And where there used to be only four or five places on the map that you could go on holiday, there’s now over a hundred.” Course, what’s happening now, with the world opening up to the LGBT experience, you’re finding more places that are willing to market to us. “The old queens know this as one of the places that you go,” Chris told me, “You know, the dyed-in-the-wool LGBT from the get-go, type. Just how gay is it, you ask? The locals hang rainbow flags from front porches on nearly every street here the crosswalks downtown are painted in rainbow colors and even the Build-a-Bear Workshop on Duval St., the town’s main tourist strip, spells its name in rainbow lettering and employs actual bears. Provincetown and Fire Island may be the gay meccas of the North, but south of the Mason-Dixon, you can’t get much gayer than Key West. Then again, no one would bat an eye if the island’s taxi fleet did color their vehicles pink solely to attract visiting gays. He saved me from paying for a cab - which, by the way, are all colored pink, “Not because they’re gay,” Chris explained, “It’s because that’s the color of a conch shell, and our nickname is the Conch Republic.” You get used to them after you’ve lived here for awhile.”Ĭhris had graciously offered to pick me up and drive me to my lodgings, a clothing-optional gay resort I had chosen out of a brochure.
“The early settlers used to eat them, but now they just roam wild. “Yeah, the chickens were brought on ships in the 1800s,” Chris explained as we drove past rows of pastel-colored bungalows, tropical palms and more packs of feral chickens. It was the first sight I saw after leaving the tiny airport, about the size of a two-story motel, and catching a ride with my guide for the week: a jolly, mustachioed queen named Chris.
Literally, cocks and chickens run wild through this tiny, historic island town, situated in the heart of the Florida Keys. My first impression of Key West, Fla., was the wild cock.