Another Gasparilla Parade parlay, the children’s’ variety and the “adult” Ye Mystic Krewe version, has come and gone. But what is increasingly obvious lingers on: Something in this scenario needs to change.
Some context.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Children’s Parade was a token gathering for little kids and their parents. Strictly a family affair. And how quaint it was to see those little red wagons transporting small children, not alcoholic provisions.
Now it has morphed into a really big deal – which is fine. Actually, it’s great. Tampa has proven that it can put on an impressively large parade – with all the trappings – sans drunks and punks and marauding trespissers weaving into the adjacent neighborhoods. Chi-chi corporate tents don’t crowd out the hoi polloi. There’s no need for a “safe house” that annually announces, in effect, that drunk and drugged teens are fully expected again.
The Gasparilla Children’s Parade down Bayshore Boulevard now attracts 200,000 spectators, 100 floats and 50 participating krewes. It features marching bands and dance squads. It even warrants its own air show and fireworks extravaganza. And beads are bestowed without breasts being bared.
And much to its credit, the mega-sized Children’s Parade hasn’t altered its family orientation. It looks like Tampa: black and white and brown. Parents and their kids. What a concept. Only downside: the scheduling needs to be more compact. It’s too long a day for most of the children. But this is not, to be sure, the Bud Blight crowd.
Then there’s the Ye Mystic Krewe parade, which draws at least 350,000, among them countless besotted teenagers with a parental free pass for the day. Ye Mystic Krude has outgrown its Bayshore Boulevard parade route. It’s an unfair invasion of the residential areas that adjoin Bayshore – and the various impacted neighborhood associations are increasingly up in arms.
And let’s spell it out. “Impact” includes public sex, urination and defecation. Plus generic fights and ad hoc vomiting. The good news: the St. John’s Episcopal Church’s “Safe House” reported only one case of alcohol-induced coma this year.
At least one attorney has been heard warning that if his kid were to get hurt at the “adult” Gasparilla, he’d like his chances bringing an “attractive nuisance” case against the city and EventFest, the co-sponsors.
And by way of full disclosure, I live in one of those parade-route neighborhoods. Across from the St. John’s “Safe House” and abutting a ground zero intersection.
I say move Ye Mystic Krude. If not back to Monday or a more innocent era, then to a more appropriate route. I would urge from downtown to Channelside, where there is more open space, more parking and less likelihood of property trespass and homeowner-teen drunk confrontations. Absent back alleys and a maze of side streets, it’s also easier to police – and deter.
And do it before somebody gets seriously hurt or killed.
Although 141 people were hauled in for various offenses at the “adult” Gasparilla Parade, there are no statistics, perforce, on how many were overlooked because, well, you can’t haul them away by the thousands.
Yes, Ye Mystic Krude is now behind us for another year. But think of it as a bullet dodged. Nothing’s been disarmed.