Each year, a month or so after the Gasparilla Pirate Fest, city officials, the police chief and Darrell Stefany, president of Gasparilla co-sponsor Event Fest, gather to assess things. That is, to make the next year’s parade even better. And to lessen the inevitable inconvenience to local residents — those who literally bear the brunt of the Bayshore Boulevard parade route that parallels, abuts and necessarily encroaches upon their South Tampa neighborhoods.
The typical result of such gatherings: some fine tuning on crowd control, traffic flow, trash-receptacle placement, corporate seating and port-o-let logistics.
A few neighbors would also put in a token appearance. There was a debriefing, and complaints were defused. After all, this was Tampa’s signature parade. There were few like it anywhere. And there were studies that showed meaningful economic impact.
The implied message to locals: “Take one for the team. Of course, there will be issues. Stuff happens. Parades come with crowds. And crowds often come decorum-challenged. It is what it is. We understand your concerns; we’re doing our best; but it’s only one day a year.”
And, on balance, it was tolerable enough. There really was an era that predates a need for a “safe house” and teens winding up in alcohol-induced comas.
The key city players would touch base with each other again in December to gear up for the next parade.
This year, however, the parade post-mortem was anything but routine.
Last week Neighborhood Services Coordinator Santiago Corrada, Tampa Police Chief Stephen Hogue and Event Fest’s Stefany were at Kate Jackson Recreation Center in Hyde Park to answer resident questions about Gasparilla. This time about 60 locals squeezed into the venue to voice their considerable anxieties. Also in attendance: Hyde Park resident and Hillsborough County Commissioner Rose Ferlita, a representative from City Councilman John Dingfelder’s office, an associate dean of students at the University of Tampa and the headmaster of Tampa Prep – all there to add their voices of concern and/or hear what the collective buzz was.
What Corrada, Hogue and Stefany heard was anything but input on fine-tuning or even the chronic carping of dyspeptic complainers. This was a serious vent vehicle – a chorus of the incensed and frustrated intent on speaking truth to power. Residents were articulate, impassioned, graphic, worried and disgusted.
The parade, they maintained, was no longer a mere “inconvenience.” Euphemisms such as “rowdy” and “revelry” were grossly inaccurate and misleading. It was a neighborhood “invasion.” The likes of which Carnival, Mardi Gras, Macy’s, the Rose Bowl and the (Philadelphia) Mummers parades wouldn’t countenance. Only Gasparilla, because of unsuitable logistics, is forced to shoe horn hundreds of thousands of spectators — many of them besotted teens and other drunks — through actual neighborhoods.
Because the 1,200 police were woefully outnumbered by a crowd of 350,000 — more than the population of Tampa itself — a virtual free-pass for anarchic behavior inevitably results. Chief Hogue acknowledged that officers have to prioritize and “judiciously” pick their spots for arrests, which take more than an hour to process. That’s why only 141 miscreants were hauled in. They let a lot slide. Besides, you can’t haul them in by the thousands.
This scenario is compounded, underscored one resident — me — by obviously enabling parents. Where do these hung-over — or worse — kids go at the end of the day’s debauchery? Who’s accountable? Is everybody sleeping over at Tiffany’s or Madison’s?
The offending behavior was detailed by residents. Ranging from ad hoc urination, defecation, public sex and property break-ins to vomiting, fighting, landscape-trashing and underage drinking. Some of the public sex involved girls barely into their teens – and multiple partners. Generic boorish behavior — say, loud, hyphenated, obscene language — no longer made the short list of outrages.
And numerous homeowners, furious about their out-of-pocket expenses for property protection (fencing and off-duty officers), strongly objected to “a for-profit event that the neighborhoods underwrite.” It cost one condominium association $6,000 to safeguard its site.
“It’s out of hand,” stated Ferlita. “We’ve got to do better.”
But it wasn’t just the trespissing charge of the Bud Light Brigades that was referenced. This really wasn’t your basic pitchfork and flambeau crowd. These were homeowners and long-time residents who were as savvy as they were angry.
The rhetoric of “inverse eminent domain” and “attractive nuisances” was part of the presentation — with all of the less-than-subtle re-imbursement and lawsuit implications. And most disturbing of all, the confirmation of what a gun-owning homeowner could legally do when confronting drunks unlawfully entering his home. This Gasparilla, some had.
“We’re normalizing these crazy behaviors and saying it’s OK to violate the law at certain times of the year,” said Gina Firth, the UT associate dean of students. “I know this is supposed to be a good event, but it’s toxic. It needs to change or end.”
While suggestions included the banning of alcohol – and even beads – and the adding of many more port-o-lets, a consensus centered on both behavior and venue. Both need changing. Venue options included Kennedy Boulevard, Dale Mabry Highway and downtown-through-Channelside.
After the 90-minute session, Corrada emphasized that those from the city had “listened carefully” and that City Hall “was not your adversary on this. We will work to make this better. We will look at the route and the alcohol (ban). We will work with the promoter to make it better. This dialogue is the beginning.”
The next step, said Corrada, will be to sit down with Event Fest and Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla and review the neighborhood input.
The following step will be to report back to residents in 60 days.
Upshot
We all know what a gorgeous venue Bayshore Boulevard is – with its awesome vistas. To many, Tampa’s world class linear park is the perfect place for a really big parade. To move it would be, in the words of some folks, including one local journalist: “Blasphemy.”
I understand. And, frankly, I agree.
That’s why the Gasparilla Children’s Parade, which attracted nearly 250,000 spectators, 100 floats and 50 krewes this year and is prominent enough to warrant its own flyover and a pyrotechnic extravaganza, should stay on Bayshore. It’s the quintessential family event that looks like Tampa – black, white and brown. The wagons carry little children, not alcoholic provisions.
Sure, the logistics can get unwieldy, but the spillover into the neighborhoods is not that of drunks and punks, but families who have put in a long day. And the sometimes long port-o-let queues are still manageable. That’s because those in line are fueled by lemonade and bottled water and not the contents of a beer bong.
The Ye Mystic Krude version of Gasparilla, however, needs to relocate. The genie of street party dissipation and the entrenched rites of pissage that overwhelm the side streets, alleys, garages, yards and lawns of neighborhoods will not be rebottled. Regardless of whether alcohol concessions and coolers are banned. Not enough law enforcement. Not enough check points. It’s too many people uninterested in a parade and too few cops to adequately monitor and police them.
A huge parade that necessarily invades a neighborhood is an ongoing, open-ended invitation to mayhem. It certainly needs to be reined in – and assuredly re-routed. Downtown through Channelside — more conducive to crowd control and proximate enough to water to maintain the nautical link — makes the most sense.
But end the annual neighborhood assault before someone dies or is critically injured and the city is looking at an attractive nuisance lawsuit for countenancing and encouraging the street party from hell – under the guise of a civic-celebration parade.
The YMK hybrid is increasingly — and inherently — unsafe and inadequately policed. Move it. If not to Monday or a more innocent era, then to downtown. To do otherwise is negligent and, ironically, blasphemous if you really believe in public safety and private property.