Annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest begins in Florida Keys

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — The annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest has begun in Key West on the 123rd anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s July 21 birth. This year’s competition attracted 135 portly, bearded men, who are endeavoring to prove their likeness to the famed American author. The contest is a highlight of Key West’s annual Hemingway Days festivities, staged to celebrate the creative talent and colorful lifestyle of the man who lived and wrote on the island for most of the 1930s. Thursday night’s entrants paraded at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, where Hemingway and his cohorts often met for drinks, before a judging panel of former contest winners.