Defining Moment, Key West

This morning, a local newspaper reporter told me that he can’t tell the difference between mayor candidate Craig Cates and Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson.
 
During last night’s Key West Business Guild mixer at Art Warehouse, John Padget told me that he had told Craig that he needs to support Key West having a nude beach. When Craig replied that he did not oppose a nude beach, John told Craig he needs to try to get us a nude beach. When Craig asked why?, John said because of the incremental increase in tourism it will create for Key West. I told John that I didn’t think Craig would come out in favor of a nude beach, because he didn’t want to lose the religious right’s votes.
 
I then heard John tell several other people at the mixer that we need a nude beach. John is a true radical. Maybe even a criminal. Maybe even a Satanist — by the religious right’s definition. However, those who know John, including Craig Cates, know he’s anything but any of that that. He’s a pragmatic businessman, a capitalist. He represents what City Commissioner Mark Rossi said night before last at the City Commission meeting many American troops had died to preserve: economic competition.
 
I have a hard time believing Craig didn’t know why John told him that he needs to try to get Key West a nude beach. I think Craig knew exactly why John told him that.
 
A nude beach will be an economic stimulus to Key West that not even Mayor McPherson and the religious-right can deny. They just don’t want us to have it, because it’s evil, according to them. Next thing you know, they will be trying to get rid of Fantasy Fest, Pride Fest, Duval Street and the One Human Family creed Key West adopted as its own. Next thing you know, they will be trying to make Key West a world-class tourist destination for the religious right. If you think this is some sort of joke, think again.
 
Another scenario, a woman new to Key West told me at the mixer last night that Edgar Cayce, once a religious-righter, until God turned him into The Sleeping Prophet and introduced him to reincarnation and other non-religious-right ideas, predicted Key West would become a world center for healing and spiritual development. I told the woman that there is an earth energy under Key West that is similar to the earth energy in the Andes and Himalayas, which is conducive to healing and spiritual development, and that it’s a cosmic joke that it is here admist what she described as debauchery.
 
I told Jim Hendrick two days ago that this election season is a defining moment for Key West, in many ways beyond a nude beach. I had in mind this excerpt from that morning’s ”Renaissance, Key West” post:
 
“There is yet another reason I want the City Commission to designate a nude beach in Key West, which has nothing directly to do with any of the above. It has to do with the constellation of changes waiting to unfold in Key West, which will launch it toward being a true renaissance city, not only for its residents and visitors, but for the entire world. As I explained to Todd German the other day, a nude beach is the first change that needs to happen, for many other changes that will move the city forward to happen. Designating a nude beach here is like cutting a trail through a forest, along which trail others can follow much more easily than by blazing their own separate trails through the forest.
 
“What are these other changes that hang in a constellation waiting on the first domino to fall? I could speculate, but that’s all it would be, speculation. I’m not speculating, though, when I say much hangs in the balance for Key West around it getting a nude beach. Much. And the sooner it happens, the sooner the constellation will start coming to ground from where it now hovers in spirit.
 
“If this sounds like what some people might call Metaphysics, then let them call it that. For me, it’s just taking one step at a time, which leads to the next step, then to the next, and so on. The sooner we take the first step, the sooner the next step will show up for us to take. That’s right, show up. We will not see the second step until after we take the first step. And we will not see the third step until after we take the second step, and so on.”
 
Translation: Steps cannot be skipped, ever. If Key West doesn’t get a nude beach, then the city will take a hard right turn that will drive one-half of its residents away, including this one.
 
Sloan Bashinsky, mayor candidate