees who intentionally or unintentionally work to diminish our Island's standard of living and loving, "Go no further. You may not cross this line. I cannot be stepping on toes because they are ours here you are standing upon now. "

Now with the 90-day window of opportunity that Buco has opened for us - with a definitive answer mandatory on November 30 - let us all who would make haste. What we need is recommendations for our first board of directors. Without hesitation, I would recommend Richard Tallmadge.

Qualification for recommendation is simple. It is a commitment to keeping Waterfront Market open for a generation. A commitment to keep Waterfront Market open is a commitment to a particular outcome, a particular future.

And that particular future?

Also simple: The best Key West imaginable!