Sometimes, bartender Tim “Safari Tim” Swann would just answer his customers’ orders with a grunt. Other times, he would simply hold up a cardboard sign with a handwritten message: “Loser!”, “Go the f*** home,” “Wrong Way A******,” among others. Still other times, he would flip people the bird from behind the bar.
But yet, the man was beloved. A whole crew of his friends and former customers gathered recently at Islamorada’s Angler House Marina to reminisce about him. And he was legendary enough to be mentioned in writer David L. Sloan’s book “The Florida Keys Bucket List.”
Safari Tim passed on May 19 at age 60 after a years-long battle with vascular disease. He died in his sleep.
“That’s our blessing,” said Krissy Carnahan about his peaceful death. Carnahan helped arrange the Angler House gathering and was one of his best friends.
Swann came to the Keys from Louisiana in 1997, and after short spells at other hospitality venues, he ended up at the D.A.B. — the Dead Animal Bar, locals’ affectionate name for the Safari Lounge. He worked there for a long time, so long that he got the nickname “Safari Tim.” And he attracted a community of like-minded souls.
Carnahan met him at the D.A.B. and recalls many a night that they hung out with the crowd until “the sun was coming up,” she said. “He said a lot by hardly saying anything. And he was a heavy pourer,” she said with a laugh.
“The Dead Animal Bar was truly a Keys bar, and Tim was the heart of it,” said Carnahan. “The D.A.B. was not corporate. I lived in Lower Mat and it was the place to go — I met my husband on the dock there.”
Swann’s best friend was Kenny White. He pointed out that somehow, everyone knew Safari Tim. White recalls randomly running into someone in Canton, Ohio, who had visited the D.A.B. and remembered meeting the gruff yet soft-hearted bartender.
Sloan listed visiting Safari Tim and the Dead Animal Bar as Number 37 in his book “The Florida Keys Bucket List.” He groaned when Keys Weekly told him that Swann had passed.
“He was an amazing creature,” Sloan said. He added, half-jokingly, “His eyes told you he knew where all the bodies were buried, but the smile on his face said he wasn’t going to tell you.”
Swann’s former coworker, Kevin Potter, said, “He would always try to do something special for friends on the side of the bar — never to draw attention — with words, or an object.”
White agreed, saying Swann once gave a bartender at the Whistle Stop a new pair of shoes simply because he had complimented Swann’s shoes a couple weeks prior.
“And if you mentioned you liked a photo, he would have it put on canvas and slip it across the bar to you a couple weeks later,” said Carnahan.
The Angler House gathering turned into a mini celebration of life, with friends shouting memories between tables.
“No one ever saw him run,” said one.
“The man never raised his voice,” said another.
“He had this expression he always said,” said Beau Ricksecker, “‘Not my monkey, not my circus.’”
And when someone was overserved, he would quietly defuse the situation, often with humor, by holding up one of his cardboard signs.
His friends also noted that in order to poke fun at his gruff exterior, he would be the first to wear goofy holiday costumes, such as an ugly Christmas sweater or a supersize necklace of Mardi Gras beads, strung with large shiny balls that were the center of many an off-color joke.
“He was the nucleus of the community that started around the D.A.B,” said Potter. “He started a community of people who are still together now.”
But times changed. The Safari Lounge closed after Hurricane Irma swept through. Swann eventually found work at the Angler House.
Toward the end, Carnahan and White called Swann “their son.” He had stopped drinking and smoking a few years before he passed after warnings from doctors about his vascular disease. But he had an aversion to medical care, and he was supposed to go for surgery. Yet he didn’t.
White would tell Swann, “Timmy, if you don’t call me, I’ll bang on your door.”
But one day in May, Swann didn’t answer Carnahan’s texts. And she knew.
Swann’s family recognized that his Keys family was important to him, so they gave his friends half his ashes. Carnahan said they will organize a formal Celebration of Life and decide where to put his remains.
“We found those old cardboard signs in his room,” Carnahan said, sadly. “And people are still texting me, ‘Where’s Timmy?’”
Carnahan said that Safari Tim Swann’s Celebration of Life will be planned for when the snowbirds are back in town, possibly around the first of the year. For readers who are interested in attending, she suggests keeping an eye for announcements on Facebook.
