Fantasy Fest 2018: TuTu Tuesday
https://fantasyfest.com
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Key West, Florida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch_Republic
Passengers sitting in the window seats are laughing out loud. The ground crew marshal waving the orange baton to guide the pilot to the line where the jet will power down is wearing a lovely accessory… a pink tutu!
Whaaaat?
Fantasy Fest 2018 is in full swing. It's Tutu Tuesday...read on...
Way back in 1979, four business owners sat down around a kitchen table and did what business owners do, tossed around ideas how to put a charge in the island during a big lull before the snow birds arrived, as predictable as the swallows returning to Capistrano.
The idea they hatched is Fantasy Fest, a you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it ten day street party. Thousands of those young at heart, young in spirit, will be parading around Duval Street by the time we arrive an hour later.
This year’s theme, “The Games People Play,” will dictate what thousands will wear …or not. Oh, and along with that there are annual events like Tu Tu Tuesday, Red Parties, Green Parties celebrated all around Duval Street. It got a head start right here at the airport and it’s been rolling since October 19, the first day of Fantasy Fest 2018.
This seed of the idea did not come out of nowhere. Maybe it was blown onto the island on a soft Caribbean breeze with the faint scent of pineapples, coconuts and lush fields of cane sugar. More likely it was inevitable, created by the residents of Key West who once declared an intention to secede from the United States (1982), celebrates its own Independence Day every April 23rd, and named itself and the keys to its north The Conch Republic.
The most endearing part of the first Independence Day (1982) The platform of the founding organization, “A Sovereign State of Mind,”as to bring more “Humor, Warmth, and Respect” to the world. That’s a living creed...I’ve felt that spirit every one of my four trips to Key West since 2009.
It’s not a reach to see the roots of Fantasy Fest, watered by love, rum, and a streak of independent and wholesomely eccentric spirit. Key West is the southernmost part of the United States. It’s not just the miles that separate it from the rest of us.
Walk around the island. Talk with people, the ones who were born here and the ones who came here and never left. They connect with the world on their own terms. Sure they have opinions and political affiliations. But their first allegiance is to the well being of their island and the others who share it with them.
They are geographically and culturally far enough away from the rest of us to be splendidly unaffected, perhaps defiantly unaffected, by life as the rest of us know it. Sure they depend on us tourists to float their economy but that doesn’t mean that they bow to our dollars. It’s more like we bow to the Conch Republic when we spend them there.
The photos and stories on the following pages give you a faint idea of what the festival is all about. There is no way that pixels can transmit the humor, warmth, respect generated on Duval Street. If you could attach a chip reader to your cerebral cortex as you view a photo you might be able to feel the utter sense of play amongst the thousands of people along Duval Street during the 10-day festival. There is a Code of Conduct. Everyone abides by it.
People you would never think in 1000 years would doff clothing and wear wildly creative costumes, mingle with each other as if they were at an annual Shriners convention. Tourists in Jimmy Buffett T-shirts and flip-flops are having a blast with their free spirited doppelgängers.
Key West is 160 road miles southwest of Miami by air. It might as well be on Mars.
Welcome to Key West...
and in case you weren't aware of the island's live and let live philosophy, there it is over the airport portal into Key West...
Playful ground crew poses; a sign in men's room, R/x for over-indulgers...in fact, I didn't see one person in need of the services during my stay.
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The theme of this years Fantasy Fest: "The Games People Play"
The games people play...I was invited to spin the arrows...you'll have to guess what the results were!
Tutus on parade; "My husband made this golden necklace for me,"says this proud Tuesday afternoon stroller on Duval Street
Duval Street is abuzz...tourists, celebrants, locals; spectators love it.
Get ready...the next stories will have scores of photos to go along with the text.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Look's like a lot of Fun!!
Posted by: Gerard M McMahon | November 08, 2018 at 06:33 AM