If one needed confirmation Fantasy Fest is the financial oasis at the end of a long dry summer check out the front of the bars on Lower Duval. Please come in and spend money is the message:
The theme for this week's celebrations is Villains Vixens and Vampires and there has been some discussion in the papers about what a vixen actually might be. I went downtown yesterday afternoon before work to get some practice photographing naked breasts but I had no luck on that front. I found some people enjoying the ambiance and whatever slop they serve at Sloppy Joes:
For some people a trip to Key West isn't complete without the famous backdrop in at least one picture:
Which when I turned around looked quite alluring, like this. This might have been a vixen I suppose staffing the trinket stall on the sidewalk:
This couple passed me by on the opposite sidewalk and I was forced to one of two conclusions: a large endowment in the bank or somewhere else or just a real nice personality. She looked like a real woman too from what little I could tell though her breasts were covered.
This next one at first glance looked like a fairy, but for all I know this could be the latest get up for vixens:
The week is taken up with parties and events in various locations but the big parade comes Saturday night and Duval Street will be closed to allow the parade to go through.
Fashion comes and fashion goes but you will see a little of everything on Duval Street in the last week of October:
I am not a great fan of Fantasy Fest, I have to work the night of the parade whether it's regular time or over time and that is the least of it. The parade of floats can be fun but lately they have added a ton of professional floats, mostly from the Tampa bay area that show all the imaginative creativity one would expect from Tampa and their floats add just a lot of hanging around time to the parade. Besides that, Fantasy fest is the first reminder that the quiet months of summer are over and a curmudgeon like me gets to feel a little grumpy at all the traffic and the cars stopped in intersections trying to figure which way to go. And all the happy scooterists:
I know they are spending much needed money so I am not grumbling expect on my own personal little corner of the web, just a little. But the deal is they don't just get to look, they have to spend money too:
And those that do spend some money get to walk around with their buttock cheeks hanging out:
Or wear some low slung tops if they prefer:
I'm not sure he was what I had in mind when I said that:
Body painting booths are open for business, this one was in a discreet little corner off the street. The photographs of past successes were appealing...
...not least because the billboard was attached, rather ironically I thought, to an old election advertising poster for Mayor Craig Cates:
What possessed this dude to venture out dressed like this we will never know, and probably just as well:
And though I am not a gambling man (do I have any vices at all?) I would bet good money she wasn't here to fantasize about Fantasy Fest. I think home was where her mind was after a long day's work:
Fantasy Fest may be starting up but for some people the important stuff is what it has always been: drinking. These people were being entertained in the world's smallest bar. If you haven't heard of it this is the extent of it. No really, four stools and a very small awning overhanging Duval Street and that's it:
Walking back to the Bonneville in front of Old City Hall I saw this couple enjoying the relative peace and quite of Greene Street. She was texting, he was staring off into space while people shuffled back and forth on Duval a block away.
I took a short stroll along the waterfront and was pleased to notice the influence of Fantasy Fest extended away from the main drag.
Colored hair and next to no clothes on. If nothing else a reminder that the end of October is not what you might call a cold month for the Southernmost City.
If one needed confirmation Fantasy Fest is the financial oasis at the end of a long dry summer check out the front of the bars on Lower Duval. Please come in and spend money is the message:
The theme for this week's celebrations is Villains Vixens and Vampires and there has been some discussion in the papers about what a vixen actually might be. I went downtown yesterday afternoon before work to get some practice photographing naked breasts but I had no luck on that front. I found some people enjoying the ambiance and whatever slop they serve at Sloppy Joes:
What possessed this dude to venture out dressed like this we will never know, and probably just as well:
Fantasy Fest may be starting up but for some people the important stuff is what it has always been: drinking. These people were being entertained in the world's smallest bar. If you haven't heard of it this is the extent of it. No really, four stools and a very small awning overhanging Duval Street and that's it:
Paula's other complaint is that the arts and crafts on sale are the same as every other street fair. Which, for all I know, may well be true but this is my favorite event downtown and I am here for the food and to meet friends who also show up at this very easy going, fully clothed gathering.
Buffalo Bill was visiting from the Canadian border and enjoying the summer, the music, the beer and just being in Key West. 
It was hot work churning out food for the masses:
These are some of the objects for sale, and surprisingly enough my wife didn't dive for an earring or two, her favorite adornments. This young woman seemed to be thinking hard about it:
The seductive power of something or other:
Bill and Diana wanted to try the alligator so my wife and I were forced to agree to taste dinosaur for the first time.
It wasn't at all bad actually and the meat did have the same texture as chicken, even though it is actually dinosaur you are eating. 
Familiarity breeds indifference and we have all seen the roadside markers, as we blow on by, where some poor unfortunate met their Maker. I was enjoying my day enough that I figured it was time I should stop and take notice for a change.
I vaguely recall this wreck, an incident that must have profoundly altered quite a few people's lives, as several lost theirs here. My overriding memory was relief that I wasn't on this section of road that day because the investigation closed the highway for a while. Which, as one looks at the crash marks, reveals itself as a rather shallow thought.
What prompted such a catastrophe, one has to ask, and there are no answers on the roadway to the untrained eye. Perhaps a moment's inattention, a mechanical failure, an animal in the road, a simple human mistake. Whatever it was I seem to recall three youngsters died and one other was flown out for treatment in Miami. 
I seem to remember it involved two cars colliding, which seems inconceivable on this stretch of road. Perhaps it was a failed attempt to pass that brought them together?
And there, in the blink of an eye everything changed. I remember going down on my Bonneville last June 1st and as the motorcycle leapt from under me and flopped to the left I had time to think about the aggravation of the damage I was going to cause to my machine. I got bumped and scratched, but completed my commute that morning thanks to a couple of passing men who lifted my motorcycle back on it's wheels for me. I suffered the bumps and bruises for a few weeks, I paid a thousand bucks to get my pretty motorcycle back to where it was before the wreck, worn but not worn out, and that was that. These folks weren't so lucky:
It is very likely they took life for granted, as do we who are still here, enjoying the day, but not necessarily expecting the end. Certainly in our culture, one that has the greatest difficulty acknowledging any of Life's little truths, the inescapable fact of Death isn't something we are encouraged to ponder.
There is that constant search for confirmation of immortality after our lives here are finished. It's existence can never be proved so it is always devoutly hoped for and firmly believed in. It is said, more to the point, that we live on in the memories of those left behind, a statement it's hard to argue with when you see these tributes:
I feel rather guilty looking at their pictures and flowers. I'm turning 52 in a few days and I've made more than my share of rider errors in my life and here I am anyway. These young'uns got to make one choice that one day- they chose to take a drive- and ended up here.
My mother died when I was a teenager and I think I can accurately say that not a day goes by that I don't think about my mortality. I doubt there is anything more after death than the same great blankness we came from, before we were born, but whether my idle speculation is right or wrong it can't hurt to try to remember to redouble our efforts to live each day as though it were our last- for one day we are sure to be right.