“Oh, Mom, you should see this.” The 20-something’s voice filled the late evening silence as she pedaled past my porch during Fantasy West week. “It looks just like Old Key West. These houses. Everything. Like Old Key West.”

I could hear her chattering fade into the next block, describing to Mom what she was seeing in a voice filled with enthusiastic appreciation. Just like Old Key West. (I’m going to assume the best: that she’s talking about our Old Key West and not Disney’s.)

Live on the island long enough and it’s easy to lose that sense of wonder.

After all, there’s the competing narrative of an island mired in casual and criminal corruption. Of sea level rise and king tides that inundate intersections and neighborhoods and warp streets into a moonscape of potholes a foot deep. Of empty single-family homes and condos wrapped up tightly for months, their owners somewhere on the mainland. Of rainbow crosswalks disappeared and rainbow picket fences, bike racks and an arch replacing them. Of driving to Miami for medical care and cobbling together a support network of frayed social services and a handful of friends.

But here’s the thing. The island loves those who love the island, warts and all. Whether you were born here, first met Key West in 1970 or arrived last week, if you love the island you will never stray far. And you’ll sacrifice a corner of your tiny closet for tutus, costumes and inflatable green frog blow-up suits, which you’ll casually wear on a grocery run for no reason at all except that, well, Key West.

That brings us back to Fantasy Fest and the awkward, weird, sheer exuberance of October in Key West.

Fantasy Fest turned 45 this year. What a couple of gay business owners started in 1979 as a street party and Saturday night parade to entice visitors during the slowest month in Key West has morphed. It’s now two-plus weeks of parties, galas, multi-million-dollar fundraising, pet parades, naked, body-painted swingers doing stuff they’d never do at home, zombies on bikes, a Friday evening Masquerade March (AKA the locals parade), a Junkanoo romp at Goombay, binge drinking and a tea dance at La Te Da to wrap things up. In 2025 we added a No Kings rally in Bayview Park last Saturday that debuted costumes guaranteed to reappear (minus the politics, I suspect) at the locals parade. We don’t waste good costumes.

Martha Flick Purple in progress

Getting ready

Orange sitting down

Marthat with picket fence Main

Three guys

Andie laughing

Orange at rest

Fantasy Fest | Hey, it’s a rainbow picket fence

All that’s a bit disconcerting to Key West newcomers unprepared for — or disbelieving of — the island’s ways of doing things. For them costumes are for Halloween, one day and done. Not in their wildest imaginations could they see themselves in their previous lives at dinner, in public, in full-on zombie mode. The lucky ones fall in love and stock their costume closets. The unlucky kinda roll their eyes and check job boards on the mainland.

I’ll bet my young cyclist talking to her mom has fallen in love with the island’s October. A “false fall” has given us extended relief from summer. It won’t last, of course, but it’s pretty sweet. Rainy season ended in mid-October, having scoured away much of the petroleum-laced coral grit that leaves white picket fences, streets, houses and everything green-and-growing a dingy gray. Despite tens of thousands of Fantasy Fest visitors this weekend, there are parking places to be had and the seasonal migration of snowbirds is two months away.

Fantasy Fest for locals is a kind of dry run for what’s ahead come January, when we can’t catch a breath or a break from the demands of millions of mainland visitors, when lines are long, reservations are not to be had and traffic snarls tax even the patient among us. For two weeks we practice smiling (almost sincerely) at rude guests and re-learn navigating the crowds wandering the tourist district and stepping off curbs in front of our cars. We know what’s coming and we know the quieter weeks between Fantasy Fest and Christmas still belong to locals.

The Friday night locals parade across Fleming and onto Duval found me with like-minded friends — not a one of us under 60, the other Old Key West — curbside at Williams Hall. We’d found a way to celebrate the awkward, weird, sheer exuberance of October in Key West. Dressed in blow-up tubes, it was our P+ROY-G-BIV moment. A row of rainbow picket fence. I was (P)ink. Ranger Ed was (G)reen.

We didn’t actually plan to be a photo-op for those marching in the parade, but there we were. Definitely one of those if-you-know-you-know things. Most locals knew instantly we were a Key West rainbow picket fence as they threw us thumbs-up, hands across hearts and big grins. Others? Perhaps not so much.

• “Hey, you gotta wave and move around.” Picket fences don’t move.
• “Look! They’re a box of crayons!” Uh, not so much, but whatever.
• “Stop. I gotta get a picture with them.” Huge giggles and laughter. Until, perhaps, they post on social media back home and a friend points out there’s an LGBTQ+ chorus line behind them.
• “Is is hot inside?” Surprisingly no.

What is was was fun. Two hours of the awkward, weird, sheer exuberance of October in Key West. I wish my porch-passing biker could have joined us. I think her mom would have been proud. Gaad, I love Key West.

(Editor’s note: Pickets left to right: Jana Dean, Cheryl Rollings, Tony Elichter, Ed Cunningham, John Nolte, Pat Benson, Elizabeth Borton, Andie Taras and Linda Grist Cunningham. With Martha Hubbard and Kathy Flick. Thanks to Jean Thornton, Cheryl Rollings and Fran Decker for the pix I scrounged.)

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