The Famous and the Infamous

IF THE WALLS COULD TALK   428 Greene Street would begin by telling of the early years when it originally served as an Ice house, which doubled as a City Morgue in the days before electric refrigeration. Sailboats took bananas to Boston and shipped ice back as ballast, cut from frozen lakes in the north.  The wide doors allowed for easy access for horses to wheel the ice inside.

1890's
428 Greene Street  housed a wireless telegraph station. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the battleship Maine was destroyed, as the news came from Havana to Key West and it was reported all over the world from this building.

1912
428 Greene Street was a cigar factory, then it was a bordello, and a bar popular with the Navy until it was forced out of business. After that, it became several speakeasies, the last of which was named The Blind Pig, specializing in gambling, women, and Hoover gold (the local's nickname for bootleg rum).

1930's

1933

A local Conch  named Joe "Josie" Russell bought the business in the early 30's.  He also had a charter boat business and owned a small speakeasy at the end of Duval Street.  Josie Russell held the lease at 428 Greene Street as early as 1930, and at the end of Prohibition.

Josie Russell made the decision to move his speakeasy from Duval St. to 428 Greene Street, which had three times the space.
Sloppy Joe's at 428 Green Street
was legally opened in 1933 and is the oldest licensed saloon in Florida.

The long wooden bar was on the left, the booths went to the back of the building, and there was a large room off to one side. The room had ceiling fans and sawdust floors. The two large French doors were the only means of light. The gambling consisted of roulette, craps, blackjack, one-armed bandits, faro and celo. Rumba was the music of the time and one could dance to the live music.

The back room at Sloppy Joe's known as the Silver Slipper, served as the
dance hall. 

(Now the pool room at Captain Tony's Saloon)

1933-1938

1938

Sloppy Joe's Bar during the overwhelming majority of Ernest Hemingway's life in Key West.

Ernest Hemingway
leaves Key West
for good.   

May,  1938

1940

Josie Russell, in a dispute with
the landlord over a $4 rent increase
and a clause in the lease stating
that all the fixtures must stay
if he ended the lease, decided
to moved the entire bar in the
middle of the night,
(including the light fixtures)
a half a block away, to it's third
and final location, which he ran
until his passing in 1941.
(The urinal from 428 Greene Street was taken to Hemingway's house, where it remains to this day)

428 Greene Street's landlord leased the building to a gay named Morgan Bird, who opened the saloon as the Duval Club. He decorated the saloon in late-Victorian style. He threw large, lavish "gay" parties in the Duval Club, where the gay patrons propositioned sailors. Despite warning from the Navy, Morgan proceeded with his parties, until the Navy placed the Duval Club "off limits". The Navy board's action caused an 80% decrease in business, so Morgan was forced to close.

1948

Anthony "Tony" Tarracino,
a colorful man in his own right,
was born 1916 in Elizabeth,
New Jersey.
His father was a bootlegger and
as a youngster, he helped his
father make bootleg whiskey.

Tony loved to gamble and with
his brother, concocted a scheme
to beat the bookies.
From a TV in his home, he was
able to receive the signals from a
New Jersey racetrack.
They heard the race results before anyone else, so they were able to place bets moments before the results
were in and win.

They won so much that they ran out of bookies. Finally the scheme was found out and one of the bookies arranged his demise. He was carried to a dump (where Newark Airport is now) and severely beaten, left for dead. Two days later he woke up and headed for Florida.

In 1948 Tony found his way to Hialeah to bet at Tropical Park racetrack, in a pink Cadillac with a girlfriend from home. He gambled away all his money, so he sent his girlfriend back home, giving her the car. 
With $18 in his pocket, he hitched
a ride to Key West on a milk truck.

Captain Tony

"All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don't mean a shit."

1958 brought the final chapter of 428 Greene St., when Captain Tony Tarracino bought the bar from David Wolkowsky and Captain Tony's Saloon was born.

Captain Tony, father of thirteen children by three wives, has been a Charter Boat Captain, and a Gun Runner for Cuban mercenaries during the Bay of Pigs (a "B" grade movie called "The Cuba Crossing" staring Stewart Whitman as Captain Tony was shot on location in Key West at Captain Tony's Saloon).

More recently he has been Mayor of
Key West and its Goodwill Ambassador.

1958 to Present

The saloon has been lovingly patronized through the years by well known artists, writers & celebrities, such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, (who used to charge the men's room with purse waving and would inevitably be beat up by the sailors), Presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Frost,  and Jimmy Buffett.

Jimmy Buffett, early in his career,
played at 428 Greene Street and dedicated a song and album to it.

"Last Mango in Paris" from his CD
of the same name.




Buffett also speaks lovingly of the venerable Key West Saloon
in his book,
"Tales from Margaritaville"