Time to flaunt your fantasy

Imaginations are put on parade during Key West's mask and costume festival.

KEY WEST - The city's annual, 10-day mask and costume festival ended Sunday with an event for children at a local park, but a decadent parade Saturday night was the event's highlight.

Caribbean bands, groups costumed in robes and feathers and more than 50 lavish floats were part of the Fantasy Fest parade through historic Old Town.

Standout parade entries included a 20-foot-tall rooster with a moving head and wings and a revolutionary tea party float with riders costumed as Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Spectators came as everything from gladiators and pirate queens to bearded gnomes and schoolgirls in skimpy clothing.

Jim and Judy Thorson of Omaha, Neb., wore matching fish-printed sarong skirts and green-feathered headdresses, their torsos adorned with aquatic-inspired body art.

"I lost my pasties," said Jim Thorson, 61, a professor at the University of Nebraska. "I didn't have adequate pasty glue. When you prepare for Fantasy Fest, you should bring one more bottle of glue than you need."

Tourism officials said the festival generates about $30-million for the Keys economy. Local charities benefit from events including a campaign to choose the festival king and queen that has raised almost $2.6-million for the Keys' AIDS Help Inc. since 1989.

[Last modified October 29, 2007, 00:13:38]