buddy's truck

Buddy Owens is a fixture in Key West;
An ol' bubba, and a friend.
He owns and operates "BO's FishWagon", a funky open air eatery on the corner of William and Caroline
here in Key West.

Designed to look like a ramshackle shack with old license plates, an outboard motor, ropes, buoys, hubcaps and hastily hand painted signs decorating the walls and this rusted out old pick-up truck outside on the William Street edge of the FishWagon's property.
(it used to have a naked lady mannequin sitting behind the wheel and waving out the window but she seems to have found another gig.)
The ashtrays are old tuna fish cans and the condiment holders; Corona six-pack cartons. . .

You get the idea.

Anyway, a few years ago, either the city or the cops or code enforcement told Buddy he had to move the rusted out old pick-up truck off William Street.

Well, move it Buddy did and for a good long time there was no rusted out old pick-up truck for the tourists to stand around taking pictures of each other sipping their margaritas.
(another Key West attraction bites the dust)

But then one day, as if by magic, the rusted out old pick-up truck was back on William Street, planted in it's old spot.
But sans the naked lady.

Could she have been the issue upsetting the sensibilities of our city fathers?
Or was it, as someone told me, it had to be moved because that rusted out old pick-up truck was illegally parked?

hmmm. . .

sea king

I stopped in at one of my favorite old haunts on my way home from work this afternoon.
B.O.'s Fishwagon is such a laid back seafood restaurant that you wouldn't recognize it as a seafood restaurant unless you already knew it was a seafood restaurant.
For me it's a great place in the shade for a handful of conch fritters, a grouper sandwich on Cuban bread and a couple of cold ones on hot summer afternoons with my sketchbook.
B.O.'s is a ramshackle, tiki lookin' place on the corner of Caroline and William Streets, decorated inside and out with still lifes of "found objects".
There's a rusted out old bike here, a bunch of used-up marker buoys there and a naked lady mannequin waves a welcome to all the world from the front seat of an old junkyard pick-up truck parked in front of the place.
The rafters are tiled with expired license plates from some of the thousands of folks who escaped from the "real world" and found sane and safe refuge in paradise.
My old plates are up there too.