♪
Something changes when you leave the 18 Mile stretch.
♪
And, you go over that first bridge,
and you hit the Keys.
♪
(whistle)
This is tour guide and engineer, Doug.
Before we do leave, I have a simple question:
Is there anyone on board,
this is your first time in Key West? Anyone?
Somewhere at the end of Highway 1,
between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico,
between Havana and Miami,
lies the southernmost city in the contiguous U.S. -
Key West, Florida.
Cayo Hueso, as it was originally known,
is 4 isolated miles of fun, history, and heritage,
where just under 30,000 residents live in harmony
with the surrounding ocean, sun, and sand.
(thunder)
Except, when they don't.
With frequent evacuation orders,
an economy dependent on tourism,
and only one way in and out, why would anybody
choose to live and build a buisiness here and
Nowhere Else?
DOUG: 1622, the ship, Atocha,
sank 30 miles west of Key West.
1985, Mel Fisher and his crew,
discovered the wreck, pulling up more than
$400 million worth of
gold, silver, and precious gems.
♪
In the 19th century, shallow reefs,
turbulent seas, and primitive naval navigation
meant almost constant shipwrecks on the island shores.
The people of the Keys made a sophisticated and
highly lucrative industry of salvaging the
treasure of those wrecks.
♪
When people come down and go through our gift shop,
they can get a piece of history and wear it.
This ring is over $400,000.
One of the best emeralds you'll ever see.
This pearl is $24,000.
When you wear one of these coins around,
it's not just a piece of jewelry;
it's got a story to tell.
(thunder)
♪
At one point in their life, everybody dreams about
finding buried treasure.
I know I'm really lucky: I get to live that dream.
My dad had a dive shop out in California,
and he convinced 5 other guys to come work for
1 year without pay to look for a shipwreck off the
east coast of Florida that sank in 1715.
They found a little bit throughout the year,
but enough to survive on.
After 360 days, they dug a hole and
it was full of gold doubloons.
♪
Seeing all that gold from that first major find,
it made me want to go out and find some, myself.
Finally, my dad let me dive when I was 9 and I found
my first silver coin similar to the one I'm wearing now.
I've been hooked ever since.
You get tingles all over and it's very addictive.
♪
Within a year, we found the galleon anchor from the Atocha.
We figured the rest of it would be close by.
We moved down and found $20 million
worth of treasure there.
Let's hear it for this crew, guys.
Let's hear it for 'em!
(cheering)
It's a good feeling of accomplishment for you
to be the first one to see that artifact in
how many hundreds of years, to touch it.
But to me, it's history and another clue of
what we're looking for.
♪
And so, we figured, man, if there's $20 million here,
the rest must be close by.
And, it turned out to be another 11 miles before
we found the main pile of the treasure.
The wreck had scattered that far.
Hey, I've been hearing some wild rumours in here.
I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.
(cheers & whistles)
- Alright! Bill! - Oh, yeah!
Yeah, look at that green-y, uh?
So, the Atocha and Marguerita have yielded
a lot of treasure.
There's still over $250 million worth of
registered cargo out there to find,
and also a lot of contraband.
♪
This is a contraband gold bar.
It doesn't have any tax stamps on it,
so the King hadn't collected his taxes on this.
It was being smuggled back.
And, on the Marguerita we've actually found
more contraband than there was registered treasure.
What the coins look like when we find them,
it just looks kind of like an Oreo cookie.
Can see some of the end crustation's
been broken off here, but... There's the before;
that's what it looks like when we find it.
And then after conservation, it comes out looking like that.
♪
- Hey, John. - Hey, how you doing?
- Good, how you doing? - Good, thanks.
When they bring the artifacts in here,
I call it, "artifact triage."
It's like an emergency room at a hospital.
Even though I always loved finding the artifacts,
I also loved saving the artifacts.
I get kind of the best of both worlds.
I still get to go out and look for ships and find treasure,
and then I get to come back in here and be the
first guy in 400 years to open it up,
see what it is, and then try to save it.
(splash)
Well, there's not a lot of people out diving for treasure.
We've been at it longer than anyone.
We go out there whenever it's calm enough and
dig for treasure.
All of this work takes a lot of money,
so we have members who can invest their money and
become members of this club.
And then, they can actually come out and help us.
They can find an emerald that's worth 6 times as much as
they invested and they can get to take that emerald
home with them.
When I was 9, I was just loving
going out on the boat and diving, you know.
I didn't realize how lucky I was to be able to do that.
Now I realize it.
I got to live a dream that most people only think about:
diving for buried treasure.
♪
Of course, not all the residents of Key West
came in search of riches and treasure.
Many came simply in search of a better life,
contributing their food, their culture,
and their industry to the little island.
It's a contribution that the people here
have never forgotten,
and one that became especially important
to Cuban families in the 1950s,
who were looking for a safe place to escape the revolution.
♪
My parents moved to Key West after
the Cuban Revolution in 1960.
When they first came, they didn't plan on staying.
They thought the revolution would be short-lived and
they would go back, as many Cubans did back then.
But when finally they realized they would not be going back,
well then, they had to find something to do.
Our wedding. Going to be 19.
How old was dad in that photo?
- 45. - 45.
He was older than her mother.
I don't care. (laughs)
I came from Cuba, 19 years old.
Mhm.
With 2 kids and 1 coming, and...
That's the only thing I, I knew.
My neighbours always taking care of everybody.
Key West was very good with us.
My father - Roberto Tomas Aguino Lopez -
they used to call him Kino.
Began working in different jobs,
and then finally, he was able to get a job with
Key West Hand Print Fabrics.
My dad had a business in Cuba,
a factory in Cuba, a shoe company,
so that's what his expertise was.
But when they came to Key West,
he saw the area and he felt like the area was a
sandal, resort, highly traffic area.
That was his inspiration for the sandals.
They cosigned a loan and he opened up Kino Sandals in 1966.
♪
Everyone would tell him he was crazy to try to open up
a business in Key West 'cause at that time,
I think the only business open was a Conch Train.
He, you know, insisted, so he opened it.
He didn't have much success at first.
And they were about to leave,
and then, an idea came up that, why not -
when the women would buy a dress from Key West Hand Print -
why not give them a swatch of fabric and bring it
to the sandals and he would make a matching sandal.
♪
I think it's unique just because it's made here in Key West.
You know, it's not made elsewhere.
We get our materials from all over the world and they
all come here to Key West and we all assemble it here
using the same methods we've used since the 60s,
and using the same machines that we've used
since the 60s as well.
This machine here is the backbone
of the whole factory. I mean, without this machine,
we would be out of business.
♪
I really think it makes Kino Sandals a unique piece.
You know, especially just, you know,
not from the Florida Keys, but from Key West, Florida.
There's not many things made in Key West Florida anymore.
You really are taking a piece of Key West home with you.
♪
I'm coming from the warehouse right now.
I've got a box of Australians here, in blue,
that we're gonna finish the assembling
here at the store.
The sanding is big here, too.
This is where they're finished, like, completely.
They always compliment us,
"Oh, wow, you guys make 'em here," like...
It's real big, they love it.
♪
My cousin Robert and I, we're both doing the
Kino Sandals right now, so I would consider ourselves
the next generation of this business.
We're truly blessed to be in the position that we are
to be able to be a part of something like this because
it really is something very important.
Here in our small community in Key West,
Kino Sandals is something that's very known,
very popular.
I think the next thing for Kino Sandals is,
of course, to go up. Everyone wants to make their,
their business bigger and better.
You know, more efficient, more economical.
You know, we have big dreams.
♪
Of course, sandals aren't the only industry on
this little island, which has historically been home
to cigar factories, Pan American Airlines,
and the second-ever Coke bottling plant in America.
And what better to make in an old Coca Cola plant
than its perfect companion, rum?
Paul, when he first came in here and was kind of
renovating the place in order to make the distillery,
when he was digging through the floor,
he was finding Coke bottle after Coke bottle,
caps all over the floor.
So, we kind of felt it was fate: rum and Coke.
♪
To do something in Key West, to be the first one,
I would almost say is an impossibility.
I saw a need for something.
We're a drinking town with a tourist problem.
A lot of people immediately discredited it and said,
"You're crazy to think about doing something
like that in business." "Why do a distillery?"
And my answer was,
"There has never been a distillery in Key West."
Nobody has ever legally distilled anything here.
♪
What do you have around here?
What can you pull in that your competition can't pull in?
And that is a local product, local flavour...
history, and something that makes brand awareness
that maybe is already out there.
So, what do I do? My background's cooking.
Our company's called Chef Distilled.
I take that really seriously 'cause everything I do in here
and everything we train the other people to do is
all according to how a chef would do it.
It's really unique. It's smooth.
It's clean. It tastes like Florida.
It tastes like Key West.
♪
He creates all of the flavours all from natural ingredients.
We also start with cane sugar,
demerara grown, here in Florida.
Most rums are made from molasses,
but that has a lot of impurities in it,
so we choose not to use any molasses.
And so, we can even claim no hangover rum,
which is a pretty big deal. (laughs)
The flavour is so smooth that you can drink it just by itself.
♪
Hurricanes affect my business amazing
because what happens is, when we get a storm,
the pressure drops.
And, I can distill my rum and get flavours out of it
that I would never be able to get unless I have
a serious drop in low pressure.
I get pear flavour and this butterscotch,
and I get actual black truffle flavouring.
So, for me, I get kind of excited.
I wasn't excited with the damage it did,
but it's a way of life here.
After Hurricane Irma, we got about a foot of water
into the distillery 'cause we have several barrels that
sit right here on the ground.
And that kind of extra cured them and that
low-pressure system squeezed those barrels
and it created some really nice flavours.
We noticed after the hurricane,
we tapped one of the barrels with our Bad Bitch and
we got really great flavours from it.
So we have a special Hurricane Irma batch of those.
So, if you look here at this red line,
that's the water mark for where Irma came up to.
So, they call got that low pressure,
that extra water.
It's definitely a once-in-a-lifetime rum.
We're probably never gonna get that specific set of pressure
and all of that is never gonna happen again
just as it did.
We've kind of been joking we might have to become
storm chasers.
Next time we find one of those hurricane systems,
get some barrels and go chase it down.
♪
Going down to the end of the street,
put this barrel in the ocean...
Get it all filled up with some,
some salt water and...
a little bit of plankton.
Maybe even a couple fish if we're lucky.
As far as I know, nobody in the world does this.
Welcome to the abnormal part of the distilling
where everybody looks at us.
♪
The biggest thing is making sure
nobody pees in the water while we're here.
♪
This is how we get our Key West flavour.
There's a lot of minerals in this ocean,
and planktons and things like that,
and that stuff all equals flavour.
Is it gonna be the same as the last barrel I did?
Nope. It's gonna be a little bit different.
And like I said, it's like a vintage.
So, who knows what we got.
We might get a nice little fish in this one,
or we might get...
You know, who knows what we're gonna get.
♪
To make a product that you can put a stamp on it and
say, "This is true Key West.
It's original. We make it here.
You can't get it anywhere else."
That was the mission. Kind of a bucket list thing.
You know, that I wanted to do it 'cause I, I love this town.
When you come down here and you walk in to my place and
my staff who are incredible and they sit there and
greet you, and you purchase something,
we just got a huge award. To make a purchase,
I think, is the ultimate success of a business because
at the end of the day that's what we're all going for.
And, I hope I'm inspiring other people and kids down here,
I don't care what it is,
that you just go off that path and create a business.
But, to do the business properly,
you need to have the right people around you.
And Key West is full of all these people.
We want to thank you for joining us here
on our historic tour. We hope that you
really enjoy your time here in Key West.
Have a great day.
Community; that's the driving force behind every business,
every decision, and every life down here.
It's a town that, more than most,
stays true to its motto, "One Human Family".
It's something any visitor can feel,
but only a local can explain.
♪ I'VE BEEN COOLING, BABY, I'VE BEEN TAKING IT EASY ♪
♪ I'VE BEEN SAILIN' 'CAUSE THE WEATHER BEEN BREEZY ♪
♪ I HANG MY HAMMOCK BETWEEN 2 TREES ♪
♪ JUST CHILLIN' DOWN HERE, THE FLORIDA KEYS, YEAH ♪
Well, I think it's just the live and let live attitude.
Everybody down here gets along;
that's the way I see it.
♪ I LOVE YOU BABY, I LOVE YOU TOO ♪
♪ YOU GOT LOVE FOR ME, I GOT LOVE FOR YOU ♪
One human family, I think the best thing to
describe that is, you all come together as one.
And if you ever need any help, you could always turn to
anybody here in our small community.
♪ STILL THE WORLD IS SPINNING AROUND ♪
♪ YOU KNOW THIS WORLD IS UPSIDE DOWN ♪
One human family means whoever you are,
whatever your gender - you're purple,
green, blue, black, white, whatever it is,
whatever your thoughts - you're welcome here.
You're welcome here to act as you are.
And that is what makes this Key West, and Nowhere Else.
♪
(applause)
Thank you. I got love for you.