The Green Parrot Has Been Open Since 1890

601 Whitehead Street. Oldest bar in Key West. Open-air (no AC, no walls on two sides), concrete floor, decor of bras, license plates, and bumper stickers constituting a folk art installation no museum could replicate.

Live blues, rock, funk — musicians who live in Key West because they'd rather play for locals than tourists. Not the Duval Street Jimmy Buffett cover bands. The Saturday jam session starts around five and runs until midnight. The quality — loose, hot, unrehearsed — is what live music sounds like when musicians play for each other and you get to listen in. The crowd shifts: tourists early, locals late. Around eleven the Duval bars peak and the Green Parrot gets quieter, stranger, more itself.

Go on a weeknight with no band. The bar in its purest form — open to the street, frangipani breeze, jukebox playing what the bartender chose, the evening's pace dictated by nothing except light angle and glass level.