The seafaring spirit, vibrant marinas, renegade arts emporiums and inviting waterfront bars and restaurants of Stock Island will be showcased Dec. 13-15 during the I Love Stock Island Festival. The festival celebrates Stock Island’s culture and heritage with yummy culinary offerings, art studio tours, a holiday boat parade, live music and much more.
Incredible as it may seem, the 2019 holidays are sneaking up fast. And in the Florida Keys, they’re celebrated with festivities that range from traditional to eccentric — with, of course, a unique island twist. Throughout November and December, visitors can find events designed to jingle their bells all around the holiday-loving Keys communities.
Fantasy Fest, Key West’s internationally renowned masking and costuming festival, offers both outrageous revelry and a unique showcase for artists — illustrators who create vivid poster and T-shirt designs, body painters who use the human form as their canvas and a local talent exhibiting immersive graffiti-inspired images. There’s even a self-guided art and bar stroll.
The eerie yet lighthearted Zombie Bike Ride will bring thousands of “the bicycling dead” to prowl Key West's Atlantic Ocean shoreline and streets Sunday, Oct. 20. Since it began in 2010, the pre-Halloween ride has become a tradition for visiting and local adults, kids and even some bewildered pets — all in spooky zombie garb.
For decades, Key West's Mallory Square Sunset Celebration has been an iconic must-do experience for visitors and locals alike. On the pier overlooking colorful Key West Harbor, artisans sell handmade wares and foodstuffs. Performers range from acrobats and musicians to a daring tightrope walker silhouetted against the vivid hues of the evening sky.
Relieved and grateful that the Florida Keys were spared impacts from Hurricane Dorian, Keys groups and businesses are organizing efforts to assist people in the northwest Bahamas who felt the brunt of the hurricane’s devastating winds and water — including citizens of tiny Green Turtle Cay, whose village of New Plymouth is Key West’s sister city.
Fort Jefferson, America’s largest and most remote coastal fortress, stands on the tiny Dry Tortugas islands 68 miles west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. A trip to Dry Tortugas National Park takes visitors into a unique realm, largely untouched by modern civilization yet unmatched in its historic and natural wonders.
Key West’s colorful history includes Spanish galleon shipwreck treasures and artifacts, famous artists and eccentrics, a cigar-making heyday, a vibrant past as a bustling seaport and even an eerie haunted doll. So it’s no surprise to find that cultural and historic richness preserved, spotlighted and celebrated in the island city’s many museums.
Joe Maxey looks a lot like Ernest Hemingway. That fact was amply proved when the 68-year-old white-bearded retired banker won Key West's annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest at Sloppy Joe's Bar. More than 140 aspiring Ernests competed, vying to be named "Papa" on the island where Hemingway lived and wrote during the 1930s.
There are some people who simply belong in the Florida Keys — visitors who become mesmerized by an indefinable magic about the island chain that makes them unwilling or unable to leave. If the "symptoms" here apply to you, there’s a good chance you’re already under the spell of the laid-back subtropical destination.