Last Post from Key West

In the gap between the NFL conference finals and the up-coming Super Bowl, we attended the 28^th annual Key West Craft Fair.  They barricaded a couple of blocks near the Truman White House in Old Town and let a hundred or so artisans and craftsmen of all kinds set up tents and sell/display their wares.  We have attended these kinds of events all over the country and find them to be largely the same.  Some of the themes are different because of the specific locale—i.e., water scenes vs. mountains, palm trees vs. pines, etc., but, if you’ve been to one, you’ve been to all IMHO.  We didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without, but with unlimited funds and unlimited space, we might have picked up one or two things. As it was, we made it home empty handed.  Since it took little time to get around to all of the tents, we rode our bikes home the long way and stopped for a pretty good pizza a Roostica, a Stock Island eatery.  We certainly love to cycle everywhere on KW, but recently the head winds coming home have been nasty.

Followers of this blog have figured out that we are staying on Stock Island, a grubby little chunk of land situated between Key West and Boca Chica (the Naval Air Station).  It has: a power plant, a waste water disposal facility, a retired Tip (a landfill to y’all not from Commonwealth countries), the Monroe County Jail, a hospital, golf course, many marinas hosting both pleasure craft and working boats, the botanical gardens, a community college boasting the Tennessee Williams Theater, an elementary school, the SPCA, a bunch of restaurants, lots and lots of run down trailers/mobile homes, and a couple of expensive RV parks whose tariff exceeds the quality of their facilities.  Our photographer has become intrigued by the many shrimp/lobster docks proliferating on Stock Island.  The stacks of lobster traps, piles of netted buoys, and rows of working boats have become the fodder for an exasperated artist seeking beauty where there is none…well, one can argue, it is in eye of the beholder. 

  

We have frequented several of the restaurants, but have for weeks passed by a little Cuban hole-in-the-wall called El Mocho (the butt) almost daily and have not darkened its door.  This is the kind of place that locals and workers frequent and where every morning pockets of old men sit around outside having coffee catching up on life.  We vowed to have breakfast there some day; Monday was that day.  Well, we were mildly surprised.  While the place was very small--you couldn’t swing a dead cat around and not hit something--the quality of the food was excellent and the prices were very reasonable, quite unlike Key West restaurants as a group.  Long-time customers are treated as familia and warmly welcomed and greeted with abrazos when they arrive.  It felt more like home than the northeast coast dominated Florida.  Actually, that’s probably not fair to Key West.  There are many Cubanos and Bahamians (and other islanders, too) working in every kind of service job you can imagine.  They lend their cultural influences to this place in ways that are both obvious and envious.  Who among us hasn’t become addicted to café con leche?

El Mocho

We have spent some time making observations about cruise ships docking at Key West.  We do that in part because you can’t avoid ship passengers if you go down town and because it is such a hot topic among the citizens here.  There is a proposal underway to dredge greater access to the ship piers.  The effort would be a mile-long and 150 yards wide, allowing for more than two ships to dock at once.  Current estimates indicate that ships disgorge some 3,000 to 9,000 passengers and crew daily.  Most of them don’t wander too far from lower Duval Street.  The primary argument seems to be around whether or not Key West should focus on quality or quantity of visitors.  The cruise ships offer quantity, but it is estimated that cruise ship passengers spend $1 for every $10 spent by other visitors.  The ultimate question for Key West is do they want to be more upscale, like Nantucket or the Hamptons, or continue to stoke mass tourism that provides a reliable stream of dollars, but which results in the proliferation of T-shirt shops and other tourista crappola.  Only Key Westers and their leaders can answer that question, but for us it is probably already too late, as the masses of humanity are a big enough turnoff to keep us from returning any time soon, or ever.

Carnival Cruise Ship

 We seek entertainment wherever we can find it, and local theater productions are pretty good places to have an enjoyable evening.  Key West is no exception to that, as you may recall that earlier in the month we attended a play at the Waterfront Theater and a drag show at La Te Da.  The local Red Barn Theater, which is housed in the old carriage house for the island's oldest home, offers a series of plays throughout the year.  “The Divine Sister” just opened last week to sellout crowds (not hard, as the place only seats a hundred or so) and it was our last opportunity to attend a play in Key West.  The play stared Randy Roberts, a well-known drag queen playing the title role.  It was an outrageous evening of nearly slapstick ribald humor complete with Junior High School scatological jokes, etc.  None-the-less, it was a pleasurable evening capped off with Key Lime pie and exotic coffees at the Grand Café across the street.

At The Red Barn Theater  

Long before arriving in Key West, various friends and acquaintances told us not to miss “Latitudes,” a romantic restaurant run by The Weston Hotel on Sunset Key.  “Be sure to take the boat over to Sunset Key and have lunch at the most romantic place in the Keys,” they told us time and again.  Time, like it often does these days, almost got away from us, but we managed to sneak it in on our next to last day.  The short boat ride was fun and the island, sprinkled with excessively over-priced 1%er housing, was charming and, yes, romantic.  The color of the water around the island cannot be captured easily in photos, so you will have to take our word for it.  “Latitudes” has a gorgeous setting with tables arranged on the sandy beach, a lovely patio, and plenty of indoor seating when the weather doesn’t cooperate.  On this day the weather was perfect.  As expected, the tariff for a meal was on the steep side even for KW, but we complained not, expecting a stunning lunch.  This not a restaurant critique blog, but given the raves we received about the place before our arrival, we must say that the food was pedestrian and the service terrible.  We often grouse about the apparent lack of training wait staff and others in the service end of restaurants receive.  Even given training there is a worse lack of supervision.  It is countless times that waiters and other food servers reach across a table in front of a diner so they won’t have to walk around to serve properly.  Sadly, our staff at “Latitudes” had to be reminded to serve correctly on more than one occasion with more than one staff member.  There were many other sloppy errors made by staff here, but we won’t dwell on them.  However, we cannot recommend a restaurant that has such poor service.

Sunset Key

Key Lime Martini - A First

On a happier note, we leave tomorrow for Grassy Key, which we will enjoy for the next month.  To cap off our stay here, we had lunch at Hogfish Bar & Grill again today.  We'll repeat breakfast tomorrow morning at El Mocho.

Vaya Con Dios Cayo Hueso

An Historic Odyssey

This past week was one of historic activities and visits.  Monday we spent much of the day watching the various inaugural activities in Washington D.C. as our 44^th president was sworn in for his second term of office.  It was an historic event of monumental proportions.  While we enjoyed the day and the activities, spending that much time in front of the boob tube left us feeling groggy, so we planned several excursions by bicycle for the remainder of the week.

The Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center, located at the Truman Waterfront, was our first destination on Tuesday.  It is operated by NOAA, Mote Marine Laboratory, and other alphabet soup agencies.  They have exhibits of the “living reef” in small aquariums and live video from the reef.  There is a superb movie chronicling the adventures of a young woman in the waters around the Keys.  One of the highlights for us was a 3D video of the ocean depicting a tremendous variety of sea life…it was just like being there.

Porthole in an Under Water Live Aboard Research Pod

Aquarium @ ECO-Discovery Center

Invasive Lion Fish

For three weeks we have regularly passed a Mexican restaurant on Stock Island called Chico’s Cantina.  There has always been a crowd there, so we vowed to stop someday.  Well, on our way home from the Eco-Discovery Center, we decided that it was the day.  We were pleasantly surprised.  As anyone following this blog regularly knows, we are aficionados of Mexican food…good Mexican food.  Anyway, Chico’s did not disappoint.  They even had a green chili sauce that approximated that found in New Mexico--our favorite.  Our only complaint is that like every restaurant in Florida, a couple of enchiladas for lunch will set you back about $50.

The Key West Historic Armory has been taken over by an arts group and offers exhibits and events in the venue.  The art on display this week is that of artist Andreas Franke.  He created fascinating underwater images of people doing ordinary things, like hanging out the laundry, and then he displayed them on the sunken ship “Vandenberg” where thy could only be viewed by scuba divers  The art became encrusted with the kind of goo one would expect to find on the bottom of a boat, but perhaps not as thick.  This created an amazing effect that enhanced the power of the pieces.  The armory also had a display of sculpture that was interesting.

Sculpture in Armory's Garden

Historic Key West Armory

One of Franke's Vandenberg Pieces

For lunch the day of our bike trip to the Armory, we stopped off at Paseo, a restaurant we had wanted to try to with our friends Tom and Lore, but it was closed the day we were there with them.  The food was delightful…a Caribbean/Island style of food leaning heavily on pork, chook, rice and beans.  It was delicious.  We sat with a Canadian couple in the limited outdoor seating area.  They were on a bus trip from their winter home in St. Petersburg and had selected Paseo from an online restaurant rating site.  He was a retired dentist and she was a retired school teacher.  Interesting folk.  They (he) lamented the fact that Canada was now a white minority country and even their small town in Ontario had become that way, too.

Classic Key West Architecture

Key West has a living population of some 25,000 full time residents.  This time of year that jumps significantly with the influx of winter tourists and cruise ship escapees.  However, it is interesting to note that there are actually more dead people residing in Key West than there are living ones.  A quick visit to the historic Key West Cemetery will show that there are some 75,000 folks interred here since it was established in 1847.  The Historic Florida Keys Foundation offers a free brochure and map highlighting 58 sites worthy of one’s attention.  That was about 50 too many for us, but we did manage to see the plot set aside for the victims of the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana in 1898, the event that ignited the Spanish-American War.  We also saw B. P. Roberts’s headstone which reads, “I told you I was sick.”  The Foundation likes to point out that the “…twenty acre park-like setting…(has) Bahamian mariners, Cuban cigar makers, Spanish-American War veterans, soldiers & civilians, millionaires & paupers, whites & blacks, Catholics, Protestants, & Jews rest(ing) side-by-side, echoing the island city’s diverse heritage.”

I Told You I Was Sick

Some in the Ground, Some Vaults

On the literature front, we just completed reading Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain of Dallas, Texas.  This is a fascinating fictional look at a squad of soldiers from the Iraq war being feted by the Dallas Cowboys at one of their home games in the old Texas Stadium in Irving.  The depiction of the major personalities in the Cowboy’s organization, while fictional, is dramatically accurate and quite disturbing.  We won’t spoil the plot line for you, but suffice it to say you will have your eyes opened by this book.

A quote from the book fits right into what we have experienced here (and other places) and which has found footing in the letters to the editor of the local newspaper.  Fountain writes at one juncture, “Retail dominates the land.  Somewhere along the way, America became a giant mall with a country attached.”  The talk here in KW is about the volume of disgorged cruise ship passengers who are changing the commercial landscape.  There are even a couple of lonely voices calling for a big box store to be built up the Keys because one can’t buy necessities in Key West any more, just tourista crappola.

South Florida and the Keys have become a retail/vacation haven for Europeans and South Americans.  Everything here is cheaper for them than at home and elsewhere (no matter how expensive we think it is).  That’s why the dominate language on the streets is not English, it is a conglomeration of other languages.  American cruise ships are most numerous here to be sure, but European ships also call in here regularly.

Which Vessel Would You Rather Be On?

If you have ever owned an RV you have probably had a string break on one of your day/night shades rendering it inoperable.  We had one break two years ago, and we hired someone to restring it.  However, when another one broke last week, we decided to do it ourselves.  Actually, the decision was easy as there is no one here in the Keys that does that kind of work.  Anyway, we ordered a restringing kit and it arrived on Monday.  We set Wednesday aside to complete the task.  My old British Columbian friend, Brad, had assured me that this was a piece of cake.  Well, we completed it successfully, but we aren’t ready to hire ourselves out as shade restringers.  UHG!

A number of years ago we were traveling near Marfa in far West Texas and came upon an Air Force blimp/balloon that was being used to electronically monitor the border for drugs and human traffic.  Well, there is an identical blimp/balloon here above Cudjoe Key called “Fat Albert” by the locals, and it is also operated by the Air Force.  It monitors refugees from Cuba, drug traffic, and sends propaganda via radio Marti to Cuba for the brainwashing of Castro’s minions.  According to the local paper, Fat Albert has served its purpose and will be decommissioned.  Wonder who or what will be doing its job.

Ray & Kathleen: Someone Down Here Agrees With Us!

Out The Front Window of our Motorhome

Key Deer, Old Friends, & Chooks

Our last week has been a whirlwind of activity.  For the most part, this trip has been just the two of us doing things together without other people, especially after we left Sarasota in December.  However, this week we caught up with friends from Texas and another set of RVing friends from British Columbia.  So we have been busy, busy, busy.

Prior to the whirlwind, we ventured up to Big Pine Key on Friday a week ago to see if we could spot any of the infamous Key Deer.  These diminutive critters, found only in the lower Keys, were almost completely wiped out by mankind, but they are now protected and have their very own preserve on Big Pine Key where they are making a satisfactory recovery.  We did manage to spot a few deer during our outing.  They look like any other deer you have seen except they aren’t much bigger than a golden retriever.  Hiking on some of the trails in the refuge, we came across an occupied osprey nest.  We could only see his/her head, but it was pretty neat.  We had a pretty good lunch at Mangrove Mama’s to cap off the field trip.

Alligator at Key Deer Refuge

Key Deer

Key Deer

Mangrove Mama's

 On Monday we took our bikes down to Duval ostensibly to have lunch out (which we did), but shopping was also on the agenda.  Susan met a new friend next to one of the ubiquitous cigar stores, and we spotted a guy painting his bicycle...fascinating.

Susan and Smokin' Joe

Street Vendor Painting His Bike

We mentioned friends Tom and Lore in our last post.  On the same evening of our Key Deer adventure, we met up with them at Sears and were escorted onto the Navy base where they were staying in their RV.  On Tuesday, we had lunch with them down in the historic harbor.  At Schooner’s Wharf Bar, we had an excellent meal and enjoyed the view of the yachts.  It was our third choice of restaurant.  Our first choice was closed; our second choice turned out to be just a street vendor with an aluminum trailer, and, alas, no place to sit.  Tom and Lore have subsequently left the Keys and are working their way up the east coast seeking new adventures.

Historic Harbor with Tom & Lore

Our BC buddies arrived on Wednesday.  They are going to take a cruise from Fort Lauderdale on Sunday that will be 15 days in length, will pass through the Panama Canal (the whole object of the cruise), and will disembark in Los Angeles.  Bill and Ali are fun-loving folks.  We manage to engage in conversation upon meeting just as though we were together yesterday, even if it’s been many months.  Over their three-day visit, we drank too much, ate too much, crawled Duval too much, and wound up their stay with a visit to La Te Da to see drag queen extraordinaire Christopher Peterson.  It was their first (well, it was the first that they admit to) and only our second time seeing a female impersonator’s show.  Our first experience was also here in KW, but that was eight years ago.  It’s more expensive now, but the quality of the talent is still very high.  They left on Saturday morning so they could catch their ship tomorrow.  They only thing they missed was a KW sunset; it was cloudy the whole time they were here.  Bummer.

Hog Fish Bar & Grill with Bill & Ali

Southern most point in US with Bill & Ali

Mile Marker 0 U.S.1

La Te Da Drag Queen Chris Peterson

For Bill & Ali

Duval Street Scene

In an earlier blog, we mentioned the Navy’s jet fighters tearing up the blue skies here in KW.  The local paper ran a story this week shedding some light on the matter.  It turns out that a Virginia-based squadron, the Gladiators, trains Navy and Marine Corps pilots at NAS Key West to fly the F/A 18 Super Hornet, one of the Navy’s carrier-based super jets, in preparation for war.  These multi-million dollar machines require pilots who are finely tuned to fly them effectively.  FYI.

F/A 18 Super Hornet

Have we mentioned the chooks?  They are everywhere, these feral chooks in KW.  You find them all over the streets, in restaurants & bars, subjects of art work of every kind.  The darn roosters wake us each morning when they greet the rising sun, sometimes long before sunrise.  Usually not a problem, but it can be painful when you’ve partied too much the night before.  Of course, they will crow any old darn time they feel like it, so KW often sounds like a barnyard with tourist scooters running amok.

Quote of the week:  “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war….  The billions being spent on war overseas would be better spent on overcoming poverty in America.”

                --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Don’t Park Under a Pelican Perch

We’re in a funk over Denver’s loss to Baltimore in the AFC playoffs on Saturday.  Need to vent, so offer some tidbits from the local newspaper and some personal observations.

Interview with Thomas Sanchez (author of American Tropic, to be released January 15)

·         In the 1980’s, Key West “seemed cut off from mainland mores, a rough and tumble place, dangerous.  It was like Dodge City in the Gulf Stream, where a piratical code held sway.  Now, a generation later, the island has lost much of its swagger, it’s become a place where cruise ships disgorge multitudes, where humble cigar-makers’ shacks have been tarted up and sold for millions, where down-on-their-luck writers and artists can never afford a sliver of paradise.  The real outlaws remaining today are those fighting to save the natural habitat of the Keys, those who stand up against polluting degradation and corrosive consumerism.” 

·         “We not only have the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of righteous hacks, religious fanatics and  racist quacks, we have profiteer-polluters and destroyers of the natural world whacking off what precious little is left of earth’s pure air, water and soil.” 

Pearl Basin, a “pool of deeper blue water within the emerald-green shallows located in the Key West National Wildlife Refuge…where bottlenose dolphins love to romp,” is being leased to Fury Water Adventures (owned by Scott Saunders) to permanently moor a floating platform for 10 jet skis, 10 kayaks, and inflatable water toys such as a floating rock-climbing wall and a giant slide.  Administrative Law Judge Bram Carter ruled that the state Department of Environmental Protection should grant the lease because, “the proposed project is not contrary to the public interest and it meets all applicable criteria for authorization to lease sovereignty submerged lands.”  Last Stand, an environmental group, unsuccessfully argued that the lease should not be granted.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that this year’s State of the Union address falls on Groundhog Day.

 Naval Air Station Key West has F/A (7)18 Super Hornet fighter jets roaring overhead every day for the past week disrupting any semblance to peace and quiet in “paradise.”  The right-wing cheerleaders call this the “sound of freedom;” the left-wing cynics call it an obnoxious racket.

 Monroe County Tourist Development Council reported 99% occupancy for Key West lodging establishments on December 30 and 31.  Average daily room rates increased in Key West on December 31 and January 1 from an average of $228 to $648.

 Cayo Hueso is the name the Spaniards gave to Key West when they landed and discovered an island covered with bones.  Not surprisingly Cayo Hueso in Spanish is Bone Island.  The tone-deaf Brits bastardized it to Key West.  If you think in cockney, you can almost come up with Key West from Cayo Hueso, as Hueso is pronounced “weso.”

 South Florida and the Keys are experiencing one of the warmest Januarys in history.  Almost every day the high temps in Miami have been only one degree lower than high temperature records for the date.  We have had a run of 82° plus days and lows around 72° with forecasts predicting the same for the foreseeable future.  Locals are actually bitching about how hot it is for this time of year.  Of course, the issue isn’t the temps, it is the humidity.  The wind came up the last couple of days so that has reduced he humidity, but it has been running in the 90% range, leaving everything soggy left out overnight.

 Our friends, Tom and Lore from Denton, caught up with us on Friday and we joined them for happy hour at the Navy base here.  They have just moved into a spot offering full hookups and, hence, air conditioning, something they have been without for several weeks.  They attest to the fact that it has been oppressive trying to stay cool without the benefit of artificial cooling.  We joined them for lunch on Tuesday at our favorite Conch Republic bar, the Schooner Wharf Bar & Grill.  Saw romping giant tarpon and a manatee graced us with a cruise by.

 One of the more interesting things about our stay here in Key West this time compared to eight years ago is that we are unable for whatever reason to look past the real shoddiness of the place.  In Thomas Sanchez’ interview, he describes the tarting up of Cuban cigar-makers’ shacks and turning them into million dollar dwellings.  From our point of view, he has captured it splendidly.  He only hints at the ramshackle housing available for the 99% who happen to be here for employment, etc.  While we never say never, this may be our last trip to Key West for some time as the blush is off the melon for us.

Rookery Bay & Key West

A few days before we left Naples for the Keys, we finished up our excursions with a kayak trip in Rookery Bay.  We have been on kayaks many times in the past, and we have always enjoyed them; this was no exception.  The primary difference was that we were with a group of about 9-10 including our naturalists guides.  They both worked for the Rookery Bay research center.  Two hours out on the water paddling through mangrove tunnels in the estuary was fascinating.  Again, we didn’t see the numbers of birds and other wildlife that we have grown accustomed to here in past years, but it was still a satisfactory adventure.

On New Year’s Day we left Naples for Key West.  The 225-mile trip went quickly because the drive is so interesting.  We took US 41, the old Tamiami Trail, to Miami and then south on US 1, the so called Overseas Highway.  Most of the road follows the original roadbed of the first passage through the Keys, a railroad.  Other parts of the track bed are visible from and parallel to US 1.  Initially, the most striking thing about the Keys is the color of the water.  It would be difficult for a gifted artist to capture that unique blue-green that tints the waters here.  Part of the reason it would be hard to capture is because it is constantly changing.  Photographs catch it a specific time, but then the light shifts and that color no longer exists.  Anyway, we find it interesting.

Key West is as shabby and as glorious as we remember from out last stay down here almost 8 years ago.  At the outset, we are always put off by the seediness of the place along with streets jam-packed with cars, scooters, and pedestrians hell-bent on getting themselves killed by on-coming traffic at all hours of the day.  The juxtaposition of rundown trailers and shacks mixed in with houses the real estate magazines tell you are selling for more than a million dollars is enough to give you a migrane.  Like most high-end resort spots, Key West, and most of the other Keys, suffers from an acute shortage of affordable housing where the service/tourist industry folks can dwell (those are also the bulk of the jobs).  And, typically, they don’t handle it well.  But soon, “conch time” kicks in and we are copacetic with it all.  Our first trip down Duval, the city’s quintessential tourist drag, was a harrowing experience.  It was the day after New Year’s Day, and the place was still crawling with people who haven’t gone back to school or work yet, but that will happen soon and it will quiet down, at least by Key West standards.

We took our bikes out the next day to go to the local botanical gardens, a place we had passed by, but never stopped at previously.  While not up to the standards of Fort Worth or other big city botanical gardens, Key West’s entry into the genre is pretty nice and certainly represents the foliage of the South Florida Keys.  Considering that the spot where the gardens are located was nothing but a retched sand bar in the 1930s, the denizens of KW have certainly grown an impressive, lush topical area where there would certainly be piles of condos otherwise.  Among the most interesting things at the Gardens (in addition to the director pictured below) is an exhibit of Cuban Chugs.  Chugs are the usually home-made refugee boats that Cubans used (still use) to get from Cuba, about 90 miles south of KW, to the USA.  There is an Immigration & Customs Enforcement policy that says that Cuban refugees can stay in the US if they get on dry land, if not they go back to Cuba.  Anyway, this exhibit of Chugs at the Botanic Gardens is fascinating.

Amid the seedy trailers, shacks, and fishing boat marinas on Stock Island we found the Hog Fish Bar & Grill.  This open air affair right on the shrimp boat docks offered up some excellent food, even though one never quite escapes the faint odor of leaking sewer common to areas like this.  However, we were able to have a nice lunch and skip dinner for a change of pace.

“39 Steps” is a play being staged by the Waterfront Playhouse and it looked like the best of several choices for some real culture.  We obtained tickets for Saturday night and made our way to Mallory Square for our big night out.  Parking was a challenge and it wound up costing us $12, but that’s cheaper than a ticket where they treat parking violations like they were felonies.  Well, the play was absolutely hilarious.  It is a farce, but a well done one.  The play has only four cast members, but lots of parts.  All of the cast, save the leading man, play several roles throughout the play.  It was two hours well spent; we recommend it highly.

Having over dosed on NFL football playoffs on Sunday, we decided to do the Duval Crawl in beautiful downtown Key West on Monday.  There were two cruise ships in port to add to the merriment, but much of the Christmas & New Year’s crowd had departed for points north, so all of the oxygen wasn’t being completely sucked out of the air.  Parking is a challenge here, well free parking is a challenge here; there are plenty of opportunities to pay $2-$4  an hour to stash your car while the locals try to separate you from the rest of your cash.  We soon grew weary of seeing the same old merchandise in look-alike shops that had obnoxious music blaring at decibel levels that would be illegal in a Harley dealership.  We did spend some money on souvenirs and a few items of clothing that we couldn’t live without.  We returned to a favorite haunt in the Bahamas Village for lunch.  They’ve changed their menu (well, it’s only been 8 years) and we had to settle for something other than what we were looking forward to having.  However, it was a good lunch and they still had a dozen or so chooks running around in the al fresco dining area, which adds a certain barnyard charm to the place.  We’re pretty sure they aren’t the same chooks, but then they don’t have jerked chicken on the menu any longer, so who knows.