Free previewStop 5 of Key West Walking Tour: Mallory Square to the Southernmost Point
A Bar Full of Hemingways
You're standing at the corner of Duval and Greene, and the big old building in front of you, open to the street, with the name painted across it, is Sloppy Joe's. And if it happens to be July and the room is full of stocky men with white beards, don't rub your eyes. There's a reason for that, and it starts with a famous regular.
In the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway was a regular at Sloppy Joe's. The man behind the bar was Joe Russell, a local who ran the place and was also one of Hemingway's fishing companions. Here's a detail the T-shirts tend to skip. Sloppy Joe's didn't start at this corner. It began on Greene Street, and it moved here in 1937. So the stool you picture Hemingway on may have been somewhere else.
The main bar building was built in 1917.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 5 of Key West Walking Tour: Mallory Square to the Southernmost Point (2 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
