Nearly every longtime Key West resident knows Will Soto — and over the years, countless hordes of visitors have marveled as he walked a tightrope, juggling and bantering with them during Key West’s famed sunset celebration at Mallory Square.
Now, after decades of sharing his talent, he needs our help.
Will Soto was more than the undisputed star of the nightly celebration that draws crowds to watch buskers perform, browse vendors’ wares and applaud the sunset over Key West Harbor. He was one of its founders, and in many ways its heart.
But just as the sunset gathering wasn’t always such a widely recognized spectacle, Will wasn’t always an acrobat. He was a New Orleans-based artist, traveling the show circuit, when he was literally hijacked by a friend after a Coconut Grove art festival (and a few cocktails) and transported to Key West.
He had seen Key West once before, in 1966, when his Navy destroyer escort briefly visited the port. But the second time, 10 years later, the island’s appeal took hold during his first early-morning walk.
“In those days, nothing was really rehabbed,” he told me in a long-ago interview. “The houses were all funky and in a state of glorious disrepair. I said, ‘Wow, this is my place — where I want to be for a while.’ I just had some magical feeling about it.”
Almost immediately, Will discovered Mallory Square and its nightly sunset gathering. At that time, it was simply a local get-together — a handful of artists selling trinkets, fishermen returning from a day on the water, hippies, a few musicians, a lone performing act and whoever else happened to wander by.
Once the sun went down, the magic began. Musicians staged impromptu jams and people did the limbo, while others passed around wine and rum. Will once described it as “the kind of wild, unabashed tropical party that you always wished you could stumble upon.”
The artist from New Orleans was hooked. And soon, his new home inspired a new profession.
Will already had a background in gymnastics and an ability to juggle. Tempted by the wide-open stage of Mallory Square, he abandoned the visual arts for the performing arts.
“That exchange with the audience felt so good and so right,” he recalled about his first performances. “Everything was so immediate and so magical that it said something to my soul that I needed.”
Fueled by the response from his small audience, Will learned to work a crowd. He took his juggling and comic patter to new heights when he ascended a tightrope high above the audience.
As the years passed and Key West’s tourism industry grew, the sunset celebration became a must-see event for virtually every visitor. Will helped nurture its development into an internationally recognized “happening” — and his photographed silhouette, standing on the high wire against a blazing sunset sky and the waters of Key West Harbor, became an iconic symbol of the nightly gathering.
These days, however, life is very different for Will and his wife Amy. Three years ago, Will was driving home from a Mallory Square show when another driver crossed lanes and hit him head-on. He was left with a traumatic brain injury and balance issues that ended his career — and his income.
On Sept. 1, fellow performer Stephen “Bounce” Margil started a GoFundMe to assist Will and Amy, who now live in Illinois, with the crushing medical expenses and other costs that have piled up since the accident.
Key Westers are known for helping our own — and despite his relocation, Will Soto truly remains one of us. For those who can contribute, the GoFundMe link is gofundme.com/f/support-will-and-amy-soto.
