To really get a feel for the thing one should expect to attend at least five or six different parties with as many different costumes, and while most follow a template (togas for the toga party, leather for the leather party, sex dungeon-y corsets for the sexy dungeon party) some are more random: a neon spandex onesie here, a pair of fairy wings and rainbow platforms there, and always, ever present, the option to go topless, and body paint ones torso like a butterfly or a pair of bloodhound dogs. If it could, Key West would take out a full page ad in the Advocate saying: Hey San Francisco, Key West sees your world famous Folsom Street Fair all-day leather party and raises you two weeks of constant nudity, public drunkenness, and a parade float captained by Ron Jeremy. Oh, you went to a latex party at the back of Bourbon Street and got lost in a foam pit full of slippery young men? Please, I did that my first year down here. After only a few years of living on such a strange little rock, Key West residents develop a competitively blasé attitude toward costumed chaos, and seeing strangers in the buff. The anchor and origin to all that holier-than-thou attitude is Fantasy Fest, the ten days preceding Halloween, during which close to a hundred-thousand visitors descend upon an island four miles long and one mile wide and proceed to get very, very drunk and very close to completely naked. It’s unofficial city motto: Key West, Where The Weird Go Pro. But Key Westers (also known as Conchs, pronounced with a hard k and woe betide you if you get that wrong) are particularly hard to shock with public displays of strangeness. People from Los Angeles take pride in their special ability to remain unfazed in the presence of celebrities in line at Starbucks. Not in the same way that it is with other cities New Yorkers brag about their particular insouciance, born out of years of averting their eyes as a homeless person begs for change in the subway. There are sexy nurses and mermaids and at least two Harry Potters, a few pirates, a spooky bride, a handful of generic mummies.Īnd all of them - every single one of them, even the fireman with his washboard abs - are dead. He counts dozens of them, more than fifty, maybe even hundreds? It’s hard to tell, they’re moving quickly and a lot of them seem like maybe they haven’t ridden a bicycle in a decade or two, wobbling and weaving between one another, adults and kids and a couple of dogs stuffed into baskets, a cooler on wheels packed full of lite beer, and every now and then a burst of music from someone’s boom box mounted on a pair of handle bars. Some of the bicyclists wave to the kid as they careen past, and then they’re riding past the poor pizza delivery guy in his Corolla. The family in the minivan that was blocking his view sees them first The youngest kid has his face pressed so hard against the backseat window that his nose is smushed into a pig snout, and though you can’t hear it through the glass you can see that he’s a pantomime of excitement, yelling, laughing, pointing, waving furiously at the two-wheeled swarm moving swiftly past him. Slack-jawed, hand paused, horn un-honked. There is a moment when he decides to honk his horn again, to yell at them to get the hell out of the road, that some people have places to be tonight- and then he freezes as they come closer, finally visible.Īnd there he is, frozen. Then, squinting into the setting sun, he sees whatever it is moving towards him, turning a corner, and the delay is revealed to be a weird mass of bicyclists bearing down on his car. He rolls down the driver’s side window of his car and leans out to see what could possibly be holding up traffic like this, 20 minutes stopped short on a two lane highway next to the ocean. He’s stuck, and the line of cars behind him is getting longer. They happen year-round but they get worse in winter, too many tourists drinking too many beers. It’s probably a scooter crash, some drunk idiot on a rented, off-brand Vespa who wrapped himself around a palm tree. He’s going to be late, and when he’s late he doesn’t get a tip, and if the customer calls to complain he’ll probably get fired, and hardly anyone is hiring on this tiny island nowadays so he’s basically screwed. There’s a minivan blocking his view of whatever it is up ahead that is causing the commotion, and now he’s definitely going to be late, he thinks, staring at his phone. Two minutes ago he was fuming, furiously drumming his fingers on the wheel wondering what the problem was and why both lanes of cars have come to a complete stop on a Thursday evening. There’s a pizza delivery guy sitting with his mouth open, stunned into silence, his hand frozen halfway to the horn of his Toyota Corolla.
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