Fantasy Fest

 

October 26, 2021

Renegade Fantasy Fest

Thanks to the Covid pandemic, Fantasy Fest this year was very, very different than any previous year as the organizers and the City of Key West canceled all the events that require a permit or were to be held on city property. This meant that many of the most popular and creative events that usually are held during Fantasy Fest week, were simply gone from the schedule and that only events and parties hosted by private businesses were on the official schedule.

Of course, this being Key West, just canceling an event officially does not mean that it won’t happen and a small group of renegade partiers were determined to continue on by holding “unofficial” events such as the Zombie Bike Ride. This should not come as a surprise to people who have lived here for some time. Back in 2005 when Fantasy Fest was postponed from its traditional date in October until December of that year due to Hurricane Wilma, it did not stop hearty partiers from going out for an impromptu Fantasy Fest celebration on the original date anyway.

After having attended, participated in or photographed Fantasy Fest for over thirty years, I was very unsure about what to expect, but I planned on going to as many of the official functions as possible and try to catch the unofficial ones as well.

My Fantasy Fest had already gotten underway as I had been going around town already taking photos of the 30 entries in the Fantasy Fest Façade contest and that culminated with me joining the official judges one evening as we drove to look at each entry so they could determine the winners. My first official Fantasy Fest party was on Sunday when the Island Farm hosted the Shoktoberfest party.

The island farm is a great location for parties and they had it all decorated in a spooky and scary way for the party that featured Caffeine Carl and his band providing entertainment with food and drinks and even their goats running loose and jumping from table to table searching for any food left unattended.

It was a fun party, so much so that I returned after taking a break to attend the first renegade event of the week, the very loosely organized unofficial Zombie Bike Ride. About 300 riders, far less than the near 10,000 of recent years, but hearkening back to the very first Zombie Bike Ride, were on hand in costume to participate in the ride.

These Zombies were not going to let a little thing like the event being canceled to stop them. The city of Key West obviously anticipated that this might occur and had members of the Key West police department’s motorcycle patrol on hand to escort the riders, starting near the White Street Pier and as they made their way downtown to Duval Street. It was fun and cool to see the enthusiasm of the riders and once they got downtown, the city obliged even more by blocking off a couple of blocks of Duval Street to keep the crowd safe and allow them to spread out. And there was a good crowd, the canceling of many of the events of the week did not seem to have a lot of impact on attendance as the streets were packed, even this early in the week.

So the truncated Fantasy Fest got off to a pretty good start, as sad as it is to see many of my favorite and arguably the most creative events of the week going by the wayside, it is cool to see that for many at least it did not dampen the enthusiasm for what was happening.