Sloppy Joe’s Bar is a historic bar located in Havana, Cuba. The bar reopened in 2013 after being closed for 48 years. Renovation work on Sloppy Joe’s was completed in early 2013, and its doors opened to the public on April 12th of that year. The facade closely resembles the images from the 1950s, even down to the sign on the corner, above the arches. The advent of Prohibition in the United States spurred its original owner, Jose Abeal Otero, to change the emphasis from food service to liquor service when American tourists would visit Havana for the nightlife, the gambling and the alcohol they could not obtain back home.
Sloppy Joe’s welcomed tourists for over four decades, and offered over 80 cocktails in addition to the bar’s own brand of 12-year-old rum. During the 1940s and 1950s it was a magnet for American celebrities as well as tourists wanting to mingle with them. It has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the most famous bars in the world” with “almost the status of a shrine.”
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 saw the bar’s business nosedive, as some 90% of Sloppy Joe’s clientele was American. A fire in the 60s closed the establishment for good. The building in which the bar was housed remained intact, resembling a ghost town with its single-piece mahogany bar and photos of celebrities. The slow-paced, extensive restoration, undertaken by The Office of the Historian of Havana, began in 2007. It is located on the corner of Calle Animas and Zulueta in Havana Vieja (Old Havana). The building is located behind (on the same block as) the Plaza Hotel.
Another Sloppy Joe’s Bar is a historic American bar in Key West, Florida. It is now located on the north side of Duval Street at the corner of Greene Street, (201 Duval Street). Founded on December 5, 1933, the bar’s most famous patrons were Ernest Hemingway and the infamous rum runner Habana Joe. The original location at the time Hemingway frequented Sloppy Joe’s is a few doors down to the west, just off Duval Street, at 428 Greene Street, and is now called Captain Tony’s Saloon. The bar went through two name changes before settling on Sloppy Joe’s with the encouragement of Hemingway. The name was coined from the original Sloppy Joe’s bar, that sold both liquor and iced seafood. In the Cuban heat, the ice melted and patrons taunted the owner José (Joe) García Río that he ran a “sloppy” place. The bar is the site of the Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest, started in 1981. It is well known as a tourist attraction, with live bands and slushy drinks. On November 1, 2006, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
