Key West New Year's
Posted: Thursday, January 01, 2009
by Gregory Lewis
PopGnosis
There are worse things than being marooned in Key West on New Year's. Since I saw some of the debauchery on a Millenium television special in 2000, where a drag queen called Sushi was lowered from a balcony in a giant red slipper I longed to be at Key West on New Year's.
Cutting out of work at 3:00 Wednesday afternoon with no explanation needed I walked home, changed into my "tropical fishes" t-shirt, then hopped aboard a southbound bus. Bus drivers in the Keys being notoriously congenial, ours dropped his passengers off directly in Old Town as a special treat, rather than at the usual Searstown district New Town stop, shaving off a two mile hike.
We arrived in Old Town only minutes away from sunset. I quickly walked to Mallory Square to watch the last sunset of 2008. As I photographed it, a spectacular veil of clouds garnished the sun, and a jet trail rose from the direction of Cuba, 90 miles due-south. Someone joked about Russian missiles. We laughed.
Having saved my appetite for this night, I meandered over to Bo's on Caroline Street. My fried grouper and conch fritters were appetizing, but the atmosphere was equally appealing. Bo's is a quaint shipwreck of an eatery, a deliberate shambles inside, though I sat at a counter overlooking Caroline Street. Jimmy Buffet used to hang out here during his Margaritaville days. Now there is a sickly-sweet divide between the rich jet-set and the begging homeless who walked the sidewalk on the other side of the counter, two feet away from my basket of fries. My own situation is somewhere in between, but closer to the destitute good-for-nothings than the wealthy good-for-nothings.
Duval Street was where all the excitement was, and would remain so until midnight. I bought a fistful of cigars, and smoked one. I ran into a woman who had been patronizing our internet cafe for the past two weeks. She hugged me.
"Careful, we don't want to ruin the expensive paint job," said her husband, who happened to be standing to my left.
Indeed, paint was all she was wearing, and I honestly hadn't noticed until he mentioned it. A sunset scene was painted on her bare chest, with red footprints walking up her abdomen. Not a surprise to me, really, since she had already posed topless in our internet caf only the day before, with my very boss photographing her and painting the sunset design on his computer that she would actually wear tonight. All this taking place while I cranked out code in the same office. Being a programmer at an internet caf in the Florida Keys can be grueling work, but somebody has to do it!
The couple wanted me to follow them to Sloppy Joe's where the Great Conch would be lowered at midnight, marking the new year in the Conch Republic, but I declined. I gave the guy's topless wife a cigar, took her picture and said goodbye to them. As I walked away many people converged around her (name withheld, in case you hadn't noticed) wanting to have their pictures taken with her.
I came to a big CNN mobile broadcast van parked near 720 Duval. It was the Bourbon Street Pub, with a big red slipper hanging from the balcony. At that point I seriously believed this was where I would station myself at midnight.
A drag queen called Porsche wearing a horrible blond wig announced the opening of festivities. She did a pretty good falsetto of "Sushi's In Love," and there was a balcony full of people, notably topless Chippendale types throwing Mardi Gras bead necklaces out to the throng in the street. I caught my first necklace in the face, but by the end of the night I had caught about 10 different colored necklaces, giving many away, but draping the rest around my neck.
The drag queen act was fun at first, but quite honestly I lack an interest in the gay culture, per se, and when the male dancers came on stage I wandered down to the Southernmost Point for a respite from the crowd. There is so much to see in Old Key West, I could hardly do it justice trying to cover it all in one shot.
Eventually, I worked my way back to 201 Duval, Sloppy Joe's. Well before midnight now, I had time for a beer and a slice of key lime pie. I drank only two beers all night. The specter of Key West's homeless alcoholics gives pause for thought. Also, my own family has had its share of alcoholism, so I'm leery of the "need" to drink in order to celebrate New Year's.
There is no open container law on Duval Street, a rummy nation unto itself historically rising as a pirate's haven, and now the only Carribean island that you can drive to. Believe me, I saw more than a little rowdy drunkenness. There is a popular t-shirt that reads, "Key West is a drinking town with a fishing problem."
At about 10:00 I anchored myself in the middle of the street, squarely dead center in front of Sloppy Joe's and The Great Conch above. A couple of guys thought they could dislodge me from my spot by exertng slow, steady pressure. It didn't work. I cemented my feet to the pavement, and would come home with prime videos of the key celebration, pardon the pun.
A West Indian man wearing some fancy duds, a white sport jacket, pants, and a light blue shirt was dancing some fancy moves to bawdy hip-hop on the roof. Alongside him was a biker dude and a sweet looking young lady who reminded me of my first steady girlfriend tossing beads from the roof, next to the Conch itself, as if they were penny candies. Every time she tossed one my way, an imaginary script ran through my mind, "For you, Gregory."
Duval Street was by now an impenetrable mass of writhing human flesh, decorated in glamour beads, masks, "2009" eye-glasses, hats, you name it. Costumed people, like the pirate infiltrated the dense mass. One 20-foot circle surrounded a man and his dog. The dog-- wearing a diaper--picked up dollar bills and put them in its master's guitar case. It retrieved bills from the cleavage of bosomy lasses to the hooting guffaws of onlookers, myself among them. An aging Rastafarian was hammering out tinkling rhythms on a steel drum; an old black man playing violin was threatening to break a guy's camera for taking his picture without his permission--"I want you to erase it, or I'll break that camera, you understand? You don't do that!"--a group of white rasta hippy kids were grouped together singing "Who's Got The Crack." Another man was painting portraits on the sidewalk.
The road was blocked to traffic, and pockets of city police stood mostly idly by. I watched as a couple of them posed here and there for a camera. No fights, obvious thefts or public fornicating, but you can never tell with so many people from other places taking advantage of the hospitality of a one-mile by 50-foot stretch of road.
The minutes ticked down on a big digital clocked, the baccanalian ecstasy rising in pitch until, one minute before the stroke of midnight the Great Conch slowly descended into 2009.
I lingered a while, video recording the revelers kissing, laughing, singing Auld Lang Syne, then wheedled my way through the sea of bodies in order to make it to the bus stop by 1:00 a.m., when a special late run would supposedly pick us up and take us home.
That was another whole adventure. On the way to Southard and Simonton, the streets were choked with retreating celebrants, many far too drunk for their own good. Some were shouting obscenities, others singing. One young man repeatedly dropped his i-phone, before falling against a fence, collapsing on his butt to the secure firmament that is a city sidewalk.
A horde of people gathered at the bus-stop, and frankly I wondered if I would be able to get a ride home, possibly having to sleep on a bench, or hide in some foul, wet mangrove patch for the night. Worse, a man I was talking to said the buses were definitely not running on the 1st, which was by now officially today.
"Still, being stuck on Key West beats being shipwrecked somewhere in Hudson Bay," I quipped. I meant it, too. It's not like I would die out here because of weather or beasts or anything. The worst thing that can happen to a person on Key West is other people.
A couple I recognized from the ride down helped only little. The man was the one who yelled "party bus!" while the woman wore a shirt reading, "If you can read this, put me back on my barstool" printed upside-down on her back. After three local busses passed the burgeoning group at the stop, the couple thought they could improve their chances down the road by catching a ride at an earlier stop. I abandoned them as I lost confidence in their plan, so I returned to Simonton and Southard, and relaxed.
A very inebriated blond woman was flirting with me, her raspy voice suggesting years of acquaintance with the twin pleasures of alcohol and tobacco. She stumbled over the curb and fell. Then she made some agitated remarks about my not helping her.
"I thought you liked it down there," I told her, then offered her my hand for a hoist back on her feet.
I stepped discretely away, and found a Transit Authority worker with a walkie-talkie who assured me that busses would continue to run until every last person was picked up. I communicated this to several of the more patient people.
"Should we riot?" the blond woman laughed. By now she was stepping onto Simonton Street pulling her top down, revealing her breast in the hope of getting a ride.
Unfair advantage!" I said, and then, "We'll wait patiently and trust that the Transit Authority guy knows what he's talking about."
Well, as it turned out he did know what he was talking about because a bus with the by-now familiar marquee, "Boca Chica...Big Pine...Copit Key...Marathon" stopped for us. This was obviously a special arrangement, because on board was a security employee.
"One at a time; single file!" ordered the Transit Authority worker who had earlier allayed my concerns.
By the time I stepped to the door, the bus was already full.
"Where are you going?"
"Marathon," I answered.
"Just a minute." He held a conference with the driver and the security worker.
"Step aboard," he instructed me.
I was on, and five dollars later I was hanging on to the handrail above with no intention of letting go. The door closed behind me, and the bus departed. I looked around, but the "party bus" couple were nowhere in sight. They will probably wander Simonton Street like ghosts for all eternity, I thought, "forever waiting and wailing for their bus to Marathon."
I was forced to face a young couple scrunched together in a seat.
"You will be my new best friends," I said. They laughed.
"I'm not near as scary as I look," I told two sibling children immediately to my left.
The boy looked up at me and said, "I've seen scarier."
"I like him," I said to his sister, and gave them each a bead necklace, red for the girl, blue for the boy.
The bus ride was raucous joy, and even the bus driver was having fun with us. The packed-in arrangement thinned out considerably along the way, especially at Bahia Honda Campground where half the bus seemed to evacuate. The ride across Seven Mile Bridge was quiet and black, the Atlantic Ocean to our right twinkling with a sky full of unfamiliar constellations.
Then Marathon, home, and at mile-marker 50 the bus driver let me out.
"Happy New Year, and thanks for the lift," I told him and the security guy.
Two short minutes later, at exactly 2:00, I was home.
This Article has been viewed 805 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Wonderful article! Where are the photos/video posted? Sounds like something to try at least once!Please log in to respond to this comment.Thanks for reading Liz, glad you enjoyed. Wrote and uploaded it 100% from my PDA, which is very tedious, especially considering the length in words. I haven't really had the chance to upload my pics yet, trying to find some computer time at the library to do that. Happy New Year, GregoryPlease log in to respond to this comment.
Great article! It reminded me of times in Ybor city in Tampa. You wrote with great inspiration!Thank you!Please log in to respond to this comment.Thanks for reading Peterer. If writing isn't inspired, then I pity the reader. Key West was a lot of fun, but it sure is nice to relax at home.Please log in to respond to this comment.
G! Happy New Year! Ooohhh you brought back so many great memories. You wrote this well and it held my interest until 2:00AM exactly. *grin* Glad to hear from you. I've wondered how you were doing down there. I have hit notes I've never been able to hit again while at Sloppy Joes. Those were crazy fun times that, thank God, I survived!Please log in to respond to this comment.Thanks for rreading this Avis, it's all as true to my memory as I could make it. I don't have as much time to write or respond these days, I'm afraid, and writing is usually a painfully slow affair on this little PDA, about the size of a pocket calculator.
It's been pretty chilly down here these past few days, but at least I'm not freezing, and my electric bill is nice and low.
-GPlease log in to respond to this comment.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.