Key West Fantasy Fest 2007

Few cities need to remind their residents and visitors that public nudity is illegal, and fewer still need to remind them that touching naked people in the street is inappropriate and rude (if you saw a naked girl running around Naples, you’d probably guess she had rabies rather than trying to cop a feel). But few cities are anything like the tiny speck of land known as Key West and few parties are anything like the island’s annual Halloween bash, Fantasy Fest.

Maybe that’s why the list of rules on the Key West Fantasy Fest 2007 Web site includes one section titled “No Birthday Suits Allowed!” and reminds readers that body paint doesn’t count as clothing, even this close to international waters. However, from the looks of the almost naked crowd filling Duval Street last weekend, most of the estimated 80,000 visitors missed the memo.

Like a miniature Mardi Gras, Fantasy Fest takes over the Southernmost city in the United States every October for more than a week of chemically-fed fun. Imagine a costume ball, street fair and nudist retreat all rolled into one and dropped onto a tropical island. Add no open container laws, a large gay community and a whole lot of conch metaphors and you pretty much have the idea.

After a marathon six-hour road trip, my friends and I finally parked at a friend’s house just outside of Key West around 11:30 p.m. on Friday. We had two things on our mind: getting dressed up and getting wasted.

Forty-five minutes and two vodka shots later, the tired travelers that had walked in emerged from the house as a voluptuous gangster, slutty cop, naked chef and one regular old 20-something. We hopped into a cab and headed downtown.

Ready. Set. Party.

When we stepped onto Duval Street, the scene that greeted us more than lived up to the Fantasy Fest name. Music pumped from the open doors of nearby bars, the smell of grilling meat wafted from roadside vendors and flooding the street, thousands of costumed revelers danced, drank and strolled in the warm night air wearing little to nothing at all.

Photo by SARAH FELDBERG

Pink Flamingos. If this is in homage to the John Waters movie I'm seriously impressed.

We picked out a people watching spot on the sidewalk, cracked open some Bud Light cans and got down to business. Pirates swaggered by that could have rubbed shoulder with Jack Sparrow. An angel with intimidating biceps and white platform go-go boots paused for a picture. Two guys in German schoolboy costumes smiled with long flesh-colored penis balloons protruding from their boxers.

Unlike most Halloween celebrations, Fantasy Fest isn’t all about the free pass to dress like a teenage prostitute. Even the most scandalous French maid costume doesn’t hold a candle to the festival’s main attraction: the naked female form doused in lots and lots of body paint.

Contrary to the Fantasy Fest Web site rules, during the annual 10-day fiesta body paint is a perfectly acceptable alternative to clothing. Why wear clingy cotton or sweaty polyester when you could be comfortable (and gorgeous) with only a coat of paint between your nipples and the breeze?

In fact, so many people opt for just paint on their top half that after a few minutes the slack-jawed, wide-eyed booby gawking becomes redundant. There goes another topless chick. Ho hum.

One or two painted ladies definitely caught our attention. Not just shirtless, one fantasy fester was painted head to toe with the muscles, ligaments and bones of the human body. In the dim light and through our drunken fog, she looked disturbingly like someone had just skinned her alive and sent her off to stroll through party like a walking science experiment.

Photo by SARAH FELDBERG

Ostrich Boy, Fritz, and Horse Boy, together at last.

Mingling with the elaborately adorned celebrants, amateur cameramen trolled through the crowd as well, snapping pictures of breasts and barely-there costumes giddier than pre-teens with a Playboy. When I asked one guy with an enormous Nikon what magazine or Web site he was shooting for, he cheerfully answered, “Just for me,” before snapping a picture of me in my relatively demure naked chef get up composed of an apron, plaid boxers and a bra.

After one particularly friendly (and probably drunk) young man snapped a photo of a friend dressed as a belly dancer, he gave her an extra special “thank you.” Leaning over her legs as she sat atop a metal crowd barrier fence, our new friend gave her leg a slow, deliberate lick, starting at her knee and traveling up to her mid-thigh. We stared in stunned silence for a moment, before he flashed a smile and turned, disappearing into the throng.

As the weekend continued we got used to these friendly interruptions and the I-want-everyone-in-my-photo-album atmosphere. Walking down the street my friends and I were accosted by more strangers asking to take our picture or pose with their favorite costumed character. Two bearded nurses smiled for my camera wearing sea foam green vinyl bustiers. A friend of mine dressed as Edward Scissorhands responded to constant shouts of “Oh! It’s Edward!” or “Hey, Ed can I take your picture?” Video cameras caught more skin than the Girls Gone Wild crew at spring break, but shockingly, no one seemed to wonder or care where these pictures would end up.

Part of the magic of Key West is that virtually no matter how skanky or skimpy your costume may be, there’s always someone older, younger, in less clothing or with bigger implants on Duval Street. Naked, fully dressed or anywhere in between, you’re just part of the pulsing, vibrant mass.

And nothing feels coerced about this wildly revealing Halloween fest. The costumes, or lack there of, are the result of sober decisions and good-natured exhibitionism. There’s no “show us your tits and we’ll give you a T-shirt” rhetoric here, and there doesn’t need to be. Fantasy Fest is about letting loose and living it up. Back in Naples on Monday morning as I browsed through all of my 198 pictures, I couldn’t help thinking that was exactly what we’d done.

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