Captain Tony's Saloon sits at 428 Greene Street in Key West. This weathered building began life in 1852 as an ice house that doubled as the city morgue, and in the 1890s it housed a wireless telegraph station whose most important moment came in 1898 during the Spanish–American War, when news that the battleship Maine had been destroyed came from Havana to Key West and was reported to the world from this very building. Today the place is a bar patronized through the years by many well-known artists, writers and celebrities.
When a celebrity visits, a barstool is added and painted with that patron's name; you can see stools painted with the names Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Jimmy Buffett, Shel Silverstein, John Prine, John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman, Mike Leach, among others. Above the sign outside hangs a large Atlantic goliath grouper that Captain Tony caught and had preserved — it is said that if you throw a quarter into the mouth of the fish, good luck will follow you until you leave the island. Picture that layered past underfoot, and the preserved grouper hanging above the sign over Greene Street.