Duval Street For Fantasy Fest

It was a drag but I had to go to work so I could only take a quick early peek at Duval Street yesterday afternoon. The sun was shining as usual, and it's particularly muggy at the moment as we await the arrival of a slight cold front Thursday which should bring strong winds Friday with near perfect conditions for the big parade Saturday night.

So far Duval Street during the day is pretty low key. I did see a few elderly uncovered breasts appropriately pastied and at least one guy in a tutu and another dude in a tartan skirt, not really a kilt whose photo managed to get away from me.

Everything else was pretty quiet honestly. Boring even.

This is the week of parties leading up to Saturday and it is my great regret I could not witness the tutu race, but the headdress ball I don't mind skipping. Black white and red parties are also the order of the day. The color requirements given them a bit of Alice in Wonderland favors.

For those of us who,live and work here life goes on as usual, pest extermination at Irish Kevin's or police dispatching for me. My wife teaches classes as usual this week but we are planning on watching the local's parade Friday evening. I will be working nights this weekend so the big parade I'll miss.

There area lot fewer hotel rooms this year but no one seems to be worried about it. Planning a Fantasy Fest visit requires forethought and preparation. Last minute beds are not generally available and planning to sleep in your car will not end well as neighbors are hyper vigilant and are particularly not keen on having people camping on the streets. They will call you in if you decide to camp.

During a season of not many visitors Fantasy Fest suddenly injects crowds into the city which is a it jarring after a few weeks of peace and quiet.

That really is the whole point, to fill beds and bars and restaurants at a slow time.

People are still pretty shy about getting naked and everything, that generally starts later in the week. The rules are pretty clear, no genitals, pasties or paint on women's nipples and cover all butt cracks. Drinking is allowed in the Fantasy Zone whe. It is clearly marked between Simonton and Whitehead Streets.

For now things at least by day are pretty tame.

From what I hear there is quite a bit of bar activity after dark but its nothing you wouldn't see on a busy winter's night.

If you want to go (nearly) nude but you can't paint, don't worry as there are lots of booths waiting for your business.

Photography will get pretty intense as the bare flesh starts to appear..!

For some locals it's a time to make money:

The shortest skirt I saw was as I left to get back to my scooter on Eaton Street.

An appreciative French tourist gawped as she passed and remarked to his wife that it was an actual dress, at least that's what it looked like to him and his prepubescent daughter. His wife was laughing in a very Gallic way. I guess we look like rank amateurs to some sophisticated people from across the way.

But wait! I got a lunch break during the early part of the night! What a difference a few hours makes!

I went to the corner of Duval and Greene, near Sloppy Joes and took pictures in the light available. Enjoy!

Approaching Duval on Caroline an old dude and a young naked woman took me by surprise...and strolled on by as I pulled the camera from my pocket.

Here we go once again, Fantasy Fest 2013 is swinging, as it were.

Posted with Blogsy

Shades of Gray

I met a reader George who mentioned he liked black and white pictures of Key West. This is Fantasy Fest week, an otherworldly time in Key West, appropriate I suppose for an other worldly view of a Fall town filled with light and color, during the day.

I parked on Elizabeth Street and let my dog lead the way. She was having fun so I didn't get a huge amount of time to compose my pictures. Cheyenne having a good time makes me happy so I was okay with being tugged along. She did try to stop long enough to let me compose a frame but she was ready to walk, and two hours later she was done. That was when I should have been taking pictures, with my hairy Labrador stopped and panting for breath... A nice lady stopped by while Cheyenne was taking a pause in the alligator position, tummy down and paws spread in the gravel panting heavily. "Is she okay? " she asked anxiously. She must have thought I was a heartless bastard when I laughed my assent.

She's fine I said, just getting her breath back. The kind old dear offered to find water but I refrained from pointing out she had just lapped half a puddle. She's fine I insisted. I didn't think that explaining that she preferred to indulge in left over rain water would put either of us in a better light. Even at home she will only drink clean water out of her bowl when she can't be bothered to go down stairs to drink out of a muddy bucket of water growing pineapple shoots.

They say life comes at you in groups of seven years, as your cells take that long to completely replace themselves throughout your body. I read once how your personality changes every seven years along with your molecular make up. Thanks to the Internet you too can read this stuff, though it's a bit like a horoscope in as much as its so vague as to make it vaguely acceptable to anybody. A pinch of salt goes a long way. Every Seven Years You Change is a neat list of changes real or imagined.

While I am about as spiritual as a cabbage, the idea that life has a cycle, that we all end up living similar lives in general terms seems obvious, as unwilling as we are to accept that we aren't unique. My own life follows those cycles in broad terms. I'm closing in on 56, a number divisible by seven and I'm wearing a neck brace as my bones in my neck have grown spurs and are compressing two of my discs. It's manageable says Doctor Collins but arthritis is arthritis. The machinery of life is winding down, and it's the process we all go through, if we don't die first.

The baby boomer generation is my world, and I'm at the tail end of it. The X and the Y and the Millenials are all coming up after us, but I belong to the biggest generation of game changers in history and I can't tell the new generations apart. X versus Y? Huh? There's a new doctor in town advertising her photograph on the front page of the paper (as though her picture matters) and she looks so young I doubt she's graduated high school. It's not she that's young, it's me that's old.

I have made the best of a strange hand dealt to me at birth, an unwanted member of a family that has spent far too much time rewriting family history. For some people being a contender is a big deal, for others family matters but for some of us experience is what counts. I've enjoyed lots of that and I'm enjoying my settled life that I has come up on me unannounced. There are things I'd like to experience and I wonder if the time is there...

I had been planning a new Iron Butt long distance ride, my third on my Bonneville, until this neck problem showed up. Now I am focussing on fixing it. And that's a change for me, Mr Invincible. Cortisone and neck brace now, Iron Butt later.

I always thought I'd end up with a hack when unable to hold up a solo motorcycle, but a sidecar wouldn't do much good to my neck. I feel more comfortable on my wife's sit up and beg Vespa than the forward leaning Bonneville... Good Lord! Will I be a candidate for a cruiser?

The recent full moon has given me reminders of the pleasure I get from riding. I tried to get a picture but it was crap, when I paused on my ride to work Saturday morning before dawn. The moon was reflecting off a stream of silver water below, ducking between fast moving clouds overhead. The picture came out black with a white smear of clouds. Instead I found the La Concha hotel on my morning off work reflecting moonlight like it was day.

I wonder if the driver shown takes time to enjoy the beauty? I hope so. It's an esoteric question but I used to enjoy the views when I was driving a truck around San Francisco Bay. I don't miss the cold and the fog but I had fun humping heavy shit round The City.

The newest law of the land is slowly coming into effect and I take pleasure in knowing half a million Florida children will get access to affordable health care, even though our Republican law makers are fighting it like mad. Then they say it won't work after they have fought so hard to deny ordinary people access to what we lucky people tend to take or granted. I paid fifty bucks for the doctor's visit with X rays, and twenty seven bucks for the pills. Lucky well insured me. It seems so silly to hire people who hate government to run it. Might as well hire me to run a bank. I'd be happy to do to a bank what our law makers do to law making.

Duval Street in shades of gray. I hate to think what has been done to the flower bed to make Cheyenne so interested in it.

Time marches on, the sun is coming up, another day is forming.

Another chance to live life, bone spurs or no.

Key West on Dwellable

Posted with Blogsy

Perpetual Cleanup

No surprise that Cheyenne was thirsty early this morning after a long downtown walk through the wreckage wrought on party town.

Apparently a good few people were busy last night slaking their thirst after a walking dead ride from Stock Island.

My Crocs protect my feet but Cheyenne can pick her way through trash with ease and never comes to harm. I figure it's better she pick her own way rather than get distracted by my stupid concerns.

And then found the treasure trove, freedom fries and pizza such that on arrival at home she ignored her nourishing balanced breakfast and passed out almost instantly.

Luckily Cheyenne's heroic efforts to do her civic duty and clean up were ably supported by crews of workers with machinery ready to restore Duval Street to pristine cleanliness for another twenty four hours of more Fantasy Fest fun. This is the big Fall week in Key West and trash is the measure of a successful Fantasy Fest.

Getting there... mostly clean and rinsed.

Quality assured food service products were being unloaded from corproate trucks all over town.

I sure hope the quality is assured considering the prices when the food service products reach your table. I fail hopelessly when I try to imagine how Mahi Mahi can be worth thirty four dollars. I knew I should have worked smarter in my youth.

And here is the other side of the coin in the richest country in the world. I heard on NPR this morning that the average American is worth five times the average Chinese. Not so long ago the proportion was twenty times and soon it will be down to double. One has to suppose that more and more American children will need free shoes by that time. What a Dickensian future. I can only suppose most Chinese kids are a lot worse off, as though that were consolation.

I guess charity looks better than paying taxes. Checking Wyland Gallery on Duval one wonders at the vast space available for paintings. I understand these stores pay something around thirty or forty thousand dollars a month in rent. When local developers led by Ed Swift in the sixties came here to Duval they found shuttered store fronts and a town that was dying once again (bankruptcy struck in the first Great Depression), as the a navy withdrew and tourism waned. They rebuilt Duval Street and the rents reflect the work. Art galleries and t-shirt shops must make a fortune to survive here, if sales is what pays the bills.

All that aside silly parties populate the week, dressing up is the theme, color coded parties and costumes designed it seems to make the wearers look daft as a public spectacle. Dress in a tutu? Not bloody likely.

Dressing in tights? Even less likely. The theme of Fantasy Fest is super heroes which got them in hot water when their selected artist chose a design too close they said to well known copyrighted designs. A fifty thousand dollar error the newspaper said.

Barricades are a big part of keeping the Fantasy Zone in order. The Saturday night parade should be in good weather this year and the sidewalks will be packed to watch the floats travel down Duval.

I passed this dude breakfasting off a rather nice plate of to-go pasta. I was tempted to snatch it up but that didn't seem to be in the spirit of the required city clean up.

Besides he was nice to Cheyenne and that counts for a lot. And she was nice to him because she was full. Good dog.

 

Posted with Blogsy