![]() ![]() “We just want to protect our mark,” Mullins said. Dressed in a pastel Polo shirt emblazoned with his restaurant’s name, he says Captain Tony’s is trying to cut in on the Sloppy Joe’s success story and its $10 million a year in sales. He’s a former jock from Washington’s Virginia suburbs who came to Key West three years ago to help out with the family business. Public records indicate that Sloppy Joe’s registered its trademark in 1988, and renewed it in 1998, well into the decades-old dispute over which bar is the real deal.Ĭhris Mullins, Snelgrove’s stepson and chief executive officer of Sloppy Joe’s Enterprises International Inc., is 34 and has an MBA. Standing in front of Sloppy Joe’s, looking back down Greene Street, a customer can see another sign tacked onto the yellow building that houses Captain Tony’s: “Original Sloppy Joe’s HERE.” District Judge James Lawrence King to order Captain Tony’s to stop making the claim. The boast bothers Sidney Snelgrove and John Mayer, who bought the bar named Sloppy Joe’s in 1978. Eventually, they come across Captain Tony’s, with signs identifying it as “The First and Original Sloppy Joe’s, 1933-1937.” To get there, cruise ship tourists trudge past a glut of stores that peddle ice cream, T-shirts, jewelry and chocolate-covered Key lime pie on a stick. Since 1996, the number of tourists arriving in Key West on cruise ships has more than doubled, to more than 1 million.įor many, Sloppy Joe’s is a must stop. More than $3 billion in tourist dollars was pumped into Monroe County’s economy. The Key West Chamber of Commerce estimates 2.3 million people visited the island last year. That marketplace has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years. By calling itself “the original Sloppy Joe’s,” Captain Tony’s is creating confusion in the marketplace, Miami lawyer Robert Chaskes charged in court papers. The dispute, the topic of many a well-lubricated barroom debate, escalated a week ago when Sloppy Joe’s filed suit. “Both, as far as I can determine,” Hambright said. So, which bar can boast: Hemingway drank here? He won’t even verify that Hemingway kept felines in Key West, although he says the author had them in Cuba a few years later. According to local lore, he set it up as an outdoor watering trough for his beloved six-toed cat and its descendants.īut no documents exist to prove or disprove the tales, according to Monroe County historian Tom Hambright. ![]() Others say Hemingway took the marble urinal home from the old bar, figuring he’d used it so often he’d already paid for it. Some storytellers say Hemingway fronted Russell $5,000 to buy the new bar. His patrons helped him move out - at midnight. Other names, The Blind Pig and The Glass Slipper, have been suggested.Īs the story goes, Russell abruptly moved half a block to the current Sloppy Joe’s location in 1937, upset that his landlord had raised the rent $6 a month. Whether the Greene Street bar was called Sloppy Joe’s back then is open to discussion, like so many other details in this story. Some believe the saloon at what is now Captain Tony’s was the inspiration for a bar Hemingway called “Freddy’s” in his Key West tome To Have and Have Not. ![]()
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