Category: Tampa Bay

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.

            Too bad Attorney General Eric Holder, the first African-American to hold that position, didn’t contact either Faith Woodard or Tariq Sharrieff before giving his infamous “cowards” speech as his contribution to Black History Month. He could have used their perspective.

Both Hillsborough County teenagers showed refreshing maturity and insight in their recent presentations on the contemporary American black experience. They weren’t dealt grievance cards, so they weren’t playing any. They addressed reality as they saw it and lived it, whether it was politically correct – or racially safe – or not.

            Woodard, a 14-year-old eight grader at Rogers Middle School in Riverview, spoke at the Tampa Organization of Black Affairs’ annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast. She spoke of King and Rosa Parks and quoted Robert F. Kennedy, Aristotle and Maya Angelou. She faulted her contemporaries’ rebellious attitudes and challenged parents to do a better job of combating a popular culture that was a large part of the problem.

            “With the advancement of technology, hip-hop, rap music and TV have paved the way for the African-American youth to pick up thuggery as a way of life,” said Woodard. “Rebellion is idolized, crime is glorified and education is criticized.”

            Sharrieff, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Tampa’s Jesuit High, gave the keynote address at the Black History Month celebration at Middleton High School. He also called out adults to act like, well, adults.

            “Believe it or not, I have some friends who tell their parents what they will do and what they won’t do, and basically run the home,” noted Sharrieff. “If you adults don’t see this as your responsibility, …then society as we know it will cease to exist.”

            These certainly weren’t the voices of cowardice. They were the voices of a generation who see irresponsibility and dysfunction where others see ravages of slavery and historic grievance.

            They are the real, audacious voices of hope.

            And while we’re on the subject of cell phones and the role of parents and school administrators, let’s not forget the Florida Legislature. As noted, this state doesn’t ban cell phones in schools, but leaves their regulation up to local districts.

What it needs to re-think is that Florida has no law that prohibits — or even limits — cell phone use while driving. That obviously includes texting teenagers. That’s obviously an increasingly scary scenario.

            The National Safety Council now equates cell phoning while behind the wheel to drunken driving. It’s that dangerous. The NSC estimates that cell phone use while driving increases the risk of an accident fourfold. The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis attributes more than 2,600 deaths and 12,000 serious injuries a year to cell phone use by motorists.

            Chances are, this won’t be the year that the Legislature finally gets revenue-raising religion or helps everyone’s property taxes “drop like a rock.” We all know the politics of that.

But banning – or at least restricting – cell phone use while driving? What exactly is the constituency for enabling behavior that is the equivalent of drunk driving?  Especially for novice drivers.

            It seems fitting to accord the final word to Janet Froetscher, president of the NSC.

            “When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away,” she reasons. “It’s time to take the cell phone away.”

            Well done, Learning Gate Community School. Adults acting like adults.

            At LGCS, cell phones have been banned on campus. Students must either leave them at home or at the front office.

            Appealing to reason or just rules – given the ubiquity of cell phones in the culture – hadn’t worked. Text-messaging and calls during class were incompatible with a serious learning environment. And it wasn’t just adolescents being envelope-pushing adolescents. Too often it was their parents on the sending end of those less-than-emergency calls.

            And, of course, the ban pre-empts “sexting” at school, which speaks volumes about the challenging times we live in – and a whole separate, disturbing topic.

            LGCS did what every other county school should also do.  

Currently, Florida law permits students to carry cell phones – with the proviso that local school boards can regulate their use. As a result, Hillsborough County schools have adopted a “see and hear no evil” policy: Students generally can carry them, but they must be turned off and out of sight.

As if.

            To no one’s surprise, students see such a half measure — bring it, but resist the temptation to use it — for what it is. An obligatory, token attempt by out-of-touch adults to rain on their cell phone rite of passage. As a result, when they bring them — it’s hardly for non-use during school.

            And, no, we don’t need to keep over-reacting to Columbine. We can all agree that cell phones during a lock-down with killers on the loose would be helpful. But let’s not countenance the travesty of ongoing, academics-undermining intrusions premised on the unlikely possibility of a Columbine sequel. 

            (Meaningful, pro-active measures – from bullying and dress-code guidelines to more responsible monitoring of at-risk adolescents with unconscionable access to weaponry – should be the focus on that issue.)

            Frankly, it would also help if more parents would complement the efforts of schools by focusing more on cell phones — and their use and misuse – than cell towers.

            Congratulations to Megan Allen, the Cleveland Elementary teacher who has been named Hillsborough Teacher of the Year.

            But here’s some unsolicited advice on that annual award: Give more than one. Here’s why. Allen was chosen from eight finalists. Only one, a science teacher at Chamberlain High School, was from the secondary side.

            The template for good teaching is obviously not the same for elementary teachers and secondary teachers – with the exception that they both involve motivating students. Allen, it was noted, is known for “unexpected outfits and goofy songs.” Indeed, whatever works. Allen, it should be pointed out, is more than popular. She gets results.

            Secondary teachers are subject specific. They are also impacted by FCAT subplots and adolescent rites of passage. They build on the critical foundation laid at the elementary level.

Thus, both teacher levels are complementary – but, by definition, different in focus, content and group dynamic. As a result, the evaluative criteria cannot be the same. This is at odds with a single, overall Teacher of the Year honor being fairly awarded. Comparables are not being compared.

The solution: Give both Secondary Teacher of the Year and Elementary Teacher of the Year awards.

            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.

            My initial reaction was doubtlessly the same as many others when I heard about Florida spending $100,000 to upgrade 1,500 televisions to accommodate the national switch from analog to digital broadcasts.

            During such dire budget straits, we’re spending $100,000 for what? If prisoners don’t have television, too bad. Let’s call it part of the punishment. Don’t want to do the time? Don’t want to miss “Boston Legal”? Don’t do the crime. Next case.

            But I also hearken back to a tour I once took of Tampa’s Orient Road Jail.  We saw the televisions, which seemed to reinforce the label of the “Orient Road Country Club.”

            What we found out is that those TVs are more for the guards than the prisoners. The guards will tell you the TVs can help make the prisoners more malleable and manageable. Which equates to safety.

That’s especially relevant now with burgeoning prison populations and personnel cuts creating ever higher prisoner-to-guard ratios.

            Recently I wrote a piece about the Gasparilla parades, both the children’s and the adult, Ye Mystic Krewe version. In short, I said that Ye Mystic Krude  – for self-evident reasons – needs to be moved. If not back to Monday or another era, at least to downtown – and then through to, of all places, the entertainment districts. That would ensure that what’s invaded won’t be residential neighborhoods.

Still seems like a reasonable enough alternative.

            Last Saturday’s invasion of the 350,000, including the usual besotted teens, came and went, and we all survived. In fact, the St. John’s Episcopal Church’s “Safe House” reported only one case of alcohol-induced coma. And no incidents of copulation in the church itself. And, yes, there is precedent.

Officially, 141 people were hauled in by authorities for various forms of wayward conduct. But because you can’t prove a negative, no statistics are available on how much was countenanced because, well, you can’t haul them in by the thousands.

Of course, most Bayshore Boulevard intersections – especially the one at Willow Avenue — were alcoholic mosh pits with the Bud Blight spillover filtering across residential lawns and through side streets and alleys. They, in turn, became the de facto domain of the usual trespissing and canabissing suspects.

But no deaths or serious injuries. Not unlike recent hurricane seasons, we dodged that bullet again this year. And part of that bullet’s trajectory is legal. At least one attorney has noted that if his kid were hurt at Gasparilla, he’d like his chances with an “attractive nuisance” case against the city and EventFest, the co-organizers.

The operative word here is “dodge.” Nothing’s been disarmed.

Actually, I wasn’t going to do this recap until I recently read some public statements by those who should know better.

Shannon Edge, Tampa’s director of neighborhood and community relations was incredulous when told of accounts of parade day hijinks that included public sex and indiscreet bowel movements. Plus the more pedestrian tales of fighting and landscape urinating. Her response when confronted with resident accounts of dissipation and disgust: “We were like, ‘Wow, we didn’t realize that was going on with you.’” According to the St. Petersburg Times, Edge characterized the accounts as “eye-opening” and “disturbing.”

Now, it’s official. Edge, who is an affable, conscientious liaison between City Hall and the neighborhoods, is like, in the know now. She won’t be pooh-poohing resident complaints.

The comments of Darrell Stefany, the president of EventFest, are disingenuousness at best. He told the Times that both parades are “family events from the start to the finish.” Sure, Swiss Family Robinson one week, the Manson family the next. The Ozzie Nelsons and then the Ozzie Osbournes.

He pointed out that, if indeed, residents were seeing more than they used to, it was merely a reflection of what’s seen in the popular culture.

“I think that’s more of a statement about society and culture today than it is about Gasparilla,” he noted to the Times.

No, Stefany’s dumbfounding rationale – an excuse-mongering exercise in enabling mass misconduct – is the real statement. One that truly speaks volumes about society and culture. It says that in confrontation with all that’s most deplorable about the popular culture, we adults surrender. If it’s on cable and online, it’s off limits to challenge, let alone change.

Thanks again, Darrell, for helping make it all worse.

            That bizarre reaction of family members of the St. Petersburg teen accused of shooting that undercover cop is still reverberating in that community. But the implications are disturbing for all of us.

             To recap: Two undercover detectives — on high alert because of a rash of convenience store robberies, some violent — took note of three suspicious teens. Their suspicions were confirmed when two of them covered their faces, went inside a Suncoast Exxon gas station, and robbed it at gunpoint.

            They were confronted outside. Accounts vary – but not this part: one of the officers was shot four times. James Seay, 18, of Gulfport is accused of being the shooter.

            Seay’s relatives reacted as if Seay were the victim.

            “If you were dressed undercover – they are not in uniform – and you grab my arm, I’m going to defend myself, too,” asserted the suspect’s sister. Presumably, the suspect was downright lucky to have been packing heat when his arm was grabbed.

            The suspect’s uncle, the Rev. Daryl Seay, upped the rhetorical ante.

            “I think it’s just as much their fault as it is the boys,” noted Rev. Seay.

            Indeed, the Rev. really said that.

And now a 42-year-old married father is in serious – but stable – condition after taking four bullets in the aftermath of an armed robbery. Worse yet, some folks apparently think he had it coming.

 How disgusting is that? Moreover, how worrisome is it for police officers and law-abiding residents of St. Petersburg — already troubled and frightened by a mini crime wave — to learn that this sort of criminal rationalization is also preying on their community?

Has Hillsborough Community College no shame?

            It’s a given that it has no sense of history when it comes to architecture. Contemporary and functional, thank you, whether it’s for the Dale Mabry campus, where such a design works, or the Ybor City campus, where it affronts.

            HCC is currently pressing on with construction of its 63,000-square-foot Ybor City student center in the same inappropriately modern design. Moreover, it has been dismissive of local input, including that of the neighboring Cuban Club.

How ironic that when it comes to respecting the historic charm and architectural integrity of Ybor, an institution of higher learning doesn’t get it – but the local McDonald’s and Burger King, as well as the Hampton and Hilton hotels, do?  

            And using an ostensible exemption from architectural guidelines is loopholier-than-thou arrogance. What’s wrong with simply doing the right thing? If Golden Arches can be compromised for the sake of aesthetics in an historical setting, why not a glass façade?

            HCC is a community college that has learned nothing over the years and failed local history. By virtue of its incumbent campus, it is already responsible for one Ybor eyesore. Now the festering continues apace. That’s its cavalier contribution to historic Ybor City, the Latin soul of Tampa.