The Babbling Conch: Easing In

Fantasy Fest eases in with the Goombay Festival. It's supposed to celebrate the Bahamian influence on Key West and took place, conveniently, in the Bahama Village. Now, we've been down here before, saw the hat store on the corner (playing country music, bleck) and moved on. We hadn't realized that this is more a neighborhood than a "place," and that there were more restaurants and stores down the street that we were missing.

The event was Friday and Saturday from noon to midnight and we checked in on both days. Friday, we headed there around 2, hoping to get a late lunch. We'd heard it was all about the food, so let's eat!

Ok - someone tell me what's Bahamian about gyros, tacos, arepos, shish-ka-bobs, crepes, etc? This menu summed up almost every vendor.

There was a lot of meat. A lot...A lot of fried food too (including fried Oreos).

This was the only true Caribbean menu we could find, but you'll notice no one was manning the booth.

We waited until about a quarter til 5 and couldn't take it anymore, getting some guacamole from Colombian Grace. I'm pretty darn picky about my guacamole, but this was fantastic. They made it right in front of you, and put in as much habanero pepper and/or cilantro as you wanted. I told them they needed to start packaging it. They then pointed out it was good because it wasn't packaged. True. I liked it so much that...

Just kidding. Sort of. We were sitting, and eating guacamole off (literally) a parking lot across from a guy selling/playing reggae, soca, - you know, music you actually hear in the Caribbean. He had a record player - remember those? The only other music playing down the street was Michael Jackson. Seriously, someone needs to put the Goombay back in this Goombay event. They should have been paying this man to do what he was doing, so even though we didn't want to buy anything, we told him that we had just moved here from St. Kitts, really enjoyed his booth and wanted to give him $10 for "mooching" off his music. He just so happened to have a St Kitts flag in his bag and gave it to us and we all bumped fists. Yeah mon. We immediately put it on our deck.

This was about the extent of the actual island/African-type set-ups, but overall, not much to see from a souvenir standpoint.

Still hungry, we were invited to Finnegan's Wake Irish Pub and headed over there. They have a surprising amount of vegetarian dishes, and we have been planning on taking advantage of their 1/2 price veggie menu on Wednesdays, but hadn't made it yet.

You'll note that on the way back to the moped, we noticed a guy selling tutus. This would be for TuTu Tuesday, an event we weren't sure we would participate in (we kind of want to watch everything this year). But there it was, and Michael's coworker, Scott, told us the price was a good deal (yes, two men texting about tutus), so we bought two. And since Michael said he'd be wearing it when he arrived at Finnegan's, he was.

We had managed to blow through $100 within an hour of our arrival at Goombay (buying tshirts for friends, beer, guacamole, tutus, etc.) so decided to split an appetizer and meal. We could have stopped at the appetizer - the Simple Snacking: Baked pretzel bites and crispy tortilla strips served with a warm Ranchero cheese sauce or hummus. OMG. That was fantastic. Other than French fries and spring rolls we don't eat a lot of fried food, but the tortilla chips were the best tempura-type thing we've ever had. Dinner was good too, but that appetizer...We will be back.

Saturday, we decided to take part in the Goombay hash set by some out-of-towners. There were quite a few people there from various parts of Florida, from Tidewater (VA), and even one South African visitor. I'm still letting my hip heal, so went with the walkers, taking advantage of a rare non-running option. We're not supposed to use flour (non-hashers think it's anthrax), but did anyway. The hares deterred us with stops at two bars (McConnell's, Don' Place, an "overlook," and a park (dedicated to the King of Junkanoos - coincidence?). The usual "circle" activities ensued, and 4 hours later, it was done (sheesh).

It was perfect timing to head over to the Goombay Festival for the final evening. First of all, the roti/johnny cake people were there - yahoo! When they saw our St. Kitts hash shirts, they immediately knew we'd want pumpkin in our roti and knew Mr. X at the Shiggidy Shack! Small world. Good roti (even though they cheated with the pastry).

Kids...birds (?). Oddly, we had seen that bird during our hash earlier (we had all yelled at each other - the bird was louder).

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Then it was time for the best part: the Junkanoo. Our first experience with one of these was in the Northern Abacos, Bahamas on New Years Eve. My blog entry about it then was: "The master Junkanoo-er was ferried in and led all us drunken fools through the streets to the drum beats, horn blowers, maracas, etc." I could have written something similar on this one, although it was during the day.

They had a few moko jumbies too - I love those.

It was short and sweet and we decided to call it a day (shower needed badly). There were a few people who didn't get the "family friendly" memo on this one, they must have been testing out their costumes for next week, but they were the object of many a camera. Including mine.