"B" Line

Beads, Booze and Bawdy Behaviour.
I think a lot of Fantasy Fest can be summed up with "B" words.

Boys being boisterous.

Babes baring boobs.

Beer bloating bellies

Bangles bedecking bystanders.

Bare bodies bearing blues (and other hues)


Okay, you need more than b's, but there certainly were lots of b's about.

For people who do not know, Fantasy Fest usually occurs at Halloween, and encompasses a number of events, not all of which include the B line , Beads, booze, blah, blah, blah . . .


There are Headdress Balls, Celebrity Look-A-like Contests, A Beach Party with a Homemade Bikini Contest, Body Paint Contests, Epidermal Arts Contests, a Kid's Parade. Tea Dances, Street Fairs, A Toga party and much much more. It is a rollicking, rowdy, raucous event that usually takes 10 days to put on. Many of the events that require entrance fees raise funds for various charities, and they do a bang up job. But this year, thanks to Hurricane Wilma, it was pushed back to December and squeezed into 4 days.

At first glance, it might seem like an immoral event, but after having seen the still lingering effects of Hurricane Wilma on the area, I have come to understand that this is about a lot more than bacchanalian pursuits. Preparing for 4 hurricanes each of the last two years has a cumulative effect. You can see the stress in the locals when they talk about having to stop working to prepare for storms that did not hit, and the one that did, or of the difficulties of doing the normal daily routine. Many businesses are still struggling with cleanup while trying to get open in order to make the money needed to pay for the cleanup. Others are almost incapacitated by the enormity of the devastation. Some people are still without refrigerators a month and a half after the storm. I know one woman who's business was a total loss because it sustained 5 feet of water in an area that had never flooded before to anyone's knowledge. Every tool she had is gone . . destroyed.

Fantasy Fest is a Blow-off steam party, but it also a life line. It is a huge economic engine for the Keys. For people who only visit resort areas around the country, you may not understand how vital such events can be to the people that actually live in these areas. If your season is 5 months long and you lose a month and a half to a hurricane, you are in deep shit.

For Key West to pull together even a watered down version of Fantasy Fest in a little over a month is an extraordinary feat. What my wife and I experienced was estimated at being less than half the normal crowd size, so the economic impact was huge. And I suspect that some businesses may not survive the blow.

To me, "Better to boogie than be buried by bad . . . uh, stuff?"









And yes, that is a candy bead bikini. Guess what the most common comment she got was?