Welcome

He still has the attitude that probably cost him that chunk of his ear.

I found this description of the funky building now housing Walgreens on Duval Street:

The Strand Theater in Key West opened in the mid-1920s as a single screen movie house that sat 800 around people. The theater closed sometime in the early 1980s and reopened as a nightclub. It remained open as a few other nightclubs until it became a Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum in 1993. The theater was sold in December 2001 and closed in April 2002. It has since become another location of Walgreens drug store. Based on research, over the past 20 years the marquee had become damaged with parts even missing. Walgreens restored the marquee to its original status, with the exception of adding their own advertising. All of the interior has been removed and/or covered over with the exception of the balcony.

I went whizzing all over the island on my little scooter this morning.

Yesterday Father Tony and I arrived in the mid-afternoon and were whisked to our Cypress House accommodations with instructions to quickly prepare for the Key West Pride kickoff party at Island House. After a few hours of poolside menz and frozen drinkies, we were hustled off to dinner at The Flaming Buoy (heh) where the co-owner related how a recent positive mention from the New York Times nearly sank the joint with business it wasn't yet ready to handle. Fantastic char-grilled scallops, by the way. After dinner, the irrepressible Father Tony continued onward to some of the bars on Duval Street, but I was zonked on the bed by 10:30pm. I am the party animal.

DISCLOSURE: As I mentioned when I first posted about this trip, our entire Key West shebang is being funded by the Key West Business Guild - airfare, hotel, meals, nightclubbing, hookers...everything. (OK, maybe not hookers.) As always for these things, press junketeers are not "required" to review or even mention any of the places we visit. If we do, hey, that's nice of us. If we don't, oh well. I usually only mention the joints that I liked. Just so you know.

Father Tony and I are staying at the fabulous Cypress House, where we have adjoining apartments. I'll post a slideshow recap of yesterday's goings-on shortly.

I love everything about Key West's airport, like the one luggage carousel. (Where's my bag? Oh. Carousel one.) But especially the super creepy multi-culti statue family on the roof.

Tea Party hero FL Gov. Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott has signed a bill requiring welfare recipients to pass a drug test before receiving any checks. Applicants must pay for their own tests. The ACLU isn't having it.

"The wasteful program created by this law subjects Floridians who are impacted by the economic downturn, as well as their families, to a humiliating search of their urine and body fluids without cause or even suspicion of drug abuse," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "Searching the bodily fluids of those in need of assistance is a scientifically, fiscally, and constitutionally unsound policy. Today, that unsound policy is Florida law."

I'm betting that the governor also has his fingers in the companies that would be providing these millions of drug tests.

Steve Rothaus reports at the Miami Herald:

They’ve bullied and taunted her, calling her names and writing on her locker. And now, the seniors at McFatter Technical High School have elected Andrew Viveros their 2011 prom queen. “They called my name and I was in total shock,’’ said Andrew, a 17-year-old who was born male but has publicly presented herself as female for the last two years. With her long wavy brown hair, Andrew wore a royal blue dress and got a fresh manicure for the Friday night dance. Andrew, also known as Andii, plans to someday change her name to Andrea after she transitions. She wanted to run for prom queen in order to show other transgender teens “it gets better.” She ran against 14 others.

2 Live Crew rapper Luther Campbell is among the eleven candidates in today's special election to replace recalled Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, who was booted from office in March for (among other things) daring to raise property taxes in the face of a massive budget deficit.

RELATED: Back when I worked for a Miami-based music distributor, once a week I had to visit the Liberty City office of Campbell's label. Even after my 20th visit, he always acted as if he'd never seen me before. Pissed me the hell off.

The Key West Business Guild has invited me down on a press junket to cover this year's Pride events, which run June 8th thru June 13th. And of course I'll be hosting a JMG readers meet-up at the fabulous Island House, date and time TBD. My third trip to Key West in 18 months! Hope to see some of you there!

After Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected billions in federal funding for high speed rail development, the feds invited other states to apply for the money. And as it turns out, the primary beneficiaries of Scott's short-sightedness will be commuters on Amtrak's northeast rail corridor.

The largest share of the money—nearly $800 million—will be used to upgrade train speeds from 135 mph to 160 mph on critical segments of the heavily traveled Northeast corridor, the department said in a statement. Another $404 million will go to expand high-speed rail service in the Midwest, including newly constructed segments of 110-mph track between Detroit and Chicago that are expected to save passengers 30 minutes in travel time. Nearly $340 million will go toward state-of-the-art locomotives and rail cars for California and the Midwest. California will also get another $300 million toward trains that will travel up to 220 mph between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Two other GOP governors also rejected federal rail money.