A lot of people look forward to Gasparilla all year. No crowd is too thick. No booty of beads too big. No Bloody Mary too early.
It's Tampa to the max, and even the meek aren't afraid to indulge.
Others, though, dread Gasparilla.
They hate the gridlock, the trash and the drunkenness. They find the whole obsession with beads absurd.
WHILE I SELDOM pity people who live steps from Bayshore Boulevard, on Gasparilla day I do. Imagine having 150,000 revelers stampede through your yard. And all of them want to use the bathroom.
Some people make a point of getting out of town. The parade gets ho-hum after you've seen it 100 times. Besides, how many beads does one person need?
Last year, Cheryl Davidson escaped to a beach house in Englewood. She wanted plenty of distance between her and the masses who show no regard for her property.
In the 17 years she has lived a block from Bayshore, she's pretty much seen it all: strangers sitting on her front porch, couples having sex under her bushes and people parking in her driveway.
SHE TAKES MOST of it in stride. Some things make her fume. Like when parents leave dirty diapers on her grass. Or the time when a pregnant woman threw up in her flower bed. And it wasn't morning.
"We live here," Davidson said. "I don't think it occurs to them."
Stewart Lippe, who has lived a bead's-throw from the parade for more than two decades, says he meets new people every year. From the college girls banging on his door to use the bathroom to the homeless bums rooting through his yard for cans.
"It's an unusual day," he says.
To describe it mildly.
Lippe used to throw parties every year until he got tired of doing so. This year, during a "moment of bad judgment" and after a few glasses of wine, he agreed to let a friend borrow his place for a bash.
"I woke up the next day and thought, "Did I really do that?"'
Yep. Company's coming. All 150 Gasparilla-giddy guests.
Neighbors say the event got extra wild in 1988 when the parade moved to Saturdays. Before that, it fell on Mondays and drew largely a South Tampa crowd.
These days, Gasparilla attracts people from far and wide. It's featured on Tampa tourism sites and got national attention when it coincided with the 2001 Super Bowl. This marks its centennial year.
Homeowners along Bayshore have front-row seats.
Several years ago, Margo Harrod and her family began hiring four off-duty police officers to protect their property.
"It just got too hard to keep people out of the yard," she said.
They have a lot of bushes, and partiers didn't want to wait in line for a Port-o-let, she said. (Apparently, the 400 or so portable potties along the parade route aren't enough.)
The cost is worth the peace of mind, she said. Strange things happen on Gasparilla.
Tops on Harrod's list: the year someone sneaked inside their garage apartment to take a shower. They left wet towels on the floor but didn't take anything.
If only every Gasparilla-goer could be that polite - and squeaky clean.
THE LAST DROP: Shame on anyone who drives 80 mph down Bayshore Boulevard. The 40 mph speed limit is plenty reasonable. What a tragedy that jogger Melissa McKenzie died there Tuesday.
