Key West Events

Fantasy Fest 2011

Here are the Photos you’ve been waiting for!

October and November have come and gone, and now that Halloween, the Haunted Fort, the Vampire’s Ball, Fantasy Fest and Thanksgiving are finally behind us, things have settled down to the point that I can go through the mass of photos from this years Fantasy Fest and delete the blurry shots, the foot shots, the duplicate shots, and the just plain nasty ones. For the most part I didn’t get rid of anything you wouldn’t want to see, well.. let me rephrase that.. well.. let’s just drop that line of thought altogether.

Here are the photos for better or for worse. Once again I’ve broken them up into four separate sections; Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and the infamous Dante’s Pool Party shots. As always, if you are offended by tits and such, DON’T LOOK. You might burn your eyes out.

I discovered just recently that Picasa Web Albums pretty heavily censored the shots from the Dante’s party, essentially deleting anything that most of you perverts would care to look at, so I think what I will do is post them up on Flikr where I can assign them an “Adult Content” tag. Google has no such feature, which is kind of a head scratcher to me, but what do I know. Anyways, stay tuned for that link to update soon.

Fewer House-guests This Year

And thank god for that. We only had Josh and Trevor this year, so things were relatively quiet around the apartment. The best part is we could actually get to the damned bathroom in some timely fashion. You haven’t lived until you share your apartment with 8 hungover dudes all vying for some face time with the porcelain phone.

Thursday Josh, Trev and I wandered on down to Dante’s for the Stripper Pole party. I must be getting old, because the crowd there really got on my nerves. It was so freakin crowded, you couldn’t get to the bar, you couldn’t get to the pool.. meh. I hung out for about 30 minutes or an hour sipping a dark and stormy while Josh and Trevor vied for a decent spot in the pool. I think I left before the actual stripper pole part started.. I just wasn’t feeling it, I walked back to the Porch of Destiny and chilled out with some Bob Marley on the Sirius and some of my own rum, which was considerably cheaper and less aggravating! Josh and Trevor got a shit-ton of really, really um.. interesting photos, which is obvious by how quickly Google took that shit down. The photos from last year’s pool party are still up if that gives you any idea.

After a while, Christina got home from work, my stunt photographers returned from their hazardous duty at Dante’s and we all wandered down to Duval to see what was up there. The crowds this year were twice the size that they were last year, it was amazing how many people were out and about. We walked up and down a time or two snapping photos and sipping rum drinks, eventually winding up back on the porch around midnight I think. I think Josh and Trev went back out after Christina and I went to bed.. crazy kids.

Friday is a fun day at Fantasy Fest, especially when you apartment is on the parade route for the “locals” parade that runs all through old town. In many ways, this parade is more fun for me than the big parade on Saturday. Maybe because it’s more intimate, there aren’t any barricades, and anyone can join in and walk. The costumes are fabulous, and it seems everyone is dragging along a cooler full of drinks with their group. Some even have rolling bars that pull up and hand out jello-shots or shooters.. We spent the morning fixing up a bunch of munchies and chilling out on the porch. The parade finally started, and it just went ON and ON and ON.. the cops finally tried to bust it up after a few hours because no traffic could move anywhere.. haha. It was spectacular. As a bonus, after the roads had cleared out a bit, we had a celebrity sighting as Kid Rock walked past the Porch of Destiny with a gaggle of hookers in tow. Trevor being the aspiring paparazzo that he is, was able to snap a photo. Way to go Trev!

Saturday finally came and instead of walking in the parade this year, we were able to visit the apartment of a friend of a friend who lives on Duval. It was a second floor affair with windows overlooking the parade route! Sweet! The only drawback was an ill-placed palm tree partially blocking one of the windows.. damn. Being the ever-fearless photographer, Trevor went down to the street and bellied up to the barricade to shoot some photos of the parade, while we sat in the comfort of the AC and drank. I say “some” photos.. but that’s kind of a misnomer. I think he shot like 600 plus of the parade.. good grief!

Watching the parade from up high is a pretty trippy experience, I can imagine it could only be made more awesome by an unobstructed view and an actual balcony to sit or stand on. It was awesome nonetheless though, and the floats were amazing. I think I may have had more fun last year when I walked in the parade, so next year I plan to build a float and put our whole crew in the parade.. we’ll see how that goes!

After the parade we all went down to Schooner Wharf and continued the festivities well into the night. I woke up sunday with a huge headache and went to WORK. GAH! Back to freakin’ reality.

Well, that’s the reader’s digest condensed and family-friendly version of Fantasy Fest at chez mike this year, nothing terribly insane happened, no one threw up or wound up in jail, so maybe we are all getting a little wiser. Oh wait.. Alex wasn’t there.. that explains everything.. haha. Anyways.. enjoy the photos, and next year come see it in person!

Cheers!
Mike

Here We Go Again!

Well here I am posting again…

So I guess I’m not quite ready to pull the plug on this blog yet. I’ve been away from it for about 6 months, and I find that I miss it. There’s a certain solace in writing out your thoughts.. a chance to sort it all out on paper. Well, not paper exactly, but you get the idea.

I’ve been working night and day trying to maintain my day job while building up Bone Island Graphics (BIG) in the evenings and weekends, so I haven’t had much time for doing anything fun at all. Life has become one big blur of running from one project to another.

I remember when we moved to Key West hearing that the locals did nothing but work and had no time to enjoy the finer aspects of living here. That’s crazy, I thought.. how could you NOT enjoy all the things Key West has to offer? Well, it appears that I’ve fallen into that routine myself, and I can say with all honesty that it’s time for a break. Something has to give.

I think I’ll begin with a heavy dose of Fantasy Fest!

It’s hard to believe it’s time for all of this again. The Vampire’s Ball is this Saturday, and I’ve yet to really figure out how I’m decorating for that. I guess it’ll be seat-of-the-pants again, it seemed to work last year, so cross your fingers.

Also starting up this weekend is the Haunting of Fort Taylor. I didn’t have any time whatsoever this year to donate to that event, but from what I hear they are ramping up nicely for the first night Tomorrow Evening. I’m sure it will be fantastic as usual.

Next Wednesday or Thursday, we’ve got a few folks coming into town for the Fantasy Fest madness. It’s a smaller crew this year, which is fine by me considering last year we were crammed into the apartment like sardines. Josh, Alex, Trev, and one newbie friend of Josh’s will descend on the Porch of Destiny for 4 days and nights of excess. I’m really looking forward to just having a good time and not worrying about WORK for a few days.

I will of course post some photos so all of you who can’t be here to enjoy it can see what you’re missing (or not missing).

Speaking of photos, a few months ago I cleaned out all of my myriad google / picasa accounts. I don’t know how I managed to get so many of them, but there were too many for me to keep track of, so I consolidated them. When I did that all the links and galleries on this site went kablooey. I didn’t worry about it much at the time, because I was determined to shut this site down. Apparently that isn’t gonna happen though, so I went through and fixed all the links. Who loves ya?

Mike

Fantasy Fest 2010: A Marathon of Madness

It’s A Tough Job,But Someone Has to Look At All Those BOOBS..

I mean really.. if it wasn’t going to be me, who would have stood up and taken the reins to appreciate a week of the saggiest, scariest naked people from all over the world, all collected in one place and covered in paint, stale beer, and beads? I sacrificed myself on the altar of freedom of expression and the fundamental concept of the right to bear boobies so that I could bring you a few blurry, rum-soaked photos of this seminal event.

Last year if you recall, I missed the last couple nights of Fantasy Fest because I had to be in Orlando for a wedding that weekend. Well I decided nothing was gonna keep me from it this year. In fact, I even got in the parade so I could get the view from the other side of the fences.

We had quite a house full of guests on top of everything else.

Thursday My friends Alex and his brother Omar came in on the ferry from Fort Myers. I met them at the dock and we walked past Dante’s where the stripper-in-the-pool contest was just beginning to ramp up. It took everything we had to not go in right then, but we managed to skate out with just a roadie for the long 4 or 5 block walk to my apartment to drop off their bags. Shortly after we got back Christina’s brother Josh and 3 of his friends showed up from Central Florida with all of their bags and other impedimenta. All right!! So far 6 house guests! It’s gonna be a party!

Omar	Josh gets a lap dance	Moose and the Float Crew

We all mixed a couple of cocktails and walked back down to Dante’s where we met up with some other friends from Orlando (who were thankfully not staying with us). The place was already wall to wall half-nekkid people – in and out of the pool. Geeks with cameras skulked in the corners furiously snapping with their digital cameras to get every last nipple they could. I took a few photos myself, but my lens is pretty wide angle (12mm) so my photos are more of the grand spectacle variety. I did however, have a bunch of horned-up guys with me armed with cameras, and they weren’t afraid to actually get IN the pool to get photos, so if you really want to have your hair blown back, check out the pictures on Picasa here.

After Dante’s it’s all one large blur of street parties, drag shows, and parades. Friday my friend Kris and his then-fiance (now wife) showed up for the weekend, and stayed with us that night bringing the total of house-guests to 8! (They got a hotel for the rest of their stay).

I’d give a blow-by-blow of the entire madness, but it would be unnecessarily byzantine, and really.. who cares. You’re just here to look at the boobs right? I will say that actually being IN the parade was an amazingly surreal experience. It took probably 4 hours to walk the entire route, and my feet were killing me! But it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade. I missed out on getting lots of photos of the individual floats, but I think in return I got lots of great photos of the people, and that’s really the better part of the trip.

I’ve broken the photos up into 4 albums:

Dante’s Pool Party (Thursday)
Thursday Night (Out on the streets, and the drag show)
Friday (Local’s Parade, a bit out and about at night)
Saturday (In the parade)

I’ve pared the massive amount of images down to about a third of what I have for these albums. These are photos from my camera as well as my friends cameras, so invariably there was a lot of duplication. I hope I got all the blurry, boring, or duplicate photos out of there, but if not.. eh.. life goes on. Be warned however, there is a lot of nudity in there, if you are in any way easily offended by nipples, don’t look.

All in all a fantastic week-long event. Everyone gets along, there are people dancing in the streets, and lots of good drinks and food. I’ve never been to Mardi Gras, but I’m pretty sure Key West gives New Orleans a run for their money with this one…

Cheers!
M

Key West Poker Run 2010

Last weekend was the annual Key West Poker run, and as usual it was an absolute blast. Christina’s mom and her boyfriend John came down from Crystal River on his harley. We spend Friday and Saturday roaming the streets quaffing frosty beverages. I’m not a big motorcycle fan, but I can appreciate swank machinery when I see it, and there was quite a bit of it on display. I love this city.

BikeWeek2010 (28 photos)
17 September 2010

Note: To see the pictures in the original Picasa album, click here

The 2010 Schooner Wharf Tattoo Contest

How could this NOT be fun!

This was a fun little ditty. Bikers, babes and beer.. what more could you want from an afternoon in Key West? The annual Schooner Wharf & Paradise Tattoo Show & Contest and the Rock and Roll Fashion Show is an event that happens every year during bike week, but this was my first time in attendance.

Right from the get-go I knew I was in trouble. No sooner than I’d walked in and gotten a beer at the bar I heard Frank on stage with a microphone paging me to please come to the stage. This is a situation that nothing good can ever come from.

I went up on stage and he asked if I wouldn’t mind taking some photos of the contest and burlesque show. It seems that one of their photogs hadn’t shown up or something, and he’d offered my services to Evalina because I had my d90 with me. I guess if you have a big lens you’re always in demand.. wink wink, nudge nudge.

Well I’d been drinking for a few hours at that point, and my photography skills are highly suspect to begin with so of course I felt it was my moral imperative to accept the offer. There were after all going to be women in bikinis.

I’m sure my photos were pretty unusable for what Evalina wanted them for, but I tried at least to not fall over on stage while shooting, and I think that’s saying a lot. I hope she was able to salvage a few for her needs though. I took a grand total of 300+ photos of this event, and most of them were crap, but the few that came out worth looking at are down below.. enjoy!

Photos of bikes and stuff on Duval coming up….

Mike

SchoonerTattoo2010 (28 photos)
18 September 2010

Note: To see the pictures in the original Picasa album, click here