These Key West bars didn’t waste time at opening again. And the customers were ready
Jim Gilleran didn’t waste one minute of June 5, the day the governor said bars may reopen in most of Florida, including Monroe County.
Gilleran, who owns 801 Bourbon Bar on Duval Street in hard-drinking Key West, invited customers to start imbibing again at his establishment at 12:01 a.m. Friday, less than a minute after the state reopening order took effect.
“We’re a late night place anyway,” Gilleran said of the 801. “It’s our nature to open late.”
While Gilleran spoke, people were buying tickets to go upstairs. That’s where a cabaret offers drag shows seven nights a week, a production run by Gary “Sushi” Marion, the famous drag queen who drops inside a giant red shoe above Duval every New Year’s Eve.
Gilleran had a “masks required” sign out front and tape to mark the distance between seats at the bar. Upstairs at the drag show, seating was limited as tables were placed six feet from each other.
Other bars, including Old Town Tavern, Tattoos and Scars, and Sidebar also reopened just after midnight. They, like the others, were shut down March 17 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, bars were allowed to reopen at 50 percent capacity indoors and full capacity outdoors with customers seated. as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Phase 2 reopening plan. Miami-Dade and Broward bars still must remain closed.
People can now sit at the bar and must remain seated. Restaurants were also allowed to reopen their bars for customers to sit and drink.
Dozens of people waited outside the 801 for the drinks to start pouring after midnight Friday.
The lot included Arman Haghani, 22, as he sat at the bar, wearing a mask, and talking to a couple of friends. They all came down from Jacksonville and were staying on Cudjoe Key.
“It was important to be here,” Haghani said of the early-morning bar call. “You can’t get to the next phase if you don’t have people that are going to be out here and taking the chance on it.”
The city of Key West requires masks inside all businesses except while people are eating or drinking, Mayor Teri Johnston reminded the public Friday in a statement. Meanwhile, Monroe County commissioners on Thursday decided 3-2 only to “highly recommend” people wear masks while inside businesses in unincorporated Monroe, with the majority saying business owners can regulate themselves.
Despite the all clear to open, a few landmark bars, such as Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street and the Green Parrot on Whitehead Street are holding back.
“I’m trying to clarify some things,” said John Vagoni, who runs the Parrot, a fixture in Key West since 1890 with a killer jukebox and a motto of “No Sniveling.” “The messages from local governments have just been so vague.”
Rules have changed. On Friday, the city released an amended directive saying businesses must take the temperatures of their employees before they start work, but that they no longer must do the same for customers.
It is recommended the businesses take their customers’ temperatures at the door but no longer mandated in Key West. That’s because the Department of Health in Monroe County’s administrator Bob Eadie said the thermometers in use can’t be trusted, Mayor Johnston said.
“He said no-touch temperature thermometers have been proven to be relatively unreliable,” Johnston said Friday. “We’re trying to make it just a little bit easier and make that on a recommended basis, as a voluntary basis. If the technology were reliable, it would be a different story.”
The change had nothing to do with a cease-and-desist letter sent to the city June 1, when tourists were officially welcomed back to the Keys.
Danny Hughes, who owns Two Friends Patio Restaurant and in 2018 filed to run for mayor but dropped out citing back problems, says the city manager and mayor lack the authority to order businesses to require face masks or take temperatures. Only the City Commission can do so and only through passing an ordinance, Hughes’ attorney said.
City Attorney Shawn Smith said the temperature change had nothing to do with the letter.
“Mr. Hughes’ letters are inconsequential,” Smith said Friday. ”I haven’t even seen the need to respond to them.”
At Sloppy Joe’s, which has already canceled its annual Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest set for July, brand manager Donna Edwards said the bar is busy training employees and updating policies.
“When we complete our new procedures and train staff we’ll announce Sloppy Joe’s reopen date,” Edwards said.
Other Key West mainstay bars, though, reopened Friday, such as the Bull and Whistle and Willie T’s, both on Duval. Bare Assets, a strip club on Truman Avenue, planned to reopen Friday.
A complex of bars reopened Friday, too. Rick’s bar in the 200 block of Duval is one of eight bars owned and run by Mark Rossi, a former city commissioner who has filed the paperwork to run for mayor against Johnston and former real estate broker Rick Haskins in the Aug. 18 primary election.
All eight bars, including Durty Harry’s, the Crow’s Nest and the Red Garter strip club, reopened later Friday, during daylight.
“It’s like a giant weight has been taken off of my chest,” Rossi said, having been closed since March 17. “We’re following the city rules and whatever the governor says.”
Rossi employs between 50 to 70 people and was able to get a federally funded Paycheck Protection Program loan to keep his employees paid.
“I kept all my employees because I knew if I lost employees I would not be able to hire and retrain,” Rossi said. “I kept my employees paid for 80 days.
Rossi said Friday he saw a mix of tourists and locals enjoying being back at the bar to socialize.
“It’s a good mix of everyone,” he said.
But most of all, Rossi said, his employees are happy to have returned.
“People like to work,” he said. “When you have idle time, you either eat or get in trouble.”
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 4:32 PM.
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