As we’ve all been noticing over the past few years, the Children’s Gasparilla Parade down Bayshore Boulevard is no longer some cute spin-off. It’s no longer just a nice, wholesome — but token — sop to the sober. Nor is it simply a nostalgically modest reminder of what parades once were: a really big deal for little kids.
Indeed, last Saturday the Children’s Parade drew more than 200,000 spectators and attracted more than 100 floats and 50 participating krewes. Plus marching bands, dance squads and various school and community groups.
It’s that big. No wonder it also merits its own air show and a culminating “Piratechnic” extravaganza.
But more to the point, it proved, once again, that Tampa can put on an impressively big parade – with all the trappings – without drunks and punks. It didn’t ooze booze; lemonade was the thirst-slaker of choice. The aerial banners flown overhead pitched “Legos Pirates” –not Happy Hours and Bud Light. Chi-chi corporate tents didn’t crowd out the hoi polloi. Beads were bestowed without breasts being bared.
And even more to the point, it was an all-call for Family Tampa, black and white and brown. Parents and their kids. What a concept.
No fights, no obscenities, no boorish attitudes, no ad hoc vomitoriums or port-a-lets. No inebriated teens “trespissing” on private property.
Thus, no need for a “safe house,” which has now become a staple of the main Gasparilla Parade, the adult-themed Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla invasion on Feb. 7.
After seeing how the Children’s version is conducted — and how well it is attended — and what a logistical and behavioral mess the adult version is — I would say this of next week’s drunk-and-litter fest: Move it.
It has outgrown its Bayshore Boulevard parade route. The mystic crude invasion of the surrounding neighborhoods is now a given — and unacceptable. It’s reassuring, of course, that there’s a safe house, courtesy of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, but it’s disturbing that one is needed. The annual message has once again been sent: “We fully expect a number of drunk, drugged or, as a consequence, injured teens.” And thanks again, enabling parents, for providing Buffy and Biff with a free pass for the day.
As diligent and high profile as Tampa Police officers are, they are woefully outnumbered in a parade venue that’s easily overwhelmed. Mardi Gras doesn’t look like this. Too many local residents – and in the interests of full disclosure, I’m one – feel under house arrest. You have to guard your property or hire a cop. Or both.
Put it this way. If there must be a parade in addition to the Children’s, then start it in downtown and take it through Channelside, where there is more open space and more parking.
When you can’t confine the “invasion” to Bayshore Boulevard, and when you can’t curb the conduct of “attendees” who are drunk before the parade begins, you’d better have a Plan B that’s not Bamboleo. And you’d better hope it gets implemented before there’s a serious injury or an invasion fatality that prompts a civic outcry for change.