Terms of Use

The Keys Local is an independent guide to venues, events, live music and happy hours in the Florida Keys, built island by island. We gather information that venues and event organizers have already published in public, software reads it and publishes what matches the venue's own page under rules a person set, and people check its work against the venues' own pages. Hours, prices and lineups change constantly, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the venue before you drive, spend money, or plan your night around it.

Two things in these Terms cost you something. First, we do not guarantee that anything here is accurate, complete or current, and there are limits on what we can be held responsible for (sections 17 and 18). Second, if you send us a tip or a listing, you are giving us permission to check it and publish it (section 9).

This summary is here to help you find your way around. The numbered sections below are the actual terms.

The site is new and it is being built in public. As of the date above:

• Coverage is being built island by island and is not complete.
• The Thursday email is not sending yet. Addresses are being collected ahead of the first issue. Section 10 and the Privacy Policy explain what happens when it starts.
• The forms are connected. What you send on the contact, submit, venue and Thursday email forms reaches us.

The Keys Local (thekeyslocal.com) is operated by Optiwork LLC, a Massachusetts limited liability company, at the address above. "The Keys Local" is a trade name of Optiwork LLC. In these Terms, "The Keys Local", "we", "us" and "our" mean Optiwork LLC. "You" means anyone who uses the site or sends us anything through it. The "Powered by Optiwork" line at the bottom of every page means the same company builds and runs the software behind the site.

"Site" means thekeyslocal.com, the pages and data published on it, and the Thursday email. It does not mean the venues we list, the events we describe, or any other website you reach by clicking a link on our pages.

By using the site, browsing it, subscribing to the Thursday email, or sending us a message, a submission or an inquiry, you agree to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy, which is part of them. If you do not agree, do not use the site. We may update these Terms; section 21 explains how, and what we will not do quietly.

You must be at least 13 years old to use The Keys Local. If you are under 13, please do not use the site and do not send us anything. If you already have, tell us on the contact page and we will delete what we hold.

The Keys Local publishes happy hour details and drink specials as factual information about what venues offer. That content is intended for people of legal drinking age. Nothing on this site is an encouragement to drink, and nothing here overrides Florida law on the sale and consumption of alcohol. The site is not directed to children; the Privacy Policy says how we handle that.

What it is. An independent, editorially curated guide to publicly published information about venues, events, happy hours, live music and performers in the Florida Keys. Coverage is being built island by island and is not complete. If something is not here, we have not gathered it yet, or we were not confident enough in what we found to publish it. We would rather show less than show something we cannot stand behind.

What it is not.

• We are not a booking or reservation service, and we do not sell tickets or take payment for any venue, promoter or performer.
• We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the venues, events or performers we list, unless a page says so in plain words.
• We do not run, staff, host, promote or supervise any event we describe.
• A listing is not a review, a rating, a recommendation, a safety assessment or a warranty of quality.
• We are not the venue. If you have a question about a venue's hours, prices, age policy, cover charge or accessibility, ask the venue, not us.

This is the section we most want you to read.

Information changes and we are not told when it does. Hours, happy hours, and lineups shift for holidays and events. What's shown is what each venue last posted, not a guarantee. Check the venue's own site or call ahead before you make the drive.

The guide is not real time. It reflects what we last collected. A venue can change its hours, cancel a show, close for the season or close for good between our last check and your visit. Most pages carry an Updated date. It shows when we last rebuilt the guide from our sources; it is not a promise that a particular detail was re-checked that day.

We publish what we actually have. A listing shows only the details we have. We do not invent a detail to fill a gap. A sparse listing is a sparse listing, not a complete one.

We can be wrong anyway. Sources are wrong, pages go stale, and our own process makes mistakes. Section 8 tells you how to get an error fixed, and we mean it.

Nothing in this section is a promise of accuracy. Section 17 is the formal disclaimer, and it applies to everything on the site.

We think you should know how this guide is built, so here it is in plain language.

Where the information comes from. We collect information that venues, promoters and performers have already published in public: venue websites, published schedules and calendars, event listings, and images they have posted such as flyers, posters and weekly lineup graphics. We also receive information from readers and from venues through our submit, venue and contact pages.

How we collect it. We use software as well as our own hands. The software visits publicly available pages and images and pulls out structured facts: event name, date, start time, venue, performer, happy hour windows and prices, opening hours. From a web page it records a quote as evidence for what it extracted; from an image there is no text to quote, so the transcription is less reliable and we treat it with more caution. The software also sorts what was extracted, matches names to the ones we already have, spots duplicates, and helps write the facts up in our own words. We keep a record of where each piece of information came from and when we collected it.

The public information we read includes the names of people, most often the performers on a venue's schedule. That is personal information even though it was published publicly, and section 7 and the Privacy Policy set out how we handle it. Reading an image to pull the facts out of it is not the same as republishing the image: we publish the facts, not the artwork.

People set the rules; software applies them. A listing goes live when our software finds it on the venue's own published calendar or page and it meets rules a person set, such as a real date and a start time. A reading the software is not sure of, or that our own process flags as contradictory or unreliable, is held for a person to decide. Nothing a reader sends in posts without a person reviewing it. Before an island goes live we check what the software published against the venues' own pages, and we repeat that check as the guide runs, fixing or removing what fails. That check is not an independent re-check of every fact against the venue on the day you read it. Errors can survive it, which is why we ask you to confirm with the venue.

What we do not do. We do not publish reviews, ratings, testimonials or opinions. We do not invent a fact about a business: where the source does not say it, we do not publish it. We do not let payment influence what gets extracted or how listings are ordered (section 12). We do not create images that could be mistaken for a real photograph of a venue, and the guide publishes no photographs of venues, performers or flyer artwork. We do not make automated decisions about you as a visitor, and we do not build profiles of visitors.

What goes wrong, honestly. Software misreads pages and images, flyers most of all. A source can be out of date at the moment we read it, and we will faithfully extract a stale fact. A detail can be missed. None of this makes the guide worthless, and none of it makes it a guarantee. It is a well-built starting point that you should confirm before you rely on it. If we have something wrong, tell us and we will fix it (section 8). If the way we build the guide changes in a way that affects what we publish, we will change this section rather than leave it out of date.

We list venues, events and performers on the basis of information they or others have published publicly. A business does not have to ask to be listed, and being listed does not mean it has any relationship with us.

• A listing is not an endorsement or a paid arrangement, unless it is clearly labeled as featured or sponsored.
• We publish facts, in our own words. Names, islands, hours, event details, prices and times, selected, arranged and written up by us. We do not republish a venue's marketing copy, and we do not publish its photographs, logos or artwork without permission.
• Names and marks are used for identification only. Venue, event, performer and other third-party names, logos and trademarks belong to their owners. Their appearance here identifies the business or person being described, and does not imply that they endorse us or we endorse them.
• Getting listed costs nothing. Paying us never moves a venue up an honest list, and not paying us never moves one down (section 12).

Performers. Knowing who is playing is the point of a live music guide, so performer names appear as part of factual event information: who is playing, where, and when. We do not use a performer's name, likeness or image to advertise The Keys Local, the Thursday email, or any paid placement. A performer can ask us to correct information about them, or to stop listing them by name, on the contact page; say clearly that you are the performer or represent them. Section 8 says what we commit to.

Venues. If you run a venue we list and something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. If you want more control over your page, the venue page is the route. There is no self-serve signup, no account, no password and no fee.

Three different things get confused here, so we have separated them. If you are not sure which one you have, use the first route.

8.1 Correcting a factual error

Wrong hours, a wrong price, a cancelled event, the wrong performer, a venue that has closed. Tell us through the submit page or the contact page and we will fix it. When a venue's own site or social post disagrees with us, the venue is right and we fix it. We will not put you through an evidentiary process to change a happy hour time. Our contact page says when we reply, and we hold ourselves to that. We do not promise a separate timeframe for the fix itself, because we will not promise what we cannot guarantee.

8.2 Copyright complaints

If you believe material on The Keys Local infringes your copyright, send us a written notice through the contact page, or by post to the address at the top of this page.

Your notice should include: your name and signature, or an electronic equivalent; the copyrighted work you say has been infringed; the material on our site you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it; your contact details; a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and a statement that the notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act for the owner.

We remove or disable material in response to valid notices. Where someone repeatedly sends us infringing material, we decline further submissions from them and block access where we are able to. If you believe material of yours was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice through the same route.

We have not registered a copyright agent with the U.S. Copyright Office, because the site does not host material uploaded by visitors. If that changes, this section will change with it.

8.3 Removal requests, and what we will and will not commit to

Anyone can ask us to remove a listing or a page. Here is our honest position.

We will remove content that is inaccurate and cannot be corrected, that we do not have the right to publish, that identifies a person in a way that creates a genuine safety or privacy concern, that relates to a business that has permanently closed, or where, on the facts you give us, removal is simply the right thing to do.

If you are an individual and you ask us to stop publishing your name, we will do it. We may still list the event without naming you.

We do not commit to removing an accurate, factual listing of a publicly operating business on request. The coverage is what makes the guide useful, and a guide that any listed business can delete itself out of stops being a guide. We will still read your request, we will still reply, and correction is always available.

Removal is never a paid outcome and never a lever. We will not remove a listing because a business declined to buy something, and we will not restore or improve one because it bought something.

Everything else, including complaints about the use of a person's name or image, defamation, or privacy, goes through the contact page. Requests about your own personal information are handled under the Privacy Policy, which uses the same route.

9.1 What you can send

Through the submit page you can send us a venue, an event, a happy hour, a correction, or a tip. Through the venue page a business can tell us about itself. Through the contact page you can send us anything else.

9.2 What you are promising when you send it

By sending us a submission, you confirm that the information is accurate as far as you know and you are not deliberately misleading us; that you have the right to send it and sending it does not breach anyone else's rights or any confidentiality obligation; that you are not impersonating a venue, a performer or anyone else, and if you say you represent a business, you do; and that you are not sending us spam, promotional material dressed as a listing, or anything unlawful.

What you send us is your responsibility. That does not change what we do with it, which is set out below.

9.3 What we do with it

Every submission goes through editorial review before it publishes. Nothing posts automatically. We may publish it, publish part of it, edit it for length, style and accuracy, hold it, or not publish it at all. We are under no obligation to publish anything, and we do not pay for submissions.

We need your email address so we can follow up if there is a question. We will not add you to anything. Sending us a submission or a message does not subscribe you to the Thursday email; that is a separate, explicit opt-in.

We use software, including AI tools, to help sort the messages you send us and draft our replies, and we never use them to train AI models. A person reads your message and decides what we send back.

Submissions are not confidential. If you send us a suggestion or an idea about the site itself, we may use it without owing you anything for it.

9.4 The license you give us

When you send us a submission, you give us permission to use it to check the information and to publish and maintain the listing. In legal terms: you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, store, reproduce, adapt, edit, publish, display and distribute your submission, and material derived from it, for the purposes of verifying the information and of publishing and maintaining the resulting listing on the site and in the Thursday email. The license extends to the service providers we use to host the site and send the email, so that they can do those things for us.

This license continues for as long as we publish the listing. It is irrevocable as to any listing we have already published and any issue of the Thursday email we have already sent, because a sent email cannot be recalled. We may keep copies in routine backups after a listing comes down. The license may pass to a successor if the business is sold (section 24). We may publish a listing based on your submission without naming you, and normally we will not name you.

This license is deliberately narrow, so that it matches what we tell you at the point you submit: that you are OK with us using it to check and maybe publish the listing. It does not cover using your photographs or your writing for anything else. If you send us an image, you agree that we may crop or resize it to fit the page.

9.5 What we do not accept

Do not send us content you do not have the rights to, in particular photographs, flyer artwork or logos created by someone else. There is no upload feature on the site, but if you ever send us an image by another route, you are telling us you own it or have permission to give it to us.

The Thursday email costs nothing to receive. See "What is true today" at the top of this page for whether it is sending yet. Signup uses a confirmation step: you enter your address, we send one confirmation email, and you are only on the list once you click the link in it. Nothing else is sent until you do.

When it is sending, subscribers get one email a week, on Thursday. We do not send daily blasts, and we do not send marketing for anything else. The only other emails we would send you as a subscriber are the confirmation email, a message about your own subscription, or a notice about these Terms or the Privacy Policy.

Every issue carries a one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom, which works from any email, any time, with no login. We remove you right away. Every issue also carries our postal address, as the law requires.

We may change the format and the content of the email, and we may stop sending it. We will not increase how often it goes out without telling subscribers first, in time to unsubscribe. How we handle your email address is set out in the Privacy Policy.

When you contact us about a venue through the venue page, you are telling us that you are authorized to act for that business. Tapping Claim on a venue page only tells us there is interest in that page; it does not create an account and it does not collect your details. To start a conversation, use the venue page form.

There is no account, no login, no password, and nothing to buy. Getting listed costs nothing. We read what you send and reply about your venue. There is no auto-signup and no sales sequence, and we only email you about your venue. Packages and pricing are not set, so anything beyond a listing starts as a conversation, not a checkout. If that changes, any paid product will have its own terms, not buried in this document.

We are telling you the rule now, while it is easy to keep.

• Payment never buys a ranking. A venue that pays nothing is listed the same as any other. Where we order or highlight venues, that order reflects our read, not who paid. By design, the ranking never looks at whether a venue paid us.
• We never remove or bury a venue for not paying, and we never move one up for paying. Where we remove, reorder or decline to publish something, it is for editorial, accuracy or legal reasons.
• If we sell placement, it is labeled. Any paid placement appears only inside a block clearly marked Featured or Sponsored, visually separate from the editorial list, and it never reorders the honest list around it.
• Affiliate links. If a link earns us a commission, we say so clearly, on or next to the link, before you click it, and it is at no extra cost to you. That commission never changes how we rank a venue or whether we list it.
• Changes are announced on the page, not here. If our position on paid placement changes, the labeling changes with it, out in the open, on the page. A general right to update these Terms does not let us take that promise back quietly.

Our public editorial standards page states the current position, including whether any venue has paid for placement. That page is the live statement. This section is the rule behind it.

Use the site as a guide. Do not treat it as raw material.

You agree not to:

• Harvest or scrape the contact details, names or listings of the businesses, venues or performers we publish in order to market to them, build a lead list, or sell that data.
• Copy the guide wholesale, or copy our selection and arrangement of it, to build or feed a competing directory or listing service, or to redistribute it as a dataset.
• Submit false, misleading or spam listings, or impersonate a venue, a performer, or one of their representatives.
• Use automated tools in a way that imposes an unreasonable load on the site, or circumvent rate limits, access controls or other technical measures.
• Interfere with the site's operation, attempt to gain unauthorized access to any system, or use the site for an unlawful purpose or in a way that infringes anyone's rights.

On automated access. We are not trying to ban all of it. Our robots.txt file says which automated systems we allow to fetch our pages, and we allow more than most sites do, deliberately, because we want search and answer services to find the guide and cite it. Crawling in line with robots.txt is not a breach of the load and rate-limit bullet above. But permission to fetch a page is not permission to reuse the guide as a body of work: the restrictions on harvesting contact details and on copying the guide apply whatever robots.txt allows.

On security research. If you think you have found a security problem, tell us on the contact page. We will not treat a good-faith report as a breach of this section.

We do not claim ownership of the underlying facts (section 14).

We own or license the site's original written content, our editorial write-ups, the logo and brand, the design, the code, and the selection, arrangement and presentation of the guide as a compilation. Those are protected, and section 13 applies to them.

We do not claim ownership of the facts themselves. An event date, a venue's opening hours, or the price of a well drink is not ours and never could be. Anyone is free to know those things and to publish them from their own sources. Third-party names, logos and trademarks belong to their owners and are used for identification only (section 7).

The site links out to venue websites, social media pages, map and directions services, and other third-party destinations. We do not control those and we do not endorse them. We are not responsible for their content, products, availability, security or data practices. Their terms and privacy policies govern what happens once you leave us. When you click a link on The Keys Local, you are leaving The Keys Local.

You are responsible for your own decisions, your own plans and your own safety.

• Conditions change. Weather, water, tides, road conditions and venue conditions are outside our knowledge and our control.
• Drink responsibly. Do not drive or operate a vessel impaired. Nothing in a happy hour listing is advice about how much to drink.
• Check official sources for anything safety-critical, including park hours, closures, marine conditions and public safety notices. We are not one of those sources.
• To the fullest extent permitted by law, and whether the claim is based in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, statute or any other theory, we are not responsible for what happens at a venue or an event we list, for the conduct of any venue, promoter, performer or other guest, or for any injury, loss or damage arising from your visit.

THE SITE AND ALL CONTENT ON IT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE INFORMATION ON THE SITE IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE, CURRENT OR RELIABLE, THAT LISTINGS REFLECT WHAT A VENUE IS ACTUALLY DOING TODAY, THAT EVENTS WILL TAKE PLACE AS DESCRIBED, OR THAT THE SITE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE.

Section 6 describes how listings are published and checked. Checking is not the same as guaranteeing, and this disclaimer applies in full to checked content. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties; there, the exclusions above apply only to the extent permitted, and you may have rights that this section does not affect.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, AND WHETHER THE CLAIM IS BASED IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, STATUTE OR ANY OTHER THEORY, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL OR OPPORTUNITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF THE SITE OR YOUR RELIANCE ON ANYTHING PUBLISHED ON IT, WHETHER OR NOT WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, AND WHETHER THE CLAIM IS BASED IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, STATUTE OR ANY OTHER THEORY, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SITE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS (US $100).

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, for willful misconduct, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under applicable law. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, and in those places these limits apply only as far as the law permits. There is no charge to use the site, and these limits reflect that.

This section applies if you sent us a submission, contacted us about a venue, or used the site in a way that breached section 13. It does not apply to your use of the site as an ordinary reader.

If it applies to you, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Optiwork LLC and its affiliates, officers, employees and contractors from any third-party claim, loss, liability or reasonable legal cost arising from content you submitted to us (including any claim that it infringes intellectual property, publicity or privacy rights, or that it is false or defamatory), from your breach of these Terms, or from your misuse of the site.

We will tell you promptly about any claim we want indemnified. You may control the defense with counsel we reasonably approve, and we may take part with our own counsel at our own cost. You will not settle a claim in a way that admits fault on our part, imposes any obligation on us, or costs us money, without our agreement.

We may change, add to, or stop publishing any part of the site at any time. We do not promise that the site will keep running, keep any particular feature, or keep any particular listing up.

We may block access to the site, remove content, decline submissions, or end a Thursday email subscription or a venue claim, where we reasonably believe there has been abuse, spam, impersonation, false submissions, or a breach of these Terms, or where we need to for legal or security reasons.

Sections 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24 and 25 survive any termination or blocking.

We may update these Terms. When we do, we will change the date at the top. This is the first version. Earlier versions, once there are any, will be kept on this site at /terms/archive/.

For material changes, we will give notice before they take effect, by a notice on the site, by a line in the Thursday email, or both. Continuing to use the site after the date of a change means you accept the updated Terms. Changes are not retroactive.

Three limits on this, so that this section cannot be used to swallow the rest of the document: a change to our position on paid placement will be announced openly on the relevant pages (section 12), never by a silent edit here; a change to how we build the guide that materially affects what we publish will be reflected in section 6; and a change to who decides what publishes will be reflected in section 6 and on the editorial standards page at the same time.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict of laws rules.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the site will be brought exclusively in the state courts located in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, or in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and you and we consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Either of us may still bring an individual claim in small claims court where it qualifies. If a court decides that the exclusive venue above cannot be enforced against you, the rest of this section, including the choice of Massachusetts law, still applies.

Nothing in this section takes away any right you have under the consumer protection laws of the state where you live that cannot be waived by agreement.

We want The Keys Local to be usable by everyone, and we aim to meet the WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines. We have not had an independent audit, so we do not claim conformance with any accessibility standard, and we know we are not there everywhere. If you hit a barrier on the site, tell us on the contact page and describe what happened. We will do what we reasonably can to fix it, and to get you the information another way in the meantime.

Severability. If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the unenforceable part is limited to the minimum extent necessary.

No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it.

Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the editorial standards page to the extent section 12 refers to it, are the entire agreement between you and us about the site, and they replace any earlier version.

Assignment. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets or of The Keys Local itself. You may not assign them without our written consent. Personal information transfers only as our Privacy Policy allows.

Force majeure. We are not liable for failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including hurricanes and severe weather. In the Florida Keys, that is not a theoretical provision.

No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms are between you and us. Venues, performers and other third parties named on the site do not acquire rights under them.

Electronic notices. We may give you notices electronically, by posting on the site or by email where we have your address.

Headings. Headings are for convenience and do not affect interpretation.

• Everything, including privacy requests, accessibility barriers, copyright notices, security reports and general questions: the contact page. A person reads every message.
• Corrections to a listing: the submit page or the contact page.
• By post: Optiwork LLC (The Keys Local), 867 Boylston Street, 5th Floor, #2112, Boston, MA 02116.