pt at large

The Camellia Grill: Sunny Side Up in New Orleans

The Camellia Grill
626 S Carrollton Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118-1008
Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sun 8:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Fri, Sat 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM

The food's a good reason to eat here but the real star of the Camellia Grill is the floorshow.

This retro little diner with the Greek Revival architecture could be a museum piece. The pink walls were stylish around 1950. The two connected horseshoe-shaped granite counters and 28 bolted to the floor green vinyl topped stools haven’t budged since the place opened in 1946.

A mean customer named Katrina closed it down on August 29, 2005. Its reopening in 2007 was a sign that New Orleans was bent, not broken. Next to the Saints winning a Super Bowl, this was one of the best stories in town. It’s a destination for locals and tourists alike.

 The favorites - giant fluffy omelets, cheeseburgers, “freezes,” pecan waffles and pies live up to their accolades. What you don’t expect is that your sense of well-being will be fed while you eat.

 After a few minutes, you realize you’re in an interactive environment - not the techie zeroes and ones kind, but the give and take human kind that crackles with repartee between the counter men and customers, the occasional song, and as much banter as you can muster to match the delightful goings on behind the counter.

  This morning, Marvin, a slightly built man with the playfulness of a modern day Flip Wilson, is running the show on our side of the Grill. A walking bundle of energy, his wit is sharp as one of the knives next to the grill. He occupies the place as thoroughly as the aromas of ham, toast, and bacon.

 Right now he’s running a blue-plate streak of antic, imaginative riffs with a string of customers. Things get quiet for a minute then and a syncopated bom ba da bum bum, bum-bum clatter of a metal spatula on one of the hot grills freezes forks halfway to the customers’ mouths.
 
There’s Marvin shouting “Aaattentionnnn, everyone!” He leans back theatrically and cups his hands around his mouth for effect. “We have twooooo birthday people in the house…” Seconds later, he leads the 28 bemused patrons in a hearty rendition of Happy Birthday.
 
One of the six cooks, who’s been efficiently ham and egging, seemingly oblivious to Marvin’s antics, turns from the grill and shouts, “Now you've got to dance,” and damn if this middle-aged guy doesn't get up from his ancient green topped stools and twirl his wife around the narrow space in front of the counter. Cheers erupt. This is New Orleans in full.
 
There’s Marvin observing to no one in particular, “Monday's the most important day in the week. Get Monday off to a good start and you're gonna have a good week!” Lord knows, he might say the same thing on Tuesday. With his cadenced elocution he might as well be in a pulpit. You’re listening to the gospel according to St. Marvin.
 
After a few minutes, you feel your core beginning to lighten up, your shoulders let go of that tension you didn't realize was there, and you begin to giggle, for god’s sake.
 
There are no order pads. Marvin, without looking back at the grill, shouts commands in Camellia lingo. Four cooks in front of a long line of fryers, grills, toasters, blenders, pots and pans are whipping up eggs, frying sausage, pouring pancakes and blending freezes. There’s hardly a clue they’ve heard him but everyone’s order appears within five minutes.
 
"I think everyone needs a little magic in their lives," Marvin shouts to a Tulane student sitting with her boyfriend.
 
"That's why we came here!" she fires back. I’m telling you, before long nearly every customer becomes a bit player in this daytime soap opera known as Camellia Grill.
 
"What's goin' ooonnnnn… as Marvin Gaye used to say," Marvin croons to a new customer. Camellia’s is serving soul food, all right. More than your appetite is being fed.
 
“What's the yellow liquid in that container,” I inquire. "Sweet-as-silk, richly-satisfying buttahh," Marvin declares. "Be careful. We had to call the butter police about a week ago, told 'em to butterize a customer who used too much of it at (he uses his finger to point as he counts aloud one two three four five six seven eight nine stools from where I sit) stool number nine. They started butterizing the guy at stool ten. We had to save him and point out the guy who was sitting where you are at stool nine."
 

All this repartee gets perfect strangers feeling like they’re in an exclusive club. That includes the father and mother from New Jersey visiting their daughter sitting next to us.

Ashley and her Tulane roommates were shopping nearby a while ago and stumbled upon the Camellia. Dazzled by the floorshow that came with the food, they decided they'd found the place to eat till they graduate. And the perfect place to take visiting parents. By the time the bill is delivered, we’ve shared tips on other great places to eat.

 Tell me the name of another place where you can come in and ask Marvin or one of his cohorts to charge your cell phone and have them do it and sing you a song when you're about to check out. (I saw this, really.)
 
"This is the place," Marvin playfully sings out, " we give you the love rub, we give your tummy a love rub." Psyches, too, Marvin.
 
The  pink walls are hung with black and white photos of the grill's history. Most of them are of the waiters, past and present, who’ve worked the Camellia Grill for decades. Marvin’s been there since 1992.
 
Later, a native New Orleanian tells us that Henry Thervalon worked at Camellia Grill for nearly fifty years. His son was a superior court judge, but Henry was better known. "When they sold T-shirts, they charged $10 more when Henry signed one," he said. I tell you, I would have paid five bucks more for my pecan waffle and my companion’s out of this world fluffy sausage and cheese omelet if Marvin had signed them. 

There are mountains of great food served around this town. There’s only one place you leave with a lighter heart and an ample serving of what makes New Orleans one of the special places on this good earth. Its name is the Camellia Grill. 

 We're in New Orleans for two more days. Guess where we're having breakfast tomorrow.

Photos by  Paul Tamburello

The Maple Leaf Bar: Dive In

Maple Leaf Bar
8616 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
Open 3 PM - 4 AM 7 days a week. Live music every night. Some pretty interesting conversation, too, if you get there before the  music gets cranking.

There are venues in New Orleans you just have to see. You’ve gone to New Orleans for the brass bands, the second line marches, the out of the way bars with great music, the out of the way eateries with funny names and great food, the hospitality, the waitresses who call you “ Beau,” a look at the Big Muddy- the Mississippi River, a walk down Bourbon Street with its mix of the gaudy, the commercial, and the few real deal places still standing, the lovely homes of the Garden District, the old wooden clang clang street cars with people’s elbows poking out of the open windows in the heat of the afternoon, and to breathe the air of the Big Easy.

 
Your first few visits probably don’t include the museums, unless you consider any bar or music joint built before 2000 antiquities. You want to see some real dive bars. You know, the funky ones, the ones everyone will ask you about when you return home.
 
They’re up there in ‘shrine’ status, places to be venerated, get plastered in, danced to within inches of your life in, become besotted with great music in, rub elbows with as wide a mix of America as you’ll find at a really good dive in. Which is what Zagat, for god’s sake, lists the Maple Leaf Bar as in its section about New Orleans - not the other stuff, but the ‘top dive’ part.
 
Which is why we searched for 8316 Oak Street on our handy StreetWise map and hauled down St. Charles Avenue to S. Carrollton in search of this mythical place somewhere in the Carrollton District. Two thirty in the afternoon is not an ideal time to visit a dive bar. But if it’s your last full day in New Orleans, you go to just see the place, to bookmark it in your memory, advance scouting for your next trip.
 
It was the usual 86/86 afternoon, 86 degrees F, 86 % humidity. Two steps into the darkened open doorway, the sweet smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke was the first sign that we’d entered dive territory. The second was a firm voice coming from within. “We’re not open till 3:00.”
 
That would be from the bartender, Jeff, slowly organizing for whoever would be sauntering in a half hour later.
 
“Look, we’re from Boston. We can’t come back later. We’ve heard this is one of the best bars in town. Mind if we just take a peek, you know, so we could at least say we’ve seen the place when we get home.”
 
 
A man with the grayish three-day growth and T-shirt piped up. “Sure, come on in.”  A  worn, L shaped mahogany-stained bar that's felt the weight of thousands of elbows comes into focus as our eyes adjust. Ancient overhead fans, ruby red pressed tin walls, cement floor, oh yeah, Tennessee Williams would have been right at home on this side of the Maple Leaf. Hank follows us into the other side, a narrow room painted a glorious bordello scarlet, with a worn wood dance floor and small stage against the street end.
 
 “That’s an image of James Booker lying over the stage there,” Hank says in a tone of voice that suggests I should know the name if I know a damn thing about New Orleans music. I nod.

I find out later Booker's storied career, including a stint in Angola Penitentiary for heroin possession that derailed possibilities for mainstream recognition, blossomed when college students rediscovered him in the 1970s. The eccentric rhythm & blues piano man became a New Orleans fixture in places like Tipitina’s, Snug Harbor, and The Maple Leaf Bar, which opened its doors in 1974.

Even at 2:30 in the afternoon, I can imagine the room jamming with blues, funk, R&B, rock, zydeco, jazz, and jam bands that play there seven nights a week. What I didn't know was that the Leaf hosts poetry readings, birthday parties, weddings, potlucks and the occasional wake. 

On the way out, Hank, who had warmed up amiably as he saw we were true believers, shows us photos that line the wall behind the bar of The Krewe of O.A.K., a neighborhood New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe that starts and ends its parades at the Maple Leaf.

Since 365 days is far too long to wait for Fat Tuesday, the The Krewe of O.A.K. hosts a mini Mid-Summer Mardi Gras at the end of August. A wildly decorated golf cart parked outside a neighborhood saloon is a sure way to find where the paraders have stopped for refreshment. Costumes for the midnight ball at the Maple Leaf are described as, ahhh, unconventional.

Sure enough, there is Hank as Krewe of O.A.K. King in 1989. Looks like he’s having a grand time. Well that he should.

Hank Staples, I discover while writing this story, is the proprietor of the place. And O.A.K. stands for ‘outrageous and kinky.” Like a true New Orleanean, Hank knows how to make the good times roll.

 Below, Hank and Jeff, reflected in window, relax before The Maple Leaf's 3:00 PM opening. It appears to be a badge of honor, worn with a pride rooted in a deep sense of neighborhood, that this stretch of Oak Street hasn't felt the need to change its 1950-ish sense of style.

Photos by Paul Tamburello

The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway: A blue water odyssey

^{The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, an engineering marvel that bridge afficionaldos must experience}

“Boooring and unscenic” the Louisiana native said. “And why would you want to cross the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway when we can get from New Orleans to Baton Rouge much more directly on I - 10?”
 
Whoa! I’m a bridge man. I still get a jolt thinking about my first sighting of the Brooklyn Bridge and my slow touristy walk across it from Brooklyn to the city a few winters ago.
 
The Ponchartrain Causeway is the longest highway bridge over water in the whole wide world. It’s 23.9 miles long. The gigantic lake is more like an inland sea, 630 square miles, forty miles wide, and wow, who wouldn’t want to drive those twenty three miles north and south over the heart of the lake.
 
“There’s nothing to see but water,” she said.
 
“Exactly! That’s the point! Sort of like magically driving over water,” I reason as I headed north from The French Quarter in New Orleans.
 
Twenty minutes later, the enormous lake appeared. Two parallel spans, 80 feet apart, with two lanes each, whitewashed in the noon sun, stretched straight out to the vanishing point.
 
Ten minutes later, my passenger was dozing. I was snapping photos and thrilling to the ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk rhythm as the tires traversed the pre stressed concrete panels on the road, held up by 9000 concrete pilings.
 
Metairie on the south shore was receding in the rear view mirror; Saint Tammany Parish on the north shore wouldn’t come into view for another fifteen minutes.
 
Clipping along at about 60, ten miles per hour less than the limit, so I could snap photos in the brilliant midday sun, I was mildly disappointed when the north shore, Covington and Mandeville, appeared on the horizon. After a lifetime of driving over terra firma, surrounded by forests, pastures, brick and mortar cities, and clapboard hamlets, driving over terra aqua was otherworldly.

When British mountaineer George Mallory was asked in 1923, “Why climb Mount Everest?” he responded, “Because it is there.” The Ponchartrain Causeway Bridge, the world’s longest bridge over water was there. Well...

 An estimated 30,000 cars cross the Causeway Bridge every workday. I’ll bet I had more fun than any of them.

Photo by Paul Tamburello, holding camera out window at 60 mph. Not recommended techique for amateurs.

Whiskey River Landing: Flooded With Music

Dancers in Louisiana will drive through hell and high water to get to a good shindig. We were driving through a flash flood ten minutes after we left one in Henderson.

Geno Delafose and his French Rockin’ Boogie were probably still playing back there. The place was jammed when we left around 7 pm, since we’d heeded the warning of locals that during the rain, four wheel drive was the best bet to climb the steep, muddy levee road we drove down to get there. We heaved a sigh of relief when our rental Chevy sedan slippy slidey-d up to the top of the levee, the lights from Angelle's Whiskey River Landing disappearing in the mist. Little did we know.

The rain pounding on the car roof was deafening. The wipers lashing at full speed gave split second views of the road before the windshield blurred again. It was pitch dark. We missed the turn for Interstate 10. A few minutes later, the road looked more like a bayou. The headlights played atop black water rolling over the flat country road stretching before us. The only evidence or the road’s location was light from a loose string of houses stretching to our left and right. It's unnerving when your car suddenly feels like a pleasure craft.

 
Our previous reassurance, a trickle of cars coming from the opposite direction, meaning the road ahead was manageable, had stopped. The car behind us, a Jeep, turned off and headed back. There was no way to tell whether the situation was better where we’d been or where we were headed.

The front of the car was pushing a bow wake. I opened the door to check the height of the water. Dumb. One inch below the doorsill. The terrain was flat. No high ground visible. We were making about two knots. Louisiana’s annual rainfall is 59.74 inches. It felt like most of that had fallen in the past hour.
 
The sweat from dancing for three hours in Henderson, somewhere back there in wilderness, had evaporated, replaced by the sweat from a sense of impending danger.  The tone of our voices as we plotted our course was measured. Panic would be useless. Not uncalled for, but useless.

How long before water would seep through the doors? How long before it would drown the engine? What then?

Water gurgled underneath the car. After twenty tense, slow-mo, surreal minutes of driving through a nightmare, we reached higher ground and found our way to I-10 and Baton Rouge. It took three days for the rental car to dry out. The car’s grill was clogged with flotsam. My nerves were shot. It was worth it.

Monday through Saturday Whiskey River’s an overgrown fishing shack sandwiched between a thirty-foot earthen levee and the shore of the Atchafalaya Swamp, the largest river basin in the continental United States. Come Sunday, it’s the Taj Mahal of Creole music.

It’s Cinderella trading in her glass slipper for jeans and a pair of cowboy boots - and her pumpkin carriage for a pickup truck. The hell with the Ball. She’ll find plenty of princes to dance with in the tumbledown flat-roofed addition/dance hall that juts fearlessly over the swamp.

(Below, the early crowd dances to music provided by the band preceding Geno Delafose. The Atchafalaya Swamp is visible through plate glass windows right behind the stage.)

The best Cajun and Zydeco bands in the universe find their way there from 4 pm to 8 pm.  Day of rest?  Nope. This is holy rolling rapture, as close to a religious experience as you’ll have rhythmically moving your body around with a partner of the opposite sex in playfully pagan ways. 

 

Geno Delafose brings something special to the music. Two tall Texans told me they came all the way from Houston to hear him play. After every song, friends and admirers pushed up to the bandstand to say hello. Delafose, neatly pressed shirt and jeans, big cowboy hat making him seem seven feet tall, greeted everyone with a genuinely appreciative smile, then cranked up another song. His energy is as vast as the swamp behind the dance hall.

 
Hundreds of pairs of booted feet were pounding the bejesus out of the plywood dance floor. College students, businessmen, farmers, cowboys, accountants, tourists, carpenters, you name it, of every race and age stood around the worn dance floor or leaned against the bar that runs the length of the place, which was packed.
 
Energy pulses through the place, People smile, laugh, hug. Most are regulars, “Where you from?” they ask. When Boston is the answer, eyebrows arch as if to say ‘What do Yankees know about zydeco?’ My companion, born in Baton Rouge and apparently secretly raised in a dance hall, and we do a pretty good job of answering the question on the dance floor.
 
Whiskey River Landing was rebuilt after having its roof torn off by Katrina in 2005. Louisianans would sooner go without grits than without dancing.

The Atchafalaya Swamp is visible through a plate glass window behind the stage. Paneled wood walls are pinned with posters. Groups cluster around folding chairs and small tables, many of which are topped with a pail full of ice and bottles of Abita Beer.

When I stepped outside between rainfalls to photograph the place, egrets were beginning to roost in the swamp. And Floyd LeBlanc, whom I'd interviewed the day before in Breaux Bridge, came out to show me where he set up his duck blind for the little business he had going on after WWII.

 Next time I go to Lafayette, I'm renting a pickup truck with four-wheel drive, a good stereo, and a rudder.

Photos by Paul Tamburello

Synchopated Creole Thunder

Short of sex, there aint nothing as powerful as a pressed-together-sweaty-zydeco dance with a woman who channels the music as if your two bodies were having a particle physics convention.

It felt like Andre Thierry, zydeco king accordion player from Lafayette brought everything with him in his band’s van except the snakes and the crawfish. The Louisiana music blasted through the dance pavilion like syncopated Creole thunder. The joyous accordion, guitar, bass, drums, and wash board frottoir set the two hundred dancers packed under the tent to vibrate like tuning forks in the densely humid August afternoon. This was hollerin’, hip shaking, who cares about anything except the eight beat here and now zydeco nirvana.
 
The air was thick with perfume soaked perspiration, smoke drifting from the grill, and music from just this side of heaven. The crowd had been dancing for nearly four hours, the band had lifted off with the refracted energy, everything felt slippery, clothing stuck to dancers, sweat ran like rain off bodies and nobody gave a damn. These were the last two dances and everyone concerned had one thing in mind. Totally incinerate every last molecule of dance energy and leave it smoldering on the dance floor.
 
Neurons and synapses locked in the eternal moment my partner and I touched. Every molecule locked and loaded. After sixteen beats the five six one twenty five pounds of her was molded against me like a second skin. Scent of her brown hair in my nostrils, her breath hot against my neck, her arms pulling me tight, corporeal fusion underway.
 
The preceding three and a half hours of dance was a launch pad for this one glorious fit yourselves together, become one eight count organism doing everything but mitosis on that dance floor, her Molly Bloom smiling eyes saying Yes, I’m loving this, Yes, keep it going, and Yes, I did, body parts emulating call and response, the thigh to thigh contact that had the charge of sex the sweat of sex the uninhibited moves of sex but no sex, this was a sex no sex dance, a yin yang dance real and fanciful, intimate and distant, we dance independently but totally in synch, defying Newton, tucked into the same space at the same time, “What’s your name?” she shouts as music ends, "You’ve got the best firepower I’ve felt all day!” She’s still feeling that dance as she sips her coffee this morning, jesus that dance was special, I wonder what would happen if we dance again.
 
And Im thinking that dance was a gift, a present the day after blowing out a few score candles on my birthday. This was going to be a good year.

Key West: Masquerade March at Fantasy Fest 2009

Fantasy Fest in Key West is the grandmother of all Halloween celebrations. It’s wacky, spirited and light hearted but not for the faint of heart. If you’re opposed to nudity and risqué antics, better trick or treat somewhere else. If you’re open-minded and want to experience it, plan ahead because the town’s lodgings are booked months in advance of the last week of October.

Back in 1978 a member of the Tourist Development Association wanted to add a spark to the dry tinder of the town’s autumn economy with a festivity before the tourist season began in earnest. Thirty years later, Fantasy Fest has the wallop of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the sizzle of Carnivale in Rio de Janiero. Ever heard of a bonfire?

While the rest of the town remains in business as usual mode, Duval Street becomes ground zero for ten days of intense partying. From the Goombay street fair and Coronation of 2009 Fantasy Fest King and Queen on Friday October 23 to the “Fat Lady Sings” Tea Party on November 1, every day is filled with entertainment.

Ordinary diversions like the wet T shirt, Home Made Bikini contests, and Toga Parties and originals like The Third Annual “Pinking of You” Decorated Bra Auction, Captain Tony’s Party in Plaid, the 27th Annual Headdress Ball (this year’s theme was Hedonistic Heroes and Vexing Villains with Prizes for Best Headdress), Dress In White Night, and The 9th Annual Living Art Airbrush Expo (using the human form as a living canvas for artistic expression). Then there’s the Dungeon of Dark Secrets and Fetishes, hmmmm.  Straight, gay, or somewhere in between, there is something for everyone. And everyone is having a good time.

 pt at large returned to Key West the day before the Friday October 30 Masquerade March, a clothing optional promenade of Disneyland proportion. Good idea.

The tropical sun ricochets off bleached tombstones as over a thousand paraders and spectators home in on the front gate of Key West Cemetery. Where else would anyone begin a Halloween March? It is 5 P.M. 

Marchers with a drink in one hand and camera in the other yak it up and admire each other’s attire. Gallons of body paint, pounds of sequins, yards of taffeta, not to mention latex, leather, and lycra, have been deployed creatively.

Key West has issued a giant permission slip to participants to dress up (or down) as vampires, vixens, villains, pole dancers, kinky kings, naughty nurses, tooth fairies, monks, gladiators, sailors. Wizard of Oz characters - the list goes on. 

Fantasy Fest spins straw into gold when an amalgam of levity and nudity commingles as accountants, teachers, librarians, lawyers, idlers, retirees, engineers. layabouts, - whoever- shrug off the fetters of convention and load up on body paint, Halloween costumes and an insouciance that’s contagious.

One woman walking topless down Main Street USA would end up on the evening news. Hundreds of undraped men and women walking over a mile from the cemetery to Duval Street during Fantasy Fest cause nary a ripple in Key West.

Before long, I’m looking people up and down and saying, “You look fabulous!” and snapping photos. This is a parallel universe.  These people haven’t become unhinged, just liberated for a few hours from the norms for the rest of the known world.

Look around. See men and women who’ve been getting mail from the AARP for years. They look their age and egads are they whooping it up.

Someone in the crowd remarks that some participants would be better off with their clothes on. NO, I say, This is democracy in the buff. What makes this festival fabulous is that people with soft, flabby, too big, too small bodies are flipping the bird to the conglomerates that fill glossy magazines with images of airbrushed perfection. And aren’t ashamed to bare it all right next to the hard bodies.

Free punch and beer are served along the route on tables outside neighborhood guest houses and inns en route.

Mardi Gras beads, flung by celebrants on balconies and porches, rain down and end up in tree branches, phone lines and in the hands of the happy.

No one appears intoxicated. I haven’t heard one catcall or crude remark.  The drag queens are sassy. Everyone is jovial.

When a knot of people forms up the street, you know a spectacularly painted body or cleverly designed costume in the middle of it.

“Nothing is free in Key West. Don’t rely on inaccurate self-exams. Have one here from an experienced hand!” shouts a man wearing a box with two chest-high holes carved in it. He’s drawn a crowd and a several women accept the offer, much to the delight of the crowd.

By 7 PM, thousands of people have descended upon Duval Street, where several blocks have been cordoned off. Music pours from bars and saloons. Merriment prevails.

Masquerade March is a good-natured bawdy spectacle so far outside the pale of ordinary celebrations it defies explication. 

I’ve never seen such light hearted displays of flesh and costumery, refreshingly void of self-consciousness and filled with laughter and joie de naughtiness.

I know where I’ll be trick or treating next October.

Key West Fantasy Fest: Thursday October 29, 2009

How does a town whose norm is living with its hair down celebrate? It lets its hair down and takes off its clothes. This, my dear friends, describes the general aura of the 30th Annual Villains, Vixens, and Vampires Fantasy Fest in Key West, Florida.
 
“If you look down and see confetti and peanuts, you know you missed the parade,” my college buddy host said, shaking his head at my decision to miss the event, one of the best parties on the planet. But I’d spent two great weeks crewing on, Skate, his Valiant 37 sailboat, from Fort Pierce to Key West. Leroy Thomas, the fabulous zydeco accordion player I’d heard in early October at the Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, was playing in my turf on Saturday. I wanted to be there. It was time to go home.

The American Airlines agent at Key West International Airport fished a Fantasy Fest brochure from her bag to show me what I would miss by leaving on Friday October 23.

The event brochure’s claim “Mortals beware… Fantasy Fest is calling all Villains, Vixens, and Vampires! Sink your teeth into ten days of tantalizing temptations, and outrageous events that are sure to leave a bite mark. There are over forty Fantasy Fest events that will quench the thirst for excitement, bizarre, and the provocative,” and the agent’s smile did register. But I’d seen a bit of the town, how good could this party be?

Three days later, during a daylong cold rainstorm at home in a suburb of Boston, I booked a flight to Key West. It was time to throw confetti and eat peanuts.
 
I bang away this missive from below deck on Skate, moored in Garrison Bight, one of the harbors that surround Key West. It is midnight. And hot in the cabin. We’ve just dinghied back from town and I’ve witnessed enough levity to float the Goodyear Blimp. I need to write about it.
 
It is Thursday night October 29. The skids have been greased with events going on in town since the day I left. Key West is an eccentric piece of real estate to begin with. Fantasy Fest slingshots it into the stratosphere.
 
Events have been going on day and night inside the saloons on Duval Street. Outside, however, is the place to be. Everyone going anywhere is out here tonight. It is about 80 degrees and humid.
 
I don’t have the inclination to compose in orderly paragraphs. Every circuit breaker in my mind accustomed to the norms of decorum in New England is blown. In the spirit of this southernmost town in the US of A, I excuse myself and go with the first draft.

There are hundreds of nearly naked people roaming around here. Men and women are walking up and down Duval Street with decorations on every anatomical appendage they were born with. There seems to be one rule. Genitalia regalia for women should (operative word) be covered by a triangular patch the size of their triangle. For him, a thong or breechcloth or a toga or a leetle towel or silky kiltie to conceal the family jewels. 

Exposed flesh is not a requisite. Many costumes are elaborate. Captain Morgan swashbuckles down the street. Mary Poppins skips. There are far more spectators than participants. Everyone is having fun. This is the French Riviera with a sense of theater.

The first few minutes of walking down Duval Street I felt like a paparazzi trying to snap photos of near naked celebrities. The epiphany came when I pointed my camera at an oncoming Eve. She stopped dead in her tracks and offered a saucy pose. A photo? Of course!

Couples, groups, and individuals (un)dressed for the occasion expect attention. Inhibition? Naahhh. That’s why they’re here. Confined to a wheelchair? Charge the battery!

Women wearing body paint and a smile sashay down the street. In my next lifetime I want to become a body paint artist and live in Key West. Want a photo opp? Ask and the subject obliges with a smile. Want to get in the photo? Sure thing. Hand your camera to another photographer and put your arm around the obliging subject. A swarm of photographers of both sexes flash away.

 
Beauty standards are blown to the wind. Shapes, sizes, colors, and ages are in parade mode. Couples from twenties to sixties strip down or costume up. Some would never grace the pages of any cheesecake or beefcake magazine and that is the glory of this. The street belongs to these revelers as much as to the centerfolds.
 
As an astute observer I can say that major impact factors are carriage and attitude. Give me an “I own this street” fifty year old whose body shows signs of gravity over a slouchy twenty something firm body. If you’re out here in all your glory, you don’t want to walk the same way you’d push your cart down aisle six of the Winn Dixie.


People showing off their costumes in Captain Tony’s take photos of each other. There’s a wet T shirt contest at Sloppy Joe’s but the best action is right on Duval Street. Stay in one place for an hour and you’ll see every damn partier in town.


This place is all lighthearted attitude.  Have lots of public nakedness and things can get complicated. The only thing complicated in Key West Fantasy Fest is which nearly naked person to admire.
 

Nudity is often associated with pornography. During Fantasy Fest in Key West, being near naked is an art form, lighthearted entertainment, and good old-fashioned fun. You’d think eyeballs would fall from their sockets from the strain of leering. Doesn’t happen.

When Key West cuts loose, it drifts with a playful sensual sense of fun and flaunting. This has to be seen to be understood. Luckily I am here to report this to you.

 
You don’t have to have a gorgeous body. Attitude goes a long way to improve whatever gifts nature has given you. Out of the way Margarita-ville, here comes Attitude-ville.

The good times are just beginning, three more days to go.