Now we’ve added “Flugtag” to the Tampa lexicon for that which is festive and funky and fun. Move over Gasparilla and Guavaween.
Actually, the Red Bull Flugtag, a celebration of home-made “flying” machines that drew some 100,000 spectators and three dozen participating teams to downtown recently, could carve out its own unique niche.
Frankly, you can make the case that Gasparilla is increasingly compromised by besotted teens and assorted agitators raining on the parade route, and that Guavaween has morphed from bawdy wit and the creative class to crude clichés and perimeter punks.
If Flugtag returns, and the city certainly hopes so, may it remain what it was two Saturdays ago. A salute to teamwork, youthful exuberance, the creative use of PVC pipe and duct tape, and unadulterated fun. There was no need for a Safe House. Only five misdemeanor arrests.
“For us, it was uneventful,” said Tampa Police Department spokesperson Andrea Davis. “We like uneventful.”
According to Tampa Convention Center Administrator John Moors, the city would love a Flugtag II, but that’s up to Red Bull. “I don’t think they plan a long way in advance,” said Moors. “A year or so – and a fairly limited (Tampa, Chicago, Portland, Ore., in 2008) schedule. “But they definitely had a positive experience here in Tampa,” added Moors. “That record crowd. Who could ask for anything better than that? And it was a whole lot of fun.”
And while nobody outdid Icarus, Flugtag, which began in Vienna, Austria, in 1991, did ascend to new heights on the hilarity scale. The themed entries ranged from Baywatch, Gilligan’s Island, the Red Baron and the Flintstones to a flying roller skate, UT Minaret, fire engine, rubber duckie and a Cuban sandwich. Even Elvis dropped in. Locals, especially students, were well represented — as were out-of-towners from as far as Texas and Massachusetts.
Not to put too serious a point to it, but the timing was more than fortuitous. Given all the usual reasons to be gloomy or cynical, could there have been a better time for laugh therapy? The themed flying machines, the whimsical choreography, the aerial high jinks, the comic splashdowns. It was fun, and it was funny. Thanks.
Too often, in the era of an individually-wired citizenry, the virtual experience and on-line everything, there are decreasing opportunities to literally come together as a community. And as opposed to a game or a concert, this one was free.
It also fostered teamwork – whether among aeronautical engineering students, former lifeguards, firefighters or the generically goofy. Just a guess, but I’d wager that when (not if) Flugtag, The Sequel occurs, competition will feature a number of corporate entrants – the slapstick, team-building counterpart of those who compete in the International Dragon Boat races that have proven so popular.
Flugtag also underscored downtown Tampa as the place to revel with a cause. Where traffic and humidity – if not gravity – can be defied for a good time.