Fantasy Fest Duval Street

The nightly Fantasy Fest crowds have been having fun on Duval Street and so far the weekday, after a rather hectic weekend has been largely civilized and  fun rather than filled with drama. I enjoyed wandering around. 

 Some costumes fit the "All Hallows Intergalactic Freak Show":

 Sloppy Joe's was hopping, under the watchful eye of security...

 ...and kilted men...

 ...outside and in:

 I have no idea what this was all about but I took a picture as well, just as  a precaution:

 Not crazy, not too crowded, on a pleasant, not overly hot 79 degree night:

 Some people had to be helped along after too much drink was taken:

 Some were beyond help and needed to sleep it off:

 But there were lots of happy people with pastis and smiles for all:

 And fangs too:

The pug was having fun on Duval but I was pretty sure Cheyenne would want none of it. Maybe after everyone had gone home.

Some sensible few had a quiet drink at the tap room behind Sloppy Joe's and they seemed like the smart ones to me.

But it was actually quite cheerful and fun on Duval Street hanging out.

Tutu Tuesday

Tutu Tuesday wrapped up, so to speak, with a pleasant street party which I could not attend for long as my shift started in the middle night. I have to say it wasn't the drunken crowd I expected, everyone was cheerful and havinga good time. I quite enjoyed my short walk.

 For some it's business as usual on Duval taking advantage of the crowds.

The street was closed for a while and people took advantage to enjoy the open space and get their pictures taken and socialize.

 Tutus for all! Illuminated ones too.

Working Fantasies

One part of Fantasy Fest that I do like is when locals join in the saturnalia simply for fun and silliness. From Facebook this picture of postal workers celebrating tutu Tuesday. Who wouldn't want to get their mail delivered in a tutu for a change?

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Dark Sky Drama

The weather forecast for Fantasy Fest week is pretty close to perfect, as long as you like sunshine and heat. These pictures I took last week with the cold front in the offing and gray skies rolling over Key West. I doubt it's absolutely the last of the summer thunderstorm drama but the air has definitely changed and we are sliding away from humidity  and heavy still air to a crisper frame of mind.

Cheyenne has noticed it too and she seems a little perkier though its still hot during the day.

The Week Of Weird

It's finally here, the week when clothes come off, inhibitions are cast to the wind and Duval Street becomes the Party Zone. I don't like Fantasy Fest but I put up with it because it's here. Historically it was needed to fill an economic void in a city that had no income from May to December, nowadays I would just like to have some quiet time in the two months of the year when visitors are few. Instead we get this madness and I plan to show as much of it as I can with as few irritated comments as I can on this page. This year, for the first time in years I am not working the night of the Grand Parade so that might actually be fun if the floats are political and relevant to the past year's worth of happenings in the Conch Republic.

The above sign has made the rounds on Facebook, but I first saw it here, on a blog based in the English county of Cornwall. One of the things I don't much like about Fantasy Fest is that observers seek eroticism and find a bunch of elderly out-of-shape naturists parading around Duval Street and those people take this badly. I won't strip in public thanks, but I admire the fortitude, or perhaps the lack of self awareness of those that do, especially when they aren't erotic in the flesh. I still like the sign though, as undemocratic as it may be...

My own week has started out odd, by my standards. I spent the weekend in bed nurturing a horrendous head cold brought on I believe by stress. My life is stressful at the moment, I'm testing the prototype of 911buddy and it works but we need a few bugs sorted out before it goes on sale next month. I am training a new dispatcher at work and he is good so my expectations are high and I have to work hard to keep him interested. Traffic on Highway One is packed with party goers. I'm grumpy. I need a change of  attitude.

So I come out of the house and there's this guy ambling out of a house across the street, a house with bunches of odd people coming and going all year round. They show up in loud  cars, some appear to live in their vehicles, its a constant round of humanity though they do keep to themselves and don't make noise or anything. He took the biscuit in the oddness stakes carrying what appeared to be his worldly possessions ( or someone else's ) on his back in a pillowcase. I'm buggered if I know what that was about. Fantasy Fest related or just a bit odd generally..thrown out perhaps by those less odd than himself?  Who knows.

Then we had the shooting of the Sheriff's Deputy on a traffic stop, hit in the chest at point blank range and given a huge bruise only, thanks to his impact vest. The manhunt that followed was a nightmare and I was glad not to be working. The photograph below is from the Key West Citizen as police surrounded a house where a suspect was holed up. If we had this kind of crap every day as some big cities do, there is no way I would be a dispatcher. As it is I am sick and tired of guns and shootings. Freedom for me is measured in different terms, perhaps the ability to live alongside strangers without the need for an arsenal. I anticipate no change in gun laws, I plan not to give a toss about them and presume that somebody other than me will be the next victim of the next inevitable shooting. That my wife works with the deputy's wife is just a measure of how small this community is.

Given a choice I'd rather look at nude people, which you can do as well on Duval Street webcams. Do you feel the need to see this? It's yours for the viewing:

I was on Big Pine yesterday filling up the car with gas after walking Cheyenne and minding my own business when this stranger strode up to me waving a gas can at me and barking: "How do you open this?" over and over again. I looked around but it was definitely me she had mistaken for a gas can opening expert and she thrust it into my chest. "Good morning," I said "You're pretty single minded aren't you?" and she stared at me. It took a small twist to release the cap and she strode away. I finished filling my car, reminded once again why people piss me off. Thanks again she said as I prepared to leave...again? I asked myself - how can you thank me again if you never did in the first place?  What happened to manners while I was growing old?

The calls at work have started already and I had one drunk young woman insult me for being a foreigner when I couldn't help her. "Don't talk to him,"she said dismissively to someone in her party before she disconnected. "He's got a British accent."Like he was too stupid to get her point. I explained to my startled trainee that people tend to be rude when under stress or drunk and picking on immigrants is open season with Trump running for office.  Then there was the woman who had just arrived "...on island," like the Shah of Iran and his entourage descending on Contadora. Did she take a ferry from Marathon? I wanted to ask her Importantness because this island is actually a peninsula. She was staying at a hotel on Duval and the Zombie Bike Ride had blocked her way. What was she to do? Park and walk I said trying not to sound like I was talking to a person not qualified to operate heavy machinery. Why do I still get surprised that people treat the police as an information bureau? There was the best call so far this Fantasy Fest when some drunk called to say his cab driver robbed him. The cab drove away with his money. I intervened and asked my trainee to find out how much money was involved. One twenty five he said. A hundred and twenty five bucks? I was surprised at the large amount. No a buck twenty five cents the drunk corrected me. The cab driver got mad when he didn't tip him and drove off with his change. You want an officer for a whole dollar and twenty five cents I asked packing my voice with as much incredulity as I could. We agreed it wasn't worth it after the drunk pondered ponderously the waste of time he was incurring all round to locate him, investigate cab companies and find proof that indeed some long suffering cab driver had had the gall to purloin the price of a very small Cuban coffee. I saved the taxpayers at least a little wasted police time with some mutual head scratching with the drunk. At least no one got shot on my shift and for that I was profoundly grateful. I went home happy to my dog who, like me, does not care for crowds.

Yeah. Fantasy Fest sucks. It would be great if it wasn't for the people.

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Oldest House in Key West 1829

It's a modest little structure tucked away on Duval Street, were you looking for a hamburger from Wendy's you might miss it entirely. It's not at all loud in its advertising of itself...free admission, available for weddings and receptions, take a stroll...

It has been on my list of things to do for so damned long this visit was inexcusably overdue. I have made an effort though to check out all the tourist attractions in Key West and I have done quite well though I say so myself. Could you see yourself getting married here?

Richard Cussans a Bahamian merchant is believed to have built the house on what was, in 1829, the main drag in Key West. Whitehead Street was named for one of four Americans who bought the island from Juan Salas who had the Spanish land grant. Duval Street didn't exist back then until the city filled in the lake that occupied that part of the island. At that point owner Captain Francis Watlington moved the house to the other side of his four acre lot to overlook the new social center of Key West. Like the nearby Audubon House the Oldest House is a slice of Key West history.

Nowadays the lot is reduced in size and is overlooked by new homes "in the Key West style." The garden retains its rustic edge though with a proper outhouse, padlocked unfortunately:

And the house boasts the last separate cook house in the grounds,

...built to keep the danger of fire and the heat of cooking away from the main house. The discomfort of slaves in these tight quarters wasn't of course a concern.

The Old Island Restoration Fund, an organization dedicated to preserving Old Town Key West, an uphill struggle these days, has owned the house since 1974, when a far sighted philanthropist bought it from the Wadlington estate and donated it.

And here I found Dennison, resting comfortably on the "sleeping porch" where the family enjoyed night breezes in the heat of summer. He was a veritable fount of information though oddly the other visitors while I was there had no interest in hearing about the house into which they had blundered, apparently on their way to get solidly drunk up the street.

The Wadlington's expressed their wealth with powerful colors in their interior decorations in contrast to run-of-the-mill whitewash for the lower classes.

Because the Wadlington's owned the house until it's first sale in 1972 the furnishings are, in large part those of the original family I was told.

The builder decided to use sound techniques learned as a shipwright and the structure's ability to survive hurricanes is apparently a testament to that idea. Key West was hit hard in 1846 and all but a handful of homes were flattened, about 500 homes disappeared. Indeed the aforementioned Audubon House was built in 1847 after the great storm.

Last year I visited the Firehouse Museum and noticed the pond on Duval on an old map. So when the pond was filled in and Duval Street was built, and named for the first governor of the Territory, the house was moved here on the 300 block.

The interior was designed with as few doors as possible and those there were slid into the walls to create open drafts.

I noticed the Mario Sanchez hanging on the wall:

I guess they used beds in cooler weather. The beds were short as people preferred to sleep sitting up in those days and Dennison pointed out the rope support hence the term " sleep tight" an expression used to wish you a pleasant night's sleep on a well supported mattress.

The seven of nine daughters of Captain and Emeline Wadlington who grew to adulthood. Lily, the last of them died 83 years after her father, and lived here until 1972. She is in the back row on the right.

My wandering was done, another well spent hour learning about Key West and its past. Dennison was busy with another crowd and I took my leave after dropping off some money in the begging box.

Supporting this rarity is critical if Key West is to offer visitors more than luxury condos "in the Key West style" and bars to get drunk in.

Around the corner at 616 Eaton Street construction is underway to build a monster home of glass and concrete where a forest grew up behind the old clapboard house. Here at 322 Duval big old trees get to live on unmolested. As time progresses those charged with preserving the past and maintaining the old seem to have lost their way. Places like this will become fewer and fewer and more precious than they already are.

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