What’s the Buzz in South Florida? : From Margaritville

Like a bridge over untroubled waters, the 113-mile Overseas Highway from Key Largo southwest to Key West takes you from one slap-happy island to another--and back to the ‘60s.

It’s not quite that the news of the day is of no consequence here at Mile Zero, the end of U.S. Route 1. It’s just that the news of the day is different.

On Key West, the news is that prices are up and squalor is down. Where gunrunners, rumrunners, pirates and cigar barons once roamed, now we have restaurateurs.

Newcomers are buying up and fixing up the best properties. Funky no more, Key West is becoming yuppified and gentrified, the locals lament.But it looks better than ever to the visitor. Because here in the Keys, the party isn’t over.

Remember those golden days when people got snockered? When you drank that one for the road while you were driving--because President Johnson did it on his ranch? Do you remember daiquiris and zombies and scorpions? The singles scene?

It’s all still celebrated here in the Florida Keys, the wildest and loudest island chain on the face of the earth.

The gay population brought tea dancing with them, a kind of lambada with shirts off. Straights quickly picked it up. Tea dances for both sexual orientations are held twice a week at Key West’s La Terraza de Marti--an adults-only hotel known affectionately as La Te Da.

Although the Keys are a water wonderland, rich in nature preserves and teeming with wildlife, the major tourist attraction is a bar--Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, billed as a hangout of writer Ernest Hemingway--and the major sport in these placid waters is not water-skiing, but jet-skiing.

The first fact you must learn about the Keys is that here, as in Ireland, it is considered poor form to drink at home.

The second fact is that no water sport here is considered worth performing unless you can train for it by sitting in your truck eating doughnuts.

Addresses in the Keys are stated in terms of mile markers on the Overseas Highway, which starts 50 miles south of Miami, at the tip of the mainland. After a long run across Blackwater Sound, the highway crosses into Key Largo, northernmost of the Keys’ three party towns.

At Mile Marker 104 in Key Largo, the Caribbean Club is a great place to sample life in the Keys. In 1948, scenes from “Key Largo,” the movie, were filmed here. Today it’s a biker bar, a raucous, jampacked redneck hangout. When you enter this stone roadhouse, everyone turns around and looks at you. Don’t be intimidated. In the Keys, even the meanest bikers wear shorts, and they’re quite harmless.

With some exceptions. There is occasionally a stomping at the boat dock in the back, and once a customer kicked a puppy to death right in the bar. Now a “No Dogs Allowed” sign is posted.

The “puppy,” by most accounts, was a pit bull.

You might think the Caribbean Club is not too proud of this story, but you would be wrong. When I visited, a biker was selling copies of a guidebook, “The Florida Keys: A History and Guide,” by Joy Williams, that included the tale.

Right next door, at the same Key Largo address, is the Italian Fisherman, largest restaurant in the Keys, seating more than 2,000 in a stunning outdoor setting overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a shower in the middle of the dining room, and a heated swimming pool. Diners arrive in bathing suits.

The owners got so sick of watching drunken customers throw freshly baked garlic bread to the catfish in the gulf waters below that they began handing out “fish bread,” uneaten rolls left behind by departing patrons.

Sunset specials include shrimp fra Diavolo , stone crabs, baked ziti, blackened swordfish and dolphin Rockefeller, each for $4.95, with salad and garlic bread.

Four miles to the south, at Mile Marker 100 in Key Largo, is Coconuts, a restaurant in the Marina del Mar Resort that caters to sailors and divers in search of affection. The Sexual Revolution is still going on here, and in the bar area, everyone hits on everyone.

In Islamorada, the second party town, 20 miles southwest of Key Largo, the scenery changes. The pickup trucks and tattoos and John Deere hats peter out. The crowd is younger here, and they drink in cute little tiki huts, like Kokomo. Made famous in a Beach Boys song by the same name, Kokomo is a rowdy reggae bar on the beach, with a steel-drum band and limbo contests.

It’s one of eight bars--and only 180 rooms--in the Holiday Isle Resorts and Marina, not a hotel for people who want to be alone.

An 80-mile drive down the Overseas Highway past tiny islands with the turquoise Atlantic to the left and the emerald Gulf of Mexico to the right takes you to Key West, southernmost of the Keys party towns. It has played host to revelers for years.

Hemingway lived here from 1931 to 1941, and other party animals who have made it their home range from Calvin Klein to Thornton Wilder. Tennessee Williams used to dance here with Truman Capote. Hemingway wrote “A Farewell to Arms” here, as well as “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Death in the Afternoon” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Hemingway’s two-story Spanish Colonial mansion, on an acre of land, remains a popular pilgrimage. Tours are conducted daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You’ll see the first swimming pool built in the Keys, and Hemingway’s catwalk to his writing studio. Descendants of Hemingway’s cats roam the house and grounds.

Although Hemingway was a disciplined writer during his Key West years, he frequently slipped out for a drink. So, too, do most visitors.

Bars in the Keys are allowed to remain open 21 hours a day, and at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville in Key West, last call falls just before 4 a.m.

Recently I heard a woman with a clear case of the munchies say to her boyfriend, “Hey, the sign says they serve a buffet here.”

Buffett has parlayed his career as a singer, songwriter and barkeep into a new life as a short-story writer. His collection of “Tales From Margaritaville” is now out in paperback. His home here is on prime ocean-front land. Late last month, in fact, four strangers--two men and two women--sailed up to Buffett’s home in an 18-foot boat. They turned out to be refugees from Cuba. Buffett promptly handed them drinks and cassette tapes. Coast Guard Lt. Jeff Karonis described the incident as “just another day in Margaritaville.”

No matter how tough the bar, it’s acceptable in the Keys to order the fruity drinks your grandmother used to swig at Don the Beachcomber--planter’s punches, sherry flips and sloe gin fizzes. Some of the vilest-looking bars on Key West’s Duval Street give away souvenir glasses with their Caribbean rum concoctions.

Even at Hemingway’s beloved Sloppy Joe’s Bar, pina coladas are the official house drink. In fact, this Sloppy Joe’s is an impostor. The Sloppy Joe’s where Hemingway drank is now called Captain Tony’s and is down the street. Hemingway would no sooner drink a pina colada than he would dance with Truman Capote. His drink was Scotch.

In Hemingway’s time (and to this day), locals gathered at Mallory Dock, at the foot of Duval Street, to watch the sunset. Peddlers began to join the locals and tourists in the ‘50s, and by the ‘60s they were hawking tie-dyed T-shirts and shorts. They still are. They’ve been joined by fire-eaters, jugglers, fortune tellers and would-be sea captains with talking parrots on their shoulders.

The Keys in general and Key West in particular had always been raffish and down at the heels. But now gentrification has lured tens of thousands of new visitors, among them Japanese and Europeans. And the restaurant scene has improved immeasurably.

At lunchtime in Bagatelle, a highly rated Key West restaurant in an old mansion, more than half your fellow diners will be drinking pink ladies. Service is laid-back, and you may not get what you ordered, but you’re unlikely to be disappointed. I once ordered dolphin in mango and papaya sauce, and ended up with grouper in mustard sauce. They got my drink right, though. It was the daily special, made with two kinds of rum, three kinds of fruit juice and orgeat syrup.

Drinking will not inhibit your skills at Keys water sports. (An observation, not a recommendation.) For jet-skiing, physical fitness doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite.

Jet-skis are for rent all the way from Gilbert’s Resort in Key Largo down to the Blue Lagoon Hotel, 107 miles to the south in Key West.

The swarm-of-bumblebees sound of jet-skis fills the air unrelentingly from sunrise to sunset. You can rent a stand-up Kawasaki model for $30 per half-hour, or a state-of-the-art Yamaha WaveRunner III for $40. You sit down on the WaveRunner III, and to tip it over, you really have to want to.

Hot-dogging locals prefer the Kawasakis, and they’re not very skilled. They spend most of their time overboard. For a newcomer to the sport, the sit-down model provides thrills enough. The WaveRunner’s top speed exceeds 40 m.p.h. In the water, this feels like 100. Take a curve at this speed and your heart will race. It’s a real rush.

No, you can’t do it at home. The coral reef off the Atlantic coast of the Keys breaks the waves, leaving the waters totally calm. Those who have tried jet-skiing off the California coast say it is absolutely terrifying.

Of course, jet-skiing in the Keys for hours on end can run into a pile of money. Less expensive water sports include windsurfing, at $12 per hour, and kayaking, at $25 per day. Snorkeling tours to the coral reef off Key Largo are $16, including all equipment.

The waters are crystal clear, and 600 species of sea life live here. Scuba diving is very popular, particularly in Key Largo. For $295 per person per night, you can rent a room in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, which you can reach only by diving. Meals are delivered to your room by a diver carrying a rubber suitcase. Free champagne for newlyweds--or anyone claiming to be.

Underwater or on land, let the party begin.

* Hiking: Seven Key walks. L8

GUIDEBOOK

Florida Keys

Getting there: Delta flies daily to Miami, usually with one connection. Until Feb. 20, a weekend special fare offers round-trip service from Los Angeles to Miami for $298, with seven-day advance purchase. Beginning Feb. 21, the rate goes to $374 round trip. By rental car from Miami, it’s 1 1/2 hours to Key Largo, 3 1/2 hours to Key West. Auto rental rates in Florida are among the lowest in the nation. You can fly Delta to Key West, via Dallas and Orlando, for $504 round trip, with 14-day advance. Call Delta at (213) 386-5510.

There are luxury buses from the bus loop in front of each concourse at Miami International Airport. It’s $22 and 1 1/2 hours to Key Largo, $25 and 2 hours to Islamorada.

Where to stay: In Key West, La Terraza de Marti at 1125 Duval St. for tea dancing. Doubles start at $78 in season, $58 summer and fall. Call (305) 294-8435.

In Islamorada, the Holiday Isle Resorts and Marina at 84001 Overseas Highway features eight bars and offers parasailing, windsurfing, sailboarding and jet-skiing. Doubles start at $145 in season, $65 summer and fall. Call (800) 327-7070. For peace and quiet, try the Pelican Cove next door at Mile Marker 84.5. Rates: doubles for $115 in season, $95 summer and fall. Call (800) 445-4690.

In Key Largo, the Marina del Mar Resort and Marina at 527 Caribbean Drive attracts sailors, divers and “wannabes.” Doubles start at $115 in season, $70 summer and fall. Call (800) 451-3483.

Where to party: Caribbean Club, Mile Marker 104, Bay Side, Key Largo, (305) 451-9970. Kokomo, 84001 Overseas Highway, Islamorada, (800) 327-7070 or (305) 664-2321. Margaritaville, 500 Duval St., Key West, (305) 292-1435.

For more information: Contact the Florida Keys & Key West Visitors Bureau, Box 1147, Key West, Fla. 33041, (800) 352-5397.

Also: Key Largo Chamber of Commerce, 103400 Overseas Highway, Key Largo, Fla. 33037, (800) 822-1088; Islamorada Chamber of Commerce, Box 915, Islamorada, Fla. 33036, (800) 322-5397.