Key West the Newspaper (The Blue Paper)
September 30 at 5:39am ·
Know who you’re gonna vote for in local election?
HIGHLIGHTS FROM MONDAY’S HOMETOWN! CANDIDATE FORUM -
DID YOU LIKE THIS STORY? SUPPORT THE BLUE PAPER Help us continue to bring you local investigative journalism… Click on the image to make a donation. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Arnaud and Naja Girard, owners and editors of the new, digital, Key West the…
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During my 3 minutes at the Hometown forum, I proposed disbanding KWPD and paying Sheriff Rick Ramsay to provide law enforcement for Key West, which he provides everywhere else in the Florida Keys. In yesterday’s Key West Citizen was an article about Sheriff Ramsay, which I really liked:
NO MAN’S LAND
Sheriff tackles problematic property
BY ADAM LINHARDT Key West Citizen
Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay stopped his SUV on Laurel Avenue on Thursday to order two vagrants who were loitering to move on. He stopped again, got out of his SUV, pointed at the people and yelled, “I said, beat it!”
Ramsay was with The Citizen to show the problems the Sheriff’s Office has been having with vagrant live-aboards dumping trash, human waste, doing drugs and engaging in prostitution on a strip of land that jettisons out into Boca Chica Bay on the northeastern edge of Stock Island across from the Key Haven boat ramp. Ramsay parked his SUV where Laurel Avenue dead ends and the controversial piece of property begins. “There’s no records that we can find as to who owns it,” Ramsay said. “It’s a fill road, a man-made road made to bring cranes out to dredge years ago. I’ve been trying to figure out who owns it for years.”
On Monday, Ramsay, deputies and volunteers hauled out 3.8 tons of garbage from the property, including bicycles, mattresses, beer cans and piles of other trash. Recently, Ramsay himself made arrests after catching a prostitute engaging in her trade with a customer. He pointed out derelict vessels that were stuffed into the mangroves, some of which were uprooted by vagrants to make room. “It’s disgusting,” Ramsay said. “They bring in their garbage bags and just drop them here. Human waste, you name it. And the taxpayers have to pay to clean it up.”
The water in that part of Boca Chica Bay is now likely unsafe for swimming, a point that angers not only Ramsay, but the operators of the nearby Waters Edge Colony Mobile Home park and longtime salvor and Stock Island resident Ricky Arnold of Arnold’s Towing. “We used to race 12-foot boats there as kids,” Arnold said. “The water was crystal clear. I mean clean. Now, if you go swimming out there, your skin will fall off. It’s nasty.” Arnold’s wife grew up in the nearby trailer park. “It used to be everyone’s swimming hole back then,” Arnold said.
Arnold said Ramsay has been speaking with him about removing the old engines off the bay bottom that vagrants like to use as makeshift anchors, with perhaps the state reimbursing the county to pay him. The garbage often gets tossed at low tide, when vagrants can bring their dinghys in. When the tide rises, that garbage floats all over the eastern side of Stock Island, Arnold said. “It’s a mess out there,” Arnold said. “We need to lay down the law.”
Ramsay lamented that not only has the Monroe County Property Appraiser nor the Florida Department of Environmental Protection been able to determine who owns the land, but figuring out who owns the derelict vessels is another nightmare. The owners of the derelict boats sell them to the homeless for a dollar and turn over the title, so when law enforcement finds the owner they have no legal recourse, Ramsay said. “There’s often no owner to go after,” Ramsay said. “We hate to pick on people and we’re not against people living on boats, but they’re not being good stewards.”
The issue has become a game of chase of sorts in that the vagrants were run out of Wisteria Island, or the city’s mooring field, so they went to Boca Chica Bay near Key Haven boat ramp, Ramsay said. When they were run out of that area, they went to the current piece of property causing problems. The sheriff suspects when he runs them out of their current spot, they’ll move to an area near Shark Key, where he has already put signs up. They like to be near convenience stores where they readily purchase beer, cigarettes and fuel, Ramsay said.
Ramsay would like to see the county create a managed mooring field in Boca Chica Bay, which would force liveaboards to legally pump out their waste and keep the vessels safely moored at sea. County commissioners have been kicking the idea around for more than a year, but have run into challenges such as where to install showers stalls, bathrooms and other necessities on land. They have also discussed purchasing the former Gulf Seafood property and trying to find out if they can place such facilities at that property.
Ramsay estimates there are close to 100 derelict boats in the area in question now. One of the people who was loitering came up to Ramsay and asked if she could go to her dinghy. Ramsay allowed her to do so. “If you just took care of the area, there wouldn’t be a problem,” Ramsay told the woman
alinhardt@keysnews.com
Christy Sweet also liked and commented under my review of Key West the Newspaper (thebluepaper.com), published online every Friday, with breaking news updates as they happen:
Sloan Bashinsky reviewed Key West the Newspaper (The Blue Paper) — 5 star
February 20 ·
I started reading the blue paper probably in the fall of 2002, when its then publisher and owner, Dennis Reeves Cooper, was pushing hard to get the Citizens (Police) Review Board referendum put on the ballot, and then he campaigned to get it passed, overwhelmingly. After Naja and Aranud assumed the helm a few years ago, the blue paper experienced a warp jump, like going from the speed of sound to the speed of light and beyond that. I didn’t always agree with how they covered and reported something themselves, but was so glad they were doing it and stirring the pot in Key West and the Florida Keys in ways and areas of concern and interest that made the local mullet wrappers seem like donkey-drawn wagons. Like Dennis Cooper had done, Naja and Arnaud put their bodies and lives at risk in law enforcement articles. They rattled the local bubbafied (fossilized) ways of doing things. They swam against the current, and they dug and dug and came up with stuff that, but for them, never would have seen the light of day. Which is what I say newspapers are supposed to do. Moreover, Naja and Arnaud dispensed with a daily printed from dead trees newspaper, and published entirely online, which made the blue paper available to people everywhere, who were online. People started getting up each morning and typing the blue paper into their search bars and hitting enter and - voila! - journalism the likes of which Key West, and, I wager, most of humanity had never before seen. Sure Naja and Arnaud rubbed some people the wrong way. If they did not do that, they would not have been doing it right. Sure, sometimes Naja and Arnaud made mistakes, which, on learning of them, they publicly and quickly acknowledged. Under blue paper articles, readers are given pretty much free rein to say whatever is on their mind, which tends to further, deepen and broaden the discussion. I know Naja and Arnaud pretty well. I know they ain’t making much money publishing the blue paper. Maybe 50 cents an hour, if that much, maybe only 50 cents a day. I know they bust their butts all week long working on this and that of local interest, then they do an all-nighter on Thursday so their readers will have something new and interestng to read the next morning, Friday. This past Thursday night, Arnaud, who is a salver, got a call in the wee hours about a boat in distress off of Key West, and he dropped what he was doing for Friday’s blue paper and went to the dock and got into his boat and went out and saved that boat and its passengers, who, I imagine, will holler plenty about what he told them they should pay him for rescuing them from what sounded to me like their own making. Many times have I heard Naja and Arnaud say, this week is the last week of the blue paper. We are retiring. Many times have I heard them lament someone telling them something juicy and jolting, which needed public airing out, but the source would not put his/her name on it, so Naja and Arnaud could not publish it. For their coverage of the Charles Eimers death in police custody case, I campaigned for Naja and Arnaud and the blue paper to receive a Pulitzer. The City Commission should give Arnaud and Naja keys to the city, and name a day after them and the blue paper.
As a P.S, perhaps I should say the most fun I had on something with Naja and Arnaud, and other members of what I called “The Resistance”, an informal society of people who drew one line in the sand after another in city and county attempted political muggings of defenseless creatures and Mother Nature, was the battle (war actually) for Wisteria Island, which the Bernstein family had long thought they owned, but Naja, who, with her family, had lived on a boat many years off the island, which was their and other boat people’s playground, kinda thought maybe the Navy still owned Wisteria. And this led to that, and Naja kept digging up more and more, and I told her the angels had told me to tell her to keep digging, and finally she dug up enough to convince the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that the U.S. Government probably still owned Wisteria, and the BLM officially laid claim to it for the U.S. Government, which caused the Bernsteins a bit of a dither in their efforts to turn Wisteria into Sunset Key Deux, and that led to Roger Bernstein, as I heard it told, calling Naja a witch, which, when I told her that, she cackled and said she took it as a high compliment. Wisteria’s fate now is in the hands of the federal courts, where the Bernsteins went after Naja pulled her magic trick out of her black pointy witch hat, even as there is rumor than the Bersteins might be even now making another try to sneak Wisteria Island, somehow, into being Sunset Key Deux, despite the federal courts still being the 800 pound gorilla in this here sitiation.
Key West the Newspaper (The Blue Paper)
Broadcasting & Media Production · 9,976 Likes
The day after my homeless girlfriend Kari Dangler was arrested by two Key West police officers driving two police cruisers, for sitting on the ground at night on private property between Dunkin’ Donuts and Wells Fargo Bank on North Roosevelt Blvd, and cuffed and taken to jail, yesterday was not a good day for me. Fortunately, a friendly face showed up to help cheer me up and listen to me complain and jest.
Hello Sloan Bashinsky,
This email confirms that you have received a donation of$20.00 USD from lynda . You can view the transaction details online.
|
I emailed Lynda:
Thanks much, Lynda -
It was only a matter of time before they arrested Kari, just for being homeless; like, where could she sit down on the ground in Key West and not get arrested, except in Fort Zach State State Park, which is not the city’s land?
Lynda wrote:
I wish I could do more.
She is being targeted for sure. Would she have been arrested in Ft. Zac by the Sheriff tho?
I replied:
No, the Sheriff does not patrol Ft. Zach. Park rangers patrol it. If they need back up, they probably call KWPD, because it is closer than the Sheriff. Those two cops were totally out of bounds the way they talked to Kari, who had nothing to do with why they were called into the park by an irate tourist whose sandals, he said, had been ripped off. I met him the next day, when he came back still looking for his sandals, not accusing Kari of it. He was seriously wired on something. Kari said same the day before, the cops should have cuffed him and taken him to jail.
Lynda wrote:
This all could have been avoided if that drunken twerp of a public defender had done his job.
I replied:
Shameful, Lynda - drunken twerp flatters Matthew Matteliano.
Since Rick Roberts installed the new Pay Pal button on goodmorningkeywest.com maybe a month ago, I had taken down the old Pal Pal button months prior because I became unable to log into that PayPal account, you are the first (thus the only) person to send in a donation, according to my Pay Pal account.
Your donation kinda reminds me of the time Jesus and his disciples were in a synagogue and a poor old woman put a mite into the offering plate and some of the disciples mocked her and Jesus said she had given all she had, so in that way she had given far more than anyone else had given to that temple.
I suppose I need to do what I’ve heard hundreds of times since the angels grabbed me in early 1987: “Get a real job.”
My feelings are almost feeling hurt. Almost.
🙂
Lynda wrote:
REALLY?!
All of your readers and nothing? Not even $5? I praise my parents for teaching me to share.
After years of being sick, I’ve had to go back to work ….it’s impossible to live in Jersey or KW on my SS. I’m a realtor so no salary but my old clients are beginning to hear that I am back to work and I’ve had a few sales. I can work my own hours so when Chernobyl stricks, I can hide. Going back to work as a Senior is not for sissys tho!
Job? Whatcha gonna do,… flip burgers? be a greeter at KMart? Tend Bar at The Garden of Eden? What about reading fortunes at Bayview Park on Saturday at the Farmers market?
oops…Farmers market up here is Sat…….I think it’s Thursday down there?
I replied:
Yes, it’s Thursday.
There is a fellow who all along has been giving me $5 a week, auto pay out of his checking account, to my old Pal Pal account, since probably some time latish 2015. He’s ornery, beats me up with emails from time to time; last time I heard from him, he said doctors had told him to get his affairs in order, he was going to die, but he was still around. He has many troubles, physically, but interesting in some ways, and clever.
Sitting on a pile of money, resulting from land his family had which ended up having heap of oil under it and he figured out a way for them all them all to get paid a lot more for it than similarly situated people were getting paid. He has nobody he cares about to leave all that money after he’s gone. He never told me how he intended to dispose of it.
He wants a homeless camp built on Big Coppit, where they all live. I invited him several times to finance it, even as I said if he did build it, they would not come, because of its distance from Key West. He would just have them rounded up and brought there, regardless. That was city commissioner Tony Yaniz’s idea, too.
I really don’t see any solution to homeless people short of just waking up one day and they no longer exist, magically they just disappeared, or died in their sleep. But then, what would replace them? Something would. Maybe more homeless people? Jesus told his disciples the poor would always be with them.
At least Kari is now inside, out of the weather, bugs, predator men, police harassment, has her own bunk where she can lay down her head, free room and board, assess to jail infirmary, although that didn’t always go well in the past. Prison might be better for her than the way she has been living.
Hateful thing to say, perhaps, but I’ve been face to face with what it’s like for her being homeless, with that felony assault conviction and probation, which the judge mentioned yesterday morning in the jail, before he set her bond at $5,000, which is very high for a mere misdemeanor trespass case. Perhaps unheard of high.
Choking the Chicken
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByW25VYMZrbBUE5aUEdjcmpCY00/view
Me and my opponent at Hometown PAC’s candidate forum
About Sloan
Darn, that would take a while. Try the autobiographical pages in the header. Ditto for header menu pages at www.goodmorningbirmingham.com. Hatched and raised there, eventually I ran away from home.
Here's a short list: Born 1942; male; spoken for; accused of all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable things, perhaps some true. Live on Key West of Weird asteroid. Publish something most days at goodmorningkeywest.com, been at that since July 2007. That's heaps of catch-up reading, probably not recommended.
