Duna costumed as an iguana walks in the Key West Dachshund Walk in Key West, Fla., Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011. This year’s pooch procession attracted 227 long-bodied, short-legged canines in what has become an island city New Year’s Eve tradition. (Source: Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau/HO)
New Year's Eve South Florida Style
KEY WEST, Fla. (CBS4)-If every dog has its day, for 227 dachshunds in Key West that “day” is New Year’s Eve, when the canines and their human companions staged the annual Key West Dachshund Walk in the island city’s Old Town.
The annual parade of pooches Saturday was an informal, family-friendly prelude to Key West’s nighttime New Year’s Eve revelry.
The long-bodied, short-legged participants included miniature and standard dachshunds, many of them costumed or wearing offbeat accessories.
Among standouts were dogs dressed as Green Bay Packers cheerleaders, “party animals” in feather boas and top hats, a floppy-eared “Elvis,” a “newshound” wearing a functioning video camera, a “horse” with a cowboy doll rider, and even a bright-green iguana with a three-foot-long tail.
Saturday night, tens of thousands of human revelers are expected to throng the island’s historic district for three warm-weather takeoffs on New York City’s traditional Times Square ball drop.
At the Bourbon Street Pub, female impersonator Sushi is slated to “drop” in a super-sized red high heel. A gigantic manmade conch shell, the symbol of the Florida Keys, is to descend to the roof of Sloppy Joe’s Bar, Ernest Hemingway’s former hangout. And in the Historic Seaport, a pirate wench is to be lowered from the top of a sailing ship’s mast outside the Schooner Wharf Bar.
(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Andy Newman of the Florida Keys News Bureau contributed material for this report)
