2017 Fantasy Fest Parade in Key West
Sat Oct 28, 7:00 PM - Sun Oct 29, 12:00 AM

If you’ve ever spent any time on Key West’s Duval Street, you’d imagine there’s always a party going on, but that wasn’t always true. Back in the 1970s, despite reliably beautiful weather, from a retail and tourism standpoint October was dead. Shops up and down Duval, put out the “gone fishing” signs and closed up for months at a time.

A group of local business owners started thinking about what they could do to change that by attracting visitors and tempting snowbirds to return sooner for an earlier start of the lucrative winter season. Bill Conkle, Tony Falcone, Joe Liszka and Frank Romano decided a big party might just do the trick — and taking advantage of the popularity of Halloween and the tradition of fanciful costuming locally, in 1979, they threw a parade and it's FREE!