SUNDOWNERS

MALLORY SQUARE

No visit to Key West would be complete without a visit to the Mallory Square Dock for the Sunset Celebration. It is perhaps the island’s most popular activity. Daily, when the weather cooperates, hordes descend on this lively area about 2 hours before that day’s sunset to watch the sun sink into the Gulf of Mexico, its brilliant orange and red hues swirling and illuminating the clouds in a brilliant afterglow. As the sun slowly slips away, the revelry that surrounds the Sunset Celebration, for the square is alive not only with crowds tittering as it awaits this celestial event, but a myriad of street performers, seems to quiet in reverence as the sun completes this inspirational journey and hope they are blessed with a rare green flash. The scientific reason for green flashes is a  refraction of the sun’s light where the upper rim of the sun can turn green, but to behold such a rare phenomenon would probably turn the whimsical town on its head.

SUNSET CELEBRATION

Conchs, as the citizens of Key West are known, never need a good reason to party, and the setting sun is a great reason to gather to see this heavenly display. So beloved is this celebration that Mallory Square’s website posts the time of that day’s sunset, and according to a local ordinance, a cruise ship that may be docked at that pier has to leave port an hour before the sun sets so the view is not impeded.

MALLORY SQUARE KEY WEST 

BUSKERS GALORE

The setting sun is not the only entertainment. Street performers like acrobats, jugglers and singers are everywhere, plying their trade and looking for handouts. There is such a proliferation of them; from some guy in mime face paint telling bad jokes as he eases his entire body through a tennis racket, to a heavily tattooed man juggling knives while balancing on a three-tiered balance board, to a pair of wacky and very talented jugglers who employed several men and a young boy culled from their large gathered crowd to help them with their act, to name just three.

We finally got to experience the Sunset Celebration the day of our trip to Dry Tortugas. The ferry brought us back to Key West with enough time to walk over to Mallory Square. We caught a couple of acts, laughed along with the crowds, oohed and aahed in wonder at the sun, booed lustily in unison with the crowd when a yacht knowingly passed in front of us and momentarily blocked our view of the sunset and when it was over, we found a place to go for a couple of drinks.

OUR SUNSET