Bike Week, Key West

Thank God Bike Week is here, all the Key West hotels are probably saying. After totally empty parking lots after Hurricane Ike, now they are full of $60,000 motorcycles and middle-aged dudes and dudettes dressed in black T-shirts and bad denim jeans. There are hundreds in town, and we can hear them rumbling all day long across Garrison Bight. Here are just a few pictures from Friday night. It rained so you can see rain drops on the bikes but they still look pretty good.

Here we have a Hooters Bike, with a big fat tire. It's parked near Sloppy Joe's bar, on Duval Street.

Another cool thing about Key West

Not only are scooters way cool in Key West, but even the bicycles are totally awesome. They're kooky and painted and modified and still totally rad looking. Not kooky clown looking. Kooky funky art looking. Nobody likes clowns. But someone who rides down Duval on a 100% chromed out bicycle is SO southern Florida, so cool.

Sometimes when I can't find things to culturally relate to, being from the world of northeastern cool, dark moody art and tons of personal expression, and I can't believe I'm living in a state where so many people still wear neon tank tops (originals from the 80s) and visors, and there doesn't seem to be much variety, these fancy bicycles pick my spirits right up.

Or when the world seems over populated with Tommy Bahama, let Elvis roll down the street in his leopard prints and totally funked out bicycle. Then the world seems right. One brave local Elvis with Viking Hat balances out all the preppiness around him.
Here's Elvis, sans bicycle.

Key West Power Boat Races

Key West Power Boat Races just finished for the year. For a first-timer, it was thrilling to hear the jet engines on those big boats as they practiced their runs during the week. Starting on a Wednesday they were out there in front of Key West throughout the day, with their close-flying helicopters tailing them in amazing precision. At first I thought the helicopters were there to film the boats as they drove at full speed. But they were also there during the actual Key West power boat races so it must be something to do with navigation. Maybe the boats go so fast and the drivers are situated so low in the cockpit they really can't see much around them. It's crazy to think they're racing around to close to Key West and other dive and fishing boats, not really able to see much. What?

Races were on Friday and Sunday, with practice and preparation on Thursday and Saturday. The power boats gather and register at Truman Annex waterfront and race a loop course that begins in Key West harbor and goes south towards Sand Key Light. They used to race eastwards along the south face of Key West but no more. People tell me it was pretty exciting in those days to watch the power boats come around the corner of the island in front of Fort Zachary Taylor, taking a sharp right turn into Key West harbor. Depending on the weather and the roughness of the seas, boats would often flip doing this curve. Someone even told me that a driver had a bad flip one year and the accident decapitated him. I haven't been able to verify this yet.

IF you want to view the Key West power boat races from up close and you want to sit down, you will have to shell out $15 for entrance in the bleachers area near the entrance to Fort Zachary Taylor. To save money, veer left into the park instead of going straight through the gates, where you will have to pay, even if you arrive on foot or by bicycle. Either go into Fort Zachary and pay the usual daily fee, which is about $2 or $4 for a bicycler, or bike over towards Mallory Square and squeeze in for a position at the water's edge against the rail. Few people go to the area between Fort Zachary and Mallory Square, which is where the cruise ships usually board. That's also an option.

The race consists of power boats doing a loop with their helicopters, zooming into the Harbor in front of Mallory Square where viewers can take action shots with their cameras. The noise of the helicopters is the first to arrive and serves as cue to get your camera ready for a picture. That's kind of it in a nutshell. You can't really tell who's winning or how each boat is doing, or whether a boat is having technical or mechanical difficulties. And after a while the thrill of the loud engines kind of wears off, until it's just some noise. After the races end, the helicopters gather in a group just off Sunset Key, and they look like a swarm of hornets hovering over the ocean. Then the crowd dissipates and it's just Mallory Square again.

Some people think part of the fun of Key West power boat races is the scene on Duval Street each night. Drivers and their teams wear their team jerseys and hit the bars or stroll proudly down Duval Street. There's added energy to the Duval Street scene when the Key West Power Boat racers are in town. They love to wear their jerseys everywhere they go, even if they're just going out to eat for lunch. And that, from a newcomer's perspective, is what Key West Power Boat races are all about.

Key West Body Paint

Key West body paint might be the largest single phenomenon that makes Fantasy Fest one of the largest events of the year. Body paint is often the costume of choice for a lot of people attending Fantasy Fest. It's a great way to go naked without really exposing everything you have. Key West body paint is an art form, and indeed body paint artists come to town for this major event. Local tatoo artists get in on the body paint action as well, applying their craft to more than just one medium. The styles and skills range from pretty good to truly amazing. I saw some body paint costumes that I thought were actual cloth costumes at first glance.

If body painting is done by an expert artist, the paint will look like really tight clothing. Even denim. I saw a woman wearing a western theme body paint costume, with red tied shirt on top and cutoff denim shorts on the bottom. You could tell the shirt was paint but the shorts looked real. Lots of women chose to have lingerie painted on. How to get a perfect fit...use body paint!

Sometimes Key West body paint becomes a show when artists apply their craft in a storefront window. Some nights during Fantasty Fest, for example, you can stroll past Fast Buck Freddie's, a gift store famous for its large display windows and ever-changing displays created by local artists. It's kind of like the windows at Macy's in New York at Christmastime. Anyway, during Fantasy Fest, they get a Key West body paint artist to paint willing and daring customers right in the display window. It's a tight squeeze, but the customer sits on a stool with her back to the street and the body paint artist applies the "costume". It's a spectacle and of course there's always a small crowd watching.

Fantasy Fest 2007

Fantasy Fest 2007 was a blast. It was my first Key West Fantasy Fest, and what I can say is I'm already counting the days until Fantasy Fest 2008. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas to roll around again. It's a week long series of opportunities to become somebody completely different, or at least dress up in a totally different style and become as freaky, sexy, or magical as you can. Only your imagination will limit you. If you've never been to Fantasy Fest, it's really kind of difficult to imagine what it's like, and even more difficult to picture yourself dressing up in costume. If Fantasy Fest 2007 was your first time, then you
most definitely saw some inspiring costumes and body paint. If you were like me, you felt the vibe and joined in the fun and dressed up yourself.

The theme of Fantasy Fest 2007 was something about the mad hatter and being late, kind of Alice and Wonderland I think. It was a tough theme to follow, but most people did their best with Queen of Hearts costumes. There were a bunch of women who chose this costume, but that kind of left most men without a theme costume idea, except if they wanted to be a mad hatter or a late rabbit. In any case, most of the costumes I saw during Fantasy Fest 2007 didn't follow the grand theme. People were more likely to go as their own
personal fantasy, or to dress according to which party they were attending that night.

Each night of Fantasy Fest there are several themed parties sponsored by local Key West bars. For example there's the Plaid Party at Captain Tony's Saloon. Then there's the Toga party at Sloppy Joe's on Duval Street.
There's also the Red Party at Fogarty's, and the PJ's and Lingerie Party at another local Key West bar on Duval Street. There were also some new parties for Fantasy Fest 2007, including the Green Party at a local Irish bar, off Duval Street. The Red Party seems to be one of the favorites, as is the PJs and Lingerie Party. You see lots of devils at the Red Party of course, and well lingerie and PJs is an easy costume.

The theme parties at the Duval Street bars usually spill out into the street. The Plaid party at Captain Tony's Saloon is on a side street just off Duval, and the Key West Police block off the street so there's lots of room for Plaid people. As the week wears on, and more people show up in Key West, Duval Street is blocked off for pedestrian use every single day and night. Vendors line the streets, along with artists hawking their items. The crowds build and build and the town's population swells to triple its normal size. Fantasy Fest 2007 was no exception, with 60,000 people in town. By Saturday night, the night of the big parade event, it was
hard to press on through the crowds. If you had a Fantasy Fest costume with wings, good luck. There simply wasn't room! Good advice for Fantasy Fest 2008: don't wear any costume that incorporate wings or anything else that sticks way out. It won't survive the night.

First Time in High Heels

One of my favorite places on Duval Street is the bar seating that faces the street, at Caroline's. Patrons can sit a few feet above the heads of passersby who stroll Duval, looking for action. Caroline's is also across the street from Fat Tuesday, which from what I've observed, trys to attract the younger crowd interested in dancing and drinking. They do their best to perpetuate the Duval party atmosphere. From the perch at Caroline's, my friends and I sip drinks, eat grouper sandwiches, and watch what goes on across the street. For those who care, these raised seats offer the perfect vantage point for cleavage viewing, should the unsuspecting tourist walk by wearing the right kind of shirt. I know, it's wrong. I just thought I'd offer that up.

Fat Tuesday Key West is also one of those bars that offer the right mystique, the correct blend of boozy abandon and hit list of cool pop music (very hard to achieve) that makes underage kids absolutely crave entrance. Perhaps it's the bouncer/doorkids who sport sideways baseball caps and knee-level t-shirts that makes teenagers think they can get in? Perhaps it's that the front of Fat Tuesdays is totally open, transparent, affording a tempting view to all on the outside, of what endless joy and abandon is occurring inside? The hit list of cool pop music pounding out the non-walls and onto the street? Whatever it is, Fat Tuesday seems to attract lots of would-be customers whom they just can't let in.

Take the other night. I was sipping my Club Soda on my perch at Caroline's when a gaggle of girls inched into my peripheral vision from the right. I noticed them right away because something wasn't right about the way they were walking. I mean, at first, out of the corner of my eye, it looked like a tangled herd of broken giraffes stumbling up the sidewalk, inching along with great effort. Their heads bobbed not smoothly or rhythmically, but jarringly, out of sync with anything at all. Their arms swung out at crazy sudden swooping angles, their legs lurching ahead of or lagging behind their bodies, disconnected from the holistic walking process, a frame behind. They moved along as one being, clinging to each other, trying to keep moving forward, helping each other. I swung my head to get a better look at this large creaky machine whose parts were limbs, heads, dresses and yes...the cause of it all... Very. High. Heels.

The girls made it in their high heels to the low wall in front of Hard Rock Cafe, which has sportingly made their wall low, wide and very sittable. Hard Rock Cafe is the next block over from Fat Tuesday, so they were almost there. Perhaps they were resting up for what they knew would be a hurdle much greater than painful high heels: gaining entrance to the bar. They had been eyeing the wall for many paces now, and when they reached it the machine fell apart, breaking into parts which became four girls dressed up for a night on the town. They were immaculate, obviously having taken hours and hours to get ready. I wonder if they bought the Very High Heels or if they borrowed them. As they seem not to have learned yet, the secret to wearing VHH is in the fit.

Anyway, the girls went through varying degrees of trying to soothe their injured feet: one girl was actually rubbing her ankles, another kicked off her VHH the second she sat down. One compromised by letting the shoes dangle off her toes, not allowing them to completely fall off and hit the pavement. They looked like a commercial for sore feet, or whatever treats sore feet...Dr. Scholl's? Flip Flops?

The machine eventually ammassed itself and chugged down the last bit of sidewalk between the Wall of Mercy and Fat Tuesday. Now the fun part! ID Checker guy calls the manager, manager explains why they can't come in, they listen, the machine falters, then breaks apart as each girl has a different idea of what the group should do in response to this offending denial of service. One girl, let's call her the huffy one, stomps off in her VHH down the street. Another, let's call her the one who apparently didn't have enough time to find or else couldn't decide on the right outfit to go with her VHH, since she was wearing a horrid denim skirt and old t-shirt with her very fancy indeed high heels...she just stood there, the victim of indecision and slow thought processes. The third and fourth girls worked tag team on the manager, I guess debating the law, or questioning his ID-reading abilities. They too left, in the direction of Huffy One, but not before making sure Slow-Indecisive Girl was with them. Tag Team couldn't give it up, so they offered some more enlightening points of discussion as they hobbled away in their VHH, puctuating their speech with hand gestures. Which was quite a feat, considering that the hands and arms were completely necessary to the overall functioning of The Machine, making the Very High Heels work and all.

I tried to keep my eye on the girls as they hobbled away in search of a party. I really wanted to know if they ever got in anyplace. I wonder how far they got before they ditched the VHH and went barefoot. I wonder if they just went home and drank Mom and Dad's wine and had a girls' night at home. Did they swear off high heels forever or did they resolve to get some that fit? Well, there is a good chance that at least one of the girls learned something that night: if the shoe hurts, don't wear it. And bless the Hard Rock Cafe and their Wall of Mercy.

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