Capt. Tony Tarracino, Saloonkeeper MayorAnd Eccentric Of Key West, 92, Washington Post
DGH
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/15/AR2008111502324.html
Capt. Tony Tarracino; Saloonkeeper, Mayor, Eccentric of Key West
By Matt Schudel, Washington Post Staff Writer
Anthony Tarracino, known to one and all as Capt. Tony, spent two years as
mayor of Key West, Folrida, and 60 years as one of the most colorful
characters in an island city full of them. During his 92 years, he was a
bootlegger, gambler, gunrunner, saloonkeeper, fishing boat captain, ladies'
man and peerless raconteur. He died November 1 of heart and lung ailments at
Lower Keys Medical Center in Key West.
Mr. Tarracino survived on his wits and cunning long before his arrival in
raffish Key West in 1948 with $18 in his pocket. He spent more than three
decades as a charter boat captain and for 28 years owned a dank, musty bar
that once doubled as the city morgue.
Capt. Tony's Saloon, an unprepossessing spot on Greene Street, still bears
Mr. Tarracino's name almost 20 years after he sold it. It was the original
site of Sloppy Joe's Saloon, which was the favorite watering hole of Ernest
Hemingway when he lived in Key West in the 1930s.
A huge tree grows in the center of the tavern and disappears through the
roof. License plates, business cards and countless women's bras are stapled
to the ceiling and walls. In the 1970s, the tropical troubadour Jimmy
Buffett performed at Capt. Tony's for tips and beers; he later described his
experience in the song "Last Mango in Paris." Until a few months ago, Mr.
Tarracino was a regular presence at Capt. Tony's, where he greeted visitors,
told stories and signed T-shirts and posters displaying his grizzled
likeness.
His most famous slogan, which became part of his successful run for mayor in
1989, was: "All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great
ego. Brains don't mean [a word we can't print in the newspaper]."
Mr. Tarracino ran for mayor of Key West in 1985 but lost by 52 votes to a
banker named Tom Sawyer. Locals joked that the race was between someone
named for a fictional character and someone who was a fictional character.
Four years later, when Mr. Tarracino ran again, some people objected to his
frequent use of a certain four-letter word. He was unapologetic, saying, "I
just hope everybody in Key West who uses that word votes for me. If they do,
I'll win in a landslide."
He won by 32 votes out of more than 6,000 cast.
His goal as mayor was to limit Key West's growth and to keep its reputation
as a refuge for eccentrics and renegades who had found their way to the
southernmost point of the continental United States.
"Key West is an insane asylum," he told the Chicago [Illinois] Tribune while
sitting behind his new desk at city hall. "We're just too lazy to put up the
walls or fences. I want to retain that mystique."
Anthony Tarracino was born August 10, 1916, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where
his immigrant father was a bootlegger during Prohibition. According to Brad
Manard's "Life Lessons of a Legend," a book about Mr. Tarracino published
the week of his death, young Tony dropped out of the ninth grade to make and
sell illegal whiskey.
During World War II, he left a wife and three children behind in New Jersey
and moved to Seattle, [Washington] where he worked for the Boeing aircraft
company.
After the war, he returned to New Jersey and made good money gambling on
horse races. But he ran afoul of mobsters and, according to Manard's book,
was beaten and left for dead at the Newark city dump. Mr. Tarracino fled to
Florida and hitchhiked to Key West on a milk truck.
For 35 years, he ran fishing boats -- always called the "Greyhound" -- out
of Key West. He claimed to have been a gunrunner in the 1950s and to have
ferried arms, CIA agents and mercenaries to Cuba and Haiti. He said he was
briefly jailed after smuggling refugees out of Castro's Cuba.
He ran Capt. Tony's Saloon from 1961 to 1989, when he was elected mayor. His
principal achievement was to preserve Key West's daily sunset celebration,
at which acrobats, buskers and performing animals appear in an impromptu
street theater.
"You know what's shocking to a lot of people?" Mr. Tarracino said. "I'm a
good mayor."
But when he lost his reelection bid in 1991, he didn't seem to mind, saying,
"I had my time in the sun."
Mr. Tarracino was married four times and had 13 children, the first when he
was 20 and the last when he was 70. He outlived his first three wives, Mimi,
Mae and Shirley, and one son.
Survivors include his fourth wife, of 38 years, Marty Tarracino; 12
children; 13 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
For years, Mr. Tarracino had a diet of pizza and chocolate bars, smoked
unfiltered Lucky Strikes and drank 12 cups of coffee a day, chased with the
occasional beer or whiskey.
"When I die, an era's over," he said in 1990. "But that won't happen soon.
Only the good die young."
Captain
islanders
DGH
DGH
Are you happy, now, islanders?
orpheus
I met Captain Tony the last time I was in KW, a couple of years ago.
Quite a character. He'll be missed.
Bob Feigel
<peri...@eudoramail.com> magnanimously proffered:
>"Key West is an insane asylum," he told the Chicago [Illinois] Tribune while
>sitting behind his new desk at city hall. "We're just too lazy to put up the
>walls or fences. I want to retain that mystique."
What a character. RIP
--
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
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PyrateJohn
Crossing that was produced in 1980. Stuart Whitman plays Tony and
Robert Vaughn plays a CIA heavy that wants to kill Castro. It's a C-
flick but the scenes of Key West in the 70's when the island still had
a working shrimping community are priceless. Tony is played as being
irreverent and adventurous, and living above the bar where regulars
who have had too much to drink are invited to sleep it off (I'm not
sure if he really did live up there back in the day but he and one of
his daughters shared a condo for the last several years).
A few years ago Tony did an advertisment for a restaurant that had a
large balcony that hung out over Duval Street (main drag in KW). In
the ad Tony would talk about how fresh the fish was, how good the food
was, and how you could sit there and dine and watch the tourists and
the hookers working Duval Street. About the time that he mentions the
hookers the restaurant owner's wife puts her head down on the bar and
everyone else in the background starts cracking up. Tony doesn't skip
a beat and keeps talking about how great the place is. They let the
ad run as-is on the Keys Channel, which is a local cable channel.
Only in Key West, and only Tony could have gotten away with something
like that.
In recent years Tony has been on and off oxygen, but he'd shuffle down
to the bar and sign autographs almost every day. I have a small
gallery of photos of Tony, about half of which I've personally taken
over at
http://www.fototime.com/inv/04104F6CB883D05 . You have to admire a
guy who is on oxygen and still hitting on the ladies.
Over the years I have heard a lot of stories about Tony. Other than
some of his ex-girlfriends you rarely heard anything negative about
him. I have heard more than one property owner in Key West tell me
that Tony helped them to cut through the enormous Keys red tape when
he was the Mayor.
He will be missed,
--PirateJohn--
And the new blog at http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com
islanders
> On Nov 16, 11:53�am, "DGH" <perin...@eudoramail.com> wrote:
>
> > -
>
> > Are you happy, now, islanders?
No.