KEY WEST, Fla. -- He drove ambulances in Spain in World War I, he wooed the literary elite in Paris, he fished for marlin off Havana, he stalked mountain trout in Idaho.
But no place seemed to have a stronger hold on Ernest Hemingway than Key West, the funky end-of-the-continent fishing village that the bearded "Papa" called home for most of the 1930s.As the nation gears up to celebrate Hemingway's 100th birthday July 21 -- events are scheduled in Michigan, Illinois, Boston and Havana -- many fans of the Nobel Prize-winning author will make their pilgrimage here.
About 10,000 Hemingway devotees are expected for the 19th annual Hemingway Days Festival, a 10-day event that begins Friday and includes offerings as diverse as a famous look-alike contest, a marlin tournament, a short story contest and maybe a mock running of bulls down Duval Street.
"The connections are just so deep," said Andy Newman, a publicist for the event. "In many ways, Hemingway is an icon for Key West."
Or, put in terms that Hemingway himself might admire, "It's an excuse to have a literary festival in a bar," said Karen Thurman, another festival organizer.
But for all its panache and posturing, for all its spiritual kinship with Hemingway's lifestyle of manly fun, the festival takes place against the backdrop of a city struggling to cope with rampant growth and its own spectacular success as a tourist mecca.
Key West today is far from the simple, sleepy village where the famous author spent his mornings pecking at a typewriter in the study of his stately Spanish Colonial home on Whitehead Street and his evenings at Sloppy Joe's Bar hefting drinks and swapping fishing lies with his decidedly nonliterary buddies.
Hemingway's home is still the center of a picturesque district of gingerbread-trimmed homes with wide porches and lush, overhanging tropical greenery, and Key West's streets are still narrow avenues into a quaint, scaled-down past.
But condos and parking garages now dot the crowded landscape, while cruise ships disgorge 500,000 passengers a year to traipse down Duval's T-shirt shops and souvenir emporiums. Trendy cafes and upscale guest houses charge New York prices.
Housing costs have risen so steeply that many low-paid tourism workers must crowd three and four people into one- or two-bedroom apartments that go for $1,500 or more a month, while the cost of a tumble-down shack in the historic district might top $200,000.
Business leaders seem aware that the problems must be addressed, and steps are being taken. The city has started a $53 million sewer line replacement project -- work being done strictly with local funds -- and there is talk of creating affordable housing so that workers won't flee the area.
City leaders have just passed an ordinance to tighten pollution rules for the hundreds of boaters who dock at area marinas, while new regulations stemming from creation of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary are curbing damage to coral reefs.