First, Bourbon Bar on Duval is in the heart of the gay and lesbian district. On this end of Duval there are numerous drag shows, drag queens, and gay bingo. I do not know how this particular party started but 801 has been dropping the shoe for the better part of 15 years. The start of the performance besides the shoe itself is a drag queen named Sushi. When the countdown begins she is dropped from the second story to the giant crowd below where she they pops a champagne cork.. I do not know if she actually does a drag queen performance but I would imagine she does. This is by far the most popular area to be and you really can not see much unless you get there very early.. kinda like time square. Rick and I went on a reconissance mission to scope out our potential night. These are the images I captured of the shoe..
The second potential party is at Sloppy Joe's Bar. At Sloppy's they have a conch shell that is used to ring in the new year. I do not know the history of this as the shoe drop is much more popular on the island.
The last place in KW that has a party each year is Schooners Warf. Schooners is an ocean side restaurant by the marina. Outside of Schooners on a daily basis are giant wonderful pirate-esk ships that dock. On NYE they have a party and they ring in the new year by dropping a pirate wench down the mast of one of the ships. We tried to do some pregame on the area, but this was the only one that didn't have their stuff put up so there is not image. You can google "Pirate wench drop Key West" and you will see images.
After we had sufficiently looked into each NYE spot as well as talked with our friends about their plans we had finally decided upon starting at the Navy base and partaking in the "snowball" and then heading toward the chaos. So we helped host the snowball party at Joe and Cher's house. A snowball party is like a bar crawl in the fact that each home has a start time and provides drinks/food and then at a certain time everyone moves to the next spot and so on and so forth until it was midnight. There were four homes and about 20 people involved plus kids. Erin and I had hijacked Joe and Cher's home as ours and we hosted the first stop. Our menu consisted of delicious homemade dressing, sliced apples, prosciutto and goat cheese.. crackers with onion, goat cheese, parmesan, and prosciutto.... baked feta drizzled with olive oil and honey... watermelon balsamic salad.. and jalapeno poppers. If you had to guess what do you think I made based on the previous story of dinner with Erin? Yep, you are right I made it all Erin ONLY contributed the jalapeno poppers. What a lazy cook... okay okay you are all right I contributed the poppers.. but they were very good :) As the guest were set to arrive at 7, Erin was still trying to put together her delicious spread. I told her that I could help in whatever way would make her life easier. She gave me the job of watching the feta and when it was browning to take it out of the oven. I knew this would be a good job for me because I was already going to be keeping a close eye on my poppers. After 12 min the poppers were looking delicious so I proceeded to ceremoniously place them on a nice platter for serving. This took approximately 5-8 min as they were extremely hot and I was trying to make them look nice. If you are keeping track the feta was placed in the oven about 5 min after my poppers had started. By the time I was done making my one item look good I started to smell a little something... NOOOOO!!!!!! I quickly ran to the over and the feta was starting to "nicely" brown but the area surrounding the feta was burning. The olive oil and honey that had been drizzled over the feta was now on the bottom and it was black. I immediately feel my face turn red.. frantically pull the feta out of the oven to see the damage and turn toward Rick and Phil (Erin's husband) and say "I had one job... " they both start laughing. But alas the feta was saved as according to Erin that is what was supposed to happen. Oh thank goodness.
Prior to the start of the party we received a phone call from the Andersens. For the past few years, they have hosted a pregame NYE party at their house. This is the second year I have missed the party.. but I am so glad they called before we all got to much of the night under our belts. At the end of the conversation they tell us they are pregnant.. we could not be more thrilled!!! And then Dustin got to giggling that damn little giggle he has as Rick and I are screaming YESS!!!! and tells us he is just joking. He got us.. he got us GOOD. I was just going to leave this as they were pregnant and the only reason I am not is because I love Kali too much.
Okay back to the party...
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| Erin and I after our part of snowball was over :) |
As the night went on the events tended to blurrrr together and that may or may not have to do with a certain beverage shipped from Iowa.. that Rick said would make a great contribution to the evening as Phil has never had that drink. The bottle didn't even make it to midnight. Thanks to who sent it.. it was adequately enjoyed and appreciated.
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| Classy. Your welcome mom:) |
The last stop was at an outdoor party complete with a large television that was broadcasting the NYE party in New York. The final countdown of 2012 was thoroughly screamed and hugs/kisses were spread. Here is the image I caught of myself and Rick.. I think its a keeper.
Please come visit soon, we love and miss you. Here's to 2013 and all the possibilities it holds.
xoxo
Rick and McKenzie
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