Vandals with a writ

If you've crawled Duval, you've seen the mosaic Alfa Romeo at the corner of Olivia. Clad in tiles, shells, glass, beads and assorted doodads, the funky, conchy landmark has charmed passers-by for a decade, and has been the backdrop for uncountable tourist photos.

But life on the street is never easy. A few weeks back, vandals ripped out some seat stuffings, and then some other nimrod went after it with a 2-by-4. Local glass artist Heather Clark patched it up.

Last week there was another attack, even more senseless: The primary leaseholder of the building housing Glass Reunions, where the car sits, has ordered it evicted. He says he wants the space for parking, which would be believable only when cars levitate; without a curb cut on Duval, the only access to the spot is through the space behind it.
Kim Sprague, the owner of the great glass gallery, put a placard next to the car asking folks to call the Citizen in protest, and then asked for calls to the landlord, who lives in Tallahassee. She told the newspaper the landlord is just retaliating because she wants to exercise a part of her lease that calls for a rent break based on her down-time and damage after Rita and Wilma roared through.

Since I didn't have a phone along, I went into the gallery to ask her where I could sign a Save-the-Alfa petition. There weren't any, so she graciously let me whip a few up on her computer. Before long there were pages and pages of signatures.

Some cities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on public art, but here's a freebie, and one that perfectly exemplifies Key West's fantastic art community: quirky, creative, collaborative. What part of that doesn't the landlord get?

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UPDATE -- The Key West Citizen carried this lovely reader comment today: "On one of our many trips to your island, our then-toddler son saw the mosaic car for the first time and thought that he must be in another country — a magic land — because where else would they have cars like that? Years later, our self-anointed Princess Christina (child No. 2) saw the car and announced that it must be hers, for this was a car for a princess. How could anyone want to remove a car that sparks so much imaginative thought?"