3 Staff persons from Bare Necessities just returned from a nine day journey that took them to Key West for Fantasy Fest. As 2008 festival sponsors, Tom, Melanie and I left armed with over 10,000 strands of customized beads, brochure materials, company logo giveaways, and costumes in a 23 foot Airstream for one incredible, albeit hectic, 9 days.
We arrived on Tuesday afternoon, October 21st and no sooner did we get to town when the skies opened up and poured - not just typical Key West rain mind you, but record breaking 7 inches in 5 hours rain that kept us holed up in the RV hoping it would let up by Friday when we were scheduled to set up our sponsor booth.
In between heavy downpours, we spent the next few days getting the lay of the land, lining up our body painter, meeting up with some friends and clients who offered to help us, and attending a few of the events leading up to the street fair on Friday and parade on Saturday.
Our street fair booth drew a constant crowd of curious festival goers. It was great to have past passengers stop by for a visit and help us pitch social nudism. It was super to connect with other nudists and AANR members that were in attendance for the week and everyone joined in to help us pass out beads, "tattoo" people with our temporary tattoos and talk up nude cruising.
Fridays fair was a long one that began at 6 am with our preparations for the day that included simply securing a good parking space downtown before the previous evenings revelers woke up!!! We didn't stop until almost midnight when we broke down our fair tent and tables, packed up our materials into a rented van and headed back to the Airstream. We were beat and still had the following day to go. A fast and good night's sleep was all we needed to re-charge and we were off again for another day at the street fair.Saturday night was the big parade and, as sponsors, we were given VIP seats at a downtown hotel that overlooked Duval Street. Food and drink were plentiful as the parade began its procession down Duval. The floats were really incredible and inventive. The election year had lots of political party animals out and the additional pirate theme made for lots of pirates, wenches and grog. The crowd was happy, loud and friendly - AND COLORFUL.
Body paint was the cover of choice for above and below the waist and the local body artists really outdid themselves with some of the most wonderful body painting I have ever seen. Many people, men and women alike had only the smallest of g-string thongs under their body paint. Some of the painting was SO good that it was hard to even detect the small pieces of cloth that kept people "legally covered" below the waist.
The parade floats were spectacular and gave us some good ideas for our float next year when our ship is in port for Friday and Saturday nights. We're counting on all of you to be there with us and be a part of the parade. The fine people of Key West are really looking forward to having a ship of nudists in port for the festivities... and we are looking forward to going back and doing it all again - with YOU!
