Paul Menta (Conch Republic) – An Xperience Interview

Paul Menta (Conch Republic) – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

RRX: When I think of the Keys, I think of Jimmy Buffett and that laid-back feel, but is there a more nuanced musical scene in Key West? Is there a conch metal or a conch funk? Is there anything like that, or is it really just that laid back?

PM: They have a thing every year. It’s called the Iggy Awards. And it’s for musicians in Key West and the Keys. It’s kind of our Grammys. And I got to give the best rock and roll band. And it was funny because I said, “This is the best-kept secret in the world.” The music scene down here is unbelievable, and like the melting pot we are. You can see Buffett-style stuff, you can see metal-style stuff, you can see the influence from Nashville, New Orleans. I mean, it’s stunning to see people from all walks of life find music that they like down here. Any song is gonna include something about rum, something about being under a palm tree, being out on a sandbar, or just kind of kicking your feet up and relaxing, whether it could be metal, or it could be kind of a country, it doesn’t matter; it all blends in. And that’s what’s kind of cool about Key West, because you notice that musicians take their style, and then Key West kind of captivates them a little bit, and they blend a little bit of that in. So we end up with some really unique versions of music, original music as well, that gets transformed down here.

RRX: OK, so you are the Speaker of the House of the famed Conch Republic. I’ve known this story for a while now, but can you tell us the inside perspective of that? How did we get the Conch Republic?

PM: It’s actually really good because I just had Dennis Wardlow stop by, who is one of the key founders of the Conch Republic. He was our mayor in 1982. I actually have it. If I ever get it published … I got my outline and everything written … I have a book on this because I have been wanting to set the record straight for a long time. There’s a lot of confusion on the Conch Republic.

So … just to give you some quick backstory, we had the Navy pull out in the late ‘50s and in the ‘60s. So it really hurt the island, OK? It slowed down what was going on. You had tourism starting to perk up. And then we had about 350 shrimp boats down here, which really kept the island kind of functioning. And then you had the gas crisis in 1976. So what happened was, if you went out shrimping, the gas probably cost as much as the load that you went out to do. So then comes in the term square grouper. Do you know what a square grouper is?

RRX: No, no.

PM: So a square grouper is a bale of marijuana. It was easier to make the call out, and somebody says, “Yup, shrimping, yup, I’m coming in. I’ve been out getting square groupers.” And the fishermen were getting square groupers because they can make more money and not have to spend the time out. So that went on for a bit of time. But then, unfortunately, other drugs came into effect. Key West is not into that – scary people going on. So you have that happening. Another big lull in Key West income.

Then, I think it was 1980, you had the Mariel boat lift from Cuba, and the news reports, as they are, were like, “all the criminals are running loose in Key West.” So tourism just got blasted again. And everybody that came in off of that was immediately bused up to Miami. So it was a false thing. So they were at a tipping point. In 1980, 1982, when the border patrol had (this sounds familiar) put up a roadblock right at the edge of the 18 mile stretch, to check for drugs and illegal aliens. Coming down to the Keys, there was a line that was three hours long to get to the Keys. So people weren’t coming down here, and literally, it shut down the island. There was no tourism. So this led up to a tipping point where we’ve had enough. So the mayor, David Horan, and the lady from the Chamber of Commerce went up to have their day to go sue the federal government to get an injunction to stop it (David Horan being a lawyer down here in Key West). They went up to go do that in front of a federal judge, pleaded their case, and the federal judge said there wasn’t enough to make them go away. And they basically said, “Well, you know, how many people have you gotten?” And they had gotten a couple of German tourists that left their passports back at the hotel. They got about one ounce of weed, and they were like, “Well, of course,” because they’re checking for drugs; there was probably more drugs on the side of the road in this ten-mile backup than there was at the checkpoint.

When the news media asked, he just said this: if we’re gonna be treated like a foreign country, we’re gonna act like one. So tomorrow we will secede from the United States. And he pulled out a flag, which was our city flag. Our city flag, which is the Conch Republic flag, was made by Claude Valdez in 1969. So this wasn’t something new. We’ve already had these assets. And he won a contest for making the city flag. So he’s kind of our Betsy Ross; we call him of the Conch Republic. And he waved that flag and got down.

By the time he got to Key West, it was all over the radio, cause back then it was just radio and some news media saying Key West is seceding from the United States. And there were people that were calling for him to be charged for treason, ‘cause they thought they’re gonna take down the American flag and everything. This was all done in humor, and also to make a point. And so the next day, he got a call from the Coast Guard and the Navy, saying you cannot attack or bomb us. And he was like, “We don’t plan on attacking you,” and all this kind of stuff. It’s because a guy was going around who flew the aeroplanes and they were making conch fritters and bollos and I told everybody they’re gonna go drop them on the navy and stuff like that and you know, the navy was like, “look, we don’t want anything dropped on us,” and he’s like, “Yeah, you guys are gonna eat so much, you won’t be able to do anything.” I mean, this all wasn’t meant to be anything, but got taken very seriously. There were some protests. Dennis’ life was being threatened. And then, when they realized they were just raising the Conch Republic flag, they invited the Navy and the Coast Guard there. As soon as they seceded, they immediately surrendered and asked for diplomatic immunity and a million dollars. And as Dennis likes to say, they’re still waiting on the check. Eventually, because it made so much news and put so much pressure, probably about a month or so later, the checkpoint was removed.

RRX: Gordon Ramsay made his way to the Keys for his show “Uncharted.” Usually when it comes to shows, people are going to Ramsay. In the case of this show, he’s coming to you. He’s facing off against you, ultimately. What do you think he took away from the Keys, and what did you take away from your time on that show?

PM: I can tell you that’s part of the reason they sought me out. I always said to people they were looking for this Michelin-star, high-end chef that could do all this different stuff and had all these skills, and they’re like, “wow,” and I’m like, “yes.” He wasn’t available, so they picked me, but they sought me out. He really wanted to compete against me because of the multitude of things I do. Because I go in the water and I spear fish and go get my own lobster. I’ve cooked fine dining. I’ve cooked Conch Republic soul food, and when Gordon got here, that was part of my thing to the producers. If I can’t show them the 200 ft level that locals see here all the time, I don’t wanna do it. I don’t wanna show the typical things that everybody sees. So Gordon was transported to do everything we did by boat. So he got to see Key West like we did, and I’m telling you, man, his mind was blown.

I gotta tell you, like we’re sitting out on barrels, you know, ten miles offshore on a sandbar with the water lapping up, and he’s just like, “I just can’t. This is why they call it the backcountry or the back.” I’m like, “Yeah, this is our backyard, you know,” I’m like, “we have more ocean than we do land.” Every spot, everything we did, he just had a new love for the Keys. And when you see a guy like that, who travels around the world and everything, even the producers are like, “Hey, he wants to hang out here more, do this more,” And I believe he even stuck back to the Keys.

I think about six months later, I did some fishing with his family and was able to cause he was like, “I just can’t believe what you guys have here. Like, this is a secret. I just didn’t know.” And then he also got introduced … I introduced him to the food culture here, which nobody is aware of. For me, that was really where I got to feel like, wow, Key West is finally getting its due down here. Because we have Bohemian and Cuban, and this melting pot down here, and we have such a great food culture that people just don’t know about it. And once he got into it, he really got into it. So by the time we had our cook-off, he had an arsenal of stuff he was pulling out, so it was kind of cool. He didn’t really like standing in the water cooking, and then didn’t realize I was laughing because he’s like, ‘“Why are you in your bare feet?” I’m like, “you’ll find out.” And then the tide came in, and we were calf deep trying to cook, But I gotta tell you, the most shocking thing for me was, when I do interviews or talk to people, I say, “Listen, I’ve travelled around the world, and I’ve met thousands of amazing cooks, and I’ve only met six good chefs in my lifetime.” And now I will say that I’ve met seven good chefs, because that guy’s got skills. We were cooking, unscripted, out in the middle of nowhere, doing whatever, and that guy could just rally. He’s got skills, man. That’s what was impressive to me about him, that he came from kind of the same background I came from, working as a dishwasher to prep cook, to working his way up the line, and you could tell just by the way he could handle himself in any situation.

 

 

 

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