Yes, There Are Some Rules for Fantasy Fest

As Key West readies to
celebrate its 30th Fantasy Fest,
city officials ask you to review
a few common sense rules and
safeguards that have kept this
party safe and peaceable for
three decades.

• The Key West Police
Department will have extra
officers on duty to heighten
security efforts throughout the
week, especially in the party
zone on Friday and Saturday
nights.

• Officers from the Florida
Highway Patrol, the Florida
Division of Alcoholic Beverages
and Tobacco, the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement
and the Monroe County
Sheriff’s Office will also be on
hand to ensure public safety. In
addition, the Broward County
Sheriff’s Office will be providing
equestrian support with
four horses and riders.

• A special command post
will be set up on the ground
floor of Old City Hall on Ann
Street to help the public with
various issues like relaying
problems on the streets or filling
out lost property forms. The
mobile command post will be
deployed as a secondary post
in the upper Duval area.

Fantasy Fest Is Here! Couple Arrested for Having Oral Sex in Middle of Street

CROWD GATHERS AND
APPLAUDS PERFORMANCE.
LOTS OF PHOTOS TAKEN TO
RECORD EVENT FOR HISTORY

by Dennis Reeves Cooper

Let us paint a mental picture for you. It’s about 11
o’clock on Tuesday night of Fantasy Fest week. You are
down in the middle of the action, on Greene Street, just
steps from Duval. There’s music and noise all around you.
You see a large crown gathered in the middle of the street.
There’s a lot of shouting and applause and bright flashes
of light as people in the crowd take pictures.

That’s the situation that Key West police officer
Nicholas Revoredo found himself in last Tuesday night. He pushed his way into the
crowd and, according to his
police report, he saw a female
“performing oral sex for a male
while being watched and photographed
by the crowd.”

Revoredo reported that
he took both the male and the
female into custody and hauled
them off to jail. His report does
not say, however, if he waited
until the couple finished or if he
interrupted them in the middle
of the act.

PAGE ONE COMMENTARY: Avael Pressuring Mayor Cates to Pressure Scholl to Overturn Wittenberg Demotion

AVAEL: DEMOTION OF
DEPARTMENT HEAD APPEARS
TO BE “A SPILLOVER OF THE
McPHERSON REGIME, KNOWN
FOR ITS INTIMIDATIONS AND
INSTILLING FEAR AMONG CITY
STAFF”

by Dennis Reeves Cooper

Earlier this month, City
Manager Jim Scholl sent a message
to city employees that it
is no longer business as usual
when it comes to using city resources
to do favors for friends
and family. On October 8, Scholl
signed a notice of disciplinary
action— on the recommendation
of Assistant City Manager
David Fernandez— demoting
Director of Transportation
Myra Wittenberg to transportation
manager. The demotion
included cutting Wittenberg’s
salary from $88,569 to $77,850—
although her duties remain the
same.

The demotion came after
an investigation revealed
that Wittenberg misused her
position in arranging for a city
crew to make right-of-way improvements
in front of her exhusband’s
Seidenberg Avenue home. The work took place on
September 25.

Bill Rieck, a supervisor
in the Community Services
Department (the new name for
Public Works), received a oneday
suspension for using a city
crew and equipment (including
a backhoe and a dump truck) to
perform the right-of-way work
without proper authorization.

BITCHIN’ PARADISE: Eavesdropping

by Kimberley Denney

I love to eavesdrop. It’s
my all-time favorite pastime.
But there is a major difference
between people who want you
all up in their business, and
those who have no clue. Because
the ones who have no clue give
up the best stuff.

When people think they’re
interesting, they actually have
nothing interesting to say. So
keep your traps shut, because
it makes you look even more
pathetic. Yeah, I’m talking to
you, guy in line who has to shout
into his cellphone for as long
as the line is. Nobody thinks
you’re half as cool as you do.
Same goes for you, treadmill
guy at the gym.

Right now I’m having
a love hate relationship with
Facebook. It has totally twisted
the art of eavesdropping, or
voyeurism. It’s the online version
of the jerk on the cellphone,
although sometimes there’s
that one interesting nugget that
makes it worthwhile. If only
people put some thought into
their posts and edited themselves.
There are some who
have a talent for making the
minutiae of their lives comical,
or at least somewhat interesting.

Handicap Access to Fantasy Fest Parade

The City of Key West wants to assure that the Fantasy Fest
parade is accessible to those with special needs. A wheelchair
accessible viewing area will be established on Saturday at the
corner of Duval and Virginia streets. In addition, handicapped
accessible parking and port-o-potties will be available at the Gato
Building on the corner of Virginia and Simonton.

Safe Trick-or-Treat Event Set at Tropical Garden on Halloween

Even though the Key West City Commission has changed
the date of Halloween to Monday, November 2, a trick-or-treat
event for the kids is going to happen on October 31 at the Key
West Tropical Forest and Garden, from 11A.M. ‘til 3P.M. Candy
stations will be set up so kids in costumes can hunt for candy.
There will also be a costume competition, bounce house, games,
food and more. The Tropical Forest and Garden is partnering
with the Lymphoma and Lukemia Society to present this safe
trick-or-treat event.

Organizers are looking for sponsors for the candy stations.
The donation is $100. Info: 296-1504 or email kwbgs@kwbgs.
com.

Local CRB Executive Director Invited to Speak at National CRB Conference

Stephen Muffler, executive director of the City of Key West’s
Citizen Review Board (CRB), has been invited to speak at this
year’s national conference of the national Association for Civilian
Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). Although the
Key West CRB was only created by the voters here in 2002, it is
already seen as a national model for small city oversight boards.
The four-day conference begins Saturday in Austin, Texas.

RHONDA: Dough for Dummies

by Rhonda Linseman-Saunders

Last week I decided to bake. To the great embarrassment
and dismay of my mother (the former
American Culinary Federation Chef of the Year in her
area) “deciding to bake,” for me, means heating up
pre-fab refrigerated dough in the oven. What’s harder
on my mom is the knowledge that I may or may not
meet with success in what is presumably designed to
be an idiot-proof experience. How hard is it, really,
to assemble chunks of dough on a non-stick cookie
sheet and program the oven for a number of minutes
predetermined by experts?

To me, though, this pseudo baking is more
challenging than mom realizes. For one thing, the
Pillsbury people put the directions right where you
have to tear the paper off the cardboard cylinder to
start the detubing process. Yes, I need the directions
very, very much and I will not apologize for it.

But those tubes of pastry dough are not just tricky
in the directions-salvaging department— they also
really do scare the living tar out of me. (My mother
is reading this. Everybody else sub “shit” for “living
tar”). Even if I do manage to salvage the directions,
there is that horrifying anticipation of the pressurepacked
tube’s popping to contend with.

Rick Boettger: Afghan Heroes

by Rick Boettger

With so much going on locally, why on earth do
I have to drag us all off to those bloody mountains
halfway around the world? We could happily discuss
Mayor Cates’ blocking the $18 million city hall boondoggle,
or Billy Wardlow’s dumping the disgraceful
parking meters at the beach. I might have tried writing
something funny about Fantasy Fest—Cynthia and I
have volunteered to be “Recycling Monitors” at the
parade, which sounds sure to become ridiculous. I
might even have invited you into my new investigation
of the county budget as it unfolds, so you could
experience in real time the grand adventure of a
numbers geek chasing $100 million around.

Instead, Afghanistan burns my heart, as it should
yours. Let me explain why.

The tragic moral dilemma we all, as citizens of
Great Power America, must face is choosing between
two wretched alternatives. In brief: stay to protect those
who have risked their lives to support us, especially
the schools for girls. Or leave, because we are cruelly
battering our own troops as we kill more people than
we save. This is not just “the President’s decision.”
He is merely one of us. The choice is on all of our
shoulders. And there is no good answer. We are stuck
with choosing the least awful.

Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge is 71.

Seventy one years ago this
month, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt established the second
National Wildlife Refuge in
the Florida Keys – Great White
Heron National Wildlife Refuge
on October 27, 1938.

The refuge encompasses
over 111,000 acres of lands and
waters off shore of the main
keys in the Gulf, from Key West
to the middle of the Seven Mile
Bridge, an area locally known
as the Backcountry. The refuge
was established to protect the
great white heron and other
migratory birds from the plume
and meat trade that decimated
bird populations in the early
1900’s. The refuge protects
approximately 50 islands and
island groups, most of them
comprised of just mangrove
trees. Over 250 bird species
use the refuge islands. Many
of the islands are inaccessible
and are truly wilderness. For
this reason, 1,900 acres of islands
have been established as
wilderness areas.