PAGE ONE COMMENTARY: You’ve Got to Be Kidding! Julio Avael Running for the City Commission?!

FORMER CITY MANAGER LEFT CITY GOVERNMENT IN DISGRACE IN 2008

by Dennis Reeves Cooper

Even the hardcore Bubba Conchs may have trouble stomaching this one. Former Key West City Manager Julio Avael, who left city government in disgrace in 2008, announced the other night that he is a candidate for the District 4 City Commission seat. We’re not making this up.

The District 4 seat on the commission is now held by Barry Gibson. If you listen to the rumors, Gibson may or may not run for reelection.

Avael made the announcement at a meeting of the Southernmost Republican Club.

New Scam Victimizes Restaurants and Other Businesses that Deliver

Employees of some local businesses are apparently making extra imprint of tourists’ credit cards, and are using the credit card numbers to pay for food deliveries locally.

“We got scammed a couple of times when we took those credit card numbers over the phone and delivered the food,” said a local restaurant manager. “When the tourists got back home and checked their credit card statements, they noticed the unauthorized charges for food delivery and they disputed those charges with their credit card companies. And we got charged back the amount of the food we delivered.”

One merchant reported the scam to the State Attorney’s Office, only to be told that any merchant who takes credit card numbers over the phone— rather than getting an imprint of the card— is just begging to be defrauded.

“We have now changed our policy,” said the restaurant manager. “We still take credit card information over the phone, but we tell the person who is calling that our delivery person will want to see the card upon delivery.

“The first week that this policy was in effect, we had two callers hang up on us.”

Bicyclist Collides With a Conch Tour Train. The Train Wins

In Key West, a collision between a bicyclist and a motor vehicle is not very newsworthy— unless the motor vehicle happens to be a Conch Tour Train.

Back on April 4, a Conch Tour Train was passing an elderly bicyclist on Duval Street, near Angela. As the train passed, the hand grip on the bicyclist’s handlebars touched the train. That apparently caused the 75-year-old man to lose control of his bicycle and fall to the pavement.

But, according to the police report, the driver of the Conch Tour Train did not stop.

LETTERS: Do the City Commissioners’ Family Members Park for Free on the Streets of Key West?

Dear Editor:

So, today at 8 a.m., I went to my doc on Southard Street. With all the parking controversy, I have recently begun to take note of the little white Pay to Park receipts displayed on people’s dashboards.

Of course, more folks than not, don’t have the receipt displayed. As I walked by, I noticed a business card instead of a paid receipt on the dash of the car parked in front of mine.

Well, lo and behold, the business card said “Bill Wardlow, City Commission, Key West, FL.” Okay, so the Commish doesn’t pay to park like rest of us, right? Nice bennie, along with all the others they have.

GAYFLY: I’m Addicted to Pills. So What!

by Scott McCarthy

Here’s the deal, I love Ambien. In fact, so much so that it deserves repeating. I love Ambien. For anyone who is living under a rock or in Ohio perhaps, Ambien is a sedative hypnotic drug–a sleeping pill- -with a punch. It takes just one small orange pill in my body to change me into a being that can sleep. I go to bed just after I take one and wait for the fun to begin. I get ready by doing anything that needs to be done before I pass out, TV, lights, etc.

My friend JC says “Put out your cigarette before you take the pill.” I pose like Lily Munster; remember how she would lay there perfectly straight and stiff and cross her arms holding a lily? Then I get all woozy and lightheaded and fall asleep.

Some of the more obvious drawbacks are an unclear head and unsteadiness in the morning. Okay, I admit that I enjoy both these feelings. In fact, I spend a lot of money to feel like that but it’s usually in a bar. A dizzy morning is fun. And what’s the worst that can happen? I’m not exactly performing surgery or splitting the atom on my two day work week making drinks. Since I don’t get up early for anything anymore, I am never in a hurry. So a little staggering just makes the beginning of my day more fun. But here’s the part that is huge: I sleep through the night! It’s a win/win.

RHONDA: Death Dragon or Pest?

by Rhonda Linseman-Saunders

We’re moving. These were the first words out of my mouth when my husband called KWTN World Headquarters to tell me he’d found a scorpion inside his shirt. After he’s already put it on. And after it had already stung him twice.

I’ve noticed that most people who are from around here are desensitized to these horrific creatures. Yay you. But I am not desensitized to the possibility that I could, at any time of the day or night, in any crevice of my home, including my sheets and underwear, encounter a miniature mythical-looking monster with a poisonous ax flailing around on his ugly serpentine tail. Evil at its purest.

I guess it probably just depends where you were raised. My husband is from here. He find scorpions annoying but not terrifying, yet he has an irrational fear of bears. Bears! Those fuzzy mind-their-own-business types! I, on the other hand, am from Michigan, and I’m far less afraid of encountering a black bear in the woods than I am of encountering a scorpion in, say, MY SHIRT.

O'BOYLE: What's a Buck?

by Hal O’Boyle

Having returned to the Land of Opportunity, while wondering where my next buck will come from, I wonder also about the nature of that buck. What is it, really?

The origin of the word “buck,” meaning a dollar, is uncertain. Some etymologists believe that it was a reference to deerskins. In early America buckskins were more common than silver or gold coins. In some places they served as money. According to a reference at snopes.com, the term was used in 1748 by an explorer named Conrad Weiser. On a trip through Indian territory, in what is now Ohio, Weiser wrote, “He has been robbed of the value of 300 Bucks.” A hundred years later, deerskins had fallen into disuse as money but the word buck had come to mean “dollar.” Perhaps we will hit on a use for Key Deer yet.

Knowing that a buck is a dollar, or even knowing how dollars came to be bucks, however, doesn’t help us know what a dollar is.

Bartender of the Week!

RYAN is a bartender at Ilona’s Garden Cafe on Appelrouth Lane.

His specialty drink is a Tropical Ice Wine Martini.

What’s on at the Tropic

by Phil Mann

It’s another of those something- for-everyone weeks, with a couple of new movies joining popular holdovers, plus a passel of special events.

SOURCE CODE is from that thriller genre where characters can affect history by various kinds of trans-reality interventions. Think Inception or The Adjustment Bureau. In Source Code Jake Gyllenhaal is part of a secret Army anti-terrorism experiment involving brain transplants.

More I can’t say without giving away too much. But once you accept the concept, the movie draws you in and puts you on the edge of your seat. Director Duncan Jones’ last movie was a sci-fi meditation Moon about a man ending a solo tour on a lunar station so Jones knows how to think about things as well as blow them up. With the Source Code he gives us “a gripping action film that also works as poetry.” (San Francisco Chronicle) It’s a “beautifully made, suspenseful techno-thriller,” says the New Yorker.