In Their Own Words

The “Defibulators” band’s name was misspelled for their first gig and the misspelling has stuck for the country band from Brooklyn. As the band plays on, it...

first visited the Keys in the mid-’80s and fell in love with the area. I knew right then this would be my home. I spent every moment after that trying to figure how to live here. It took a while but there was no other place on the planet I wanted to be. I just love everything about the Keys.

I don’t think I defy gravity, as much as I partner with it to tell a story. My work integrates circus arts with acting to create stories, text, and characters, which explore the rich interplay of imagination between air and ground.

None of us lives here because it’s ugly. As my editor Jim always says, the one thing everyone in the Keys can get behind is the environment....

Some songs are bilingual, some are straight English, some are straight Spanish. It really depends on when the song was written, how it was written, and what it talks about. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore nowadays, our best performance so far was in Canada where nobody spoke Spanish and everybody was singing our songs.

Back then, Sloppy’s was the “locals spot.” They brought in a lot of diverse, cool music, a lot of national touring bands were playing there. I remember Leon Russell playing there, War, Pure Prairie League.

June is World Ocean Month, a time to celebrate, honor, and learn about our ocean.  The ocean is the heart of our diverse, vibrant culture in South Florida,...

“Some friends and I were in Havana to ring in the New Year,” he said from his cottage’s book-crowded living room. “December, 1959, and Fidel Castro was ‘on his way’ to Havana. We were part of a mob of people who fled to Miami.” When he arrived in Miami, some friends decided to visit Key West. “Loved it on sight!” Kirby said. “My friend and I bought our first house. It was where the Banyan timeshare is now, on Whitehead Street.”

It’s not that my wife hates birdwatching. She just has very stringent standards for when she will go. The idea of walking around for hours, staring into bushes,...