"For many people, a visit to Key West is a trip to the fringe - a louche dead end filled with exotic slackers. ...
"Yet, if you live elsewhere in Florida - and happen to have grown up in another state - Key West provides a nostalgic return to normalcy.
"The first time I drove into town, from my new home in Fort Lauderdale, I was struck not by the alien but by the once-familiar: porches, alleys, chickens, white picket fences, people on bicycles. I had left the world of condos and gated communities and seemed to be on a childhood trip to grandmother's house, a house that - in a bewildering but beguiling twist - had been uprooted from central Pennsylvania and set down in a tropical garden."
- from "The Joys of Travel"
Here's to the city's swift return to normalcy.
