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COLETTE BANCROFTThe Artists and Writers Ball, a celebration of imagination and hedonism, returns, at least in name. The founding artists and writers aren't happy.
They threw a party, and everybody came.
In the late 1970s, Ybor City slumped between the demise of the vibrant Latin Quarter and the birth of Beer Central. It was ramshackle and perilous, and a magnet for Tampa's artists.
They could rent empty stores and cigar factories dirt cheap, hang out with the old domino players in the cafes and the transvestites from El Goya nightclub, fuel themselves on cafe Cubano, paint and sculpt and shoot photos, and argue happily about whose art was best.
They were having too much fun not to share. So an intrepid little band of people decided to hold a party. They would do it in February, right after the night parade at the end of Gasparilla festivities, as an ironic poke at the exclusive pirate krewes and their invitation-only fancy dress balls.
This party would be for anyone who could pay $10 at the door. They called it the Artists and Writers Ball for the simple reason that the people who produced it - out of nerve, sweat, imagination and creative use of salvage - were artists and writers.
The balls became an annual event. Lured by such themes as "Bad Taste in Outer Space" and "Cowboys and Indians in Love," up to 3,000 wildly costumed people would cram into the Cuban Club.
Some people omitted the costumes and wore just accessories. The parties went on way past midnight, often ending only when the beer and booze ran out. A certain herbal aroma mixed with the smells of sweat and patchouli. And the club had lots of conveniently private little cubbyholes. What went on in them is lost in the mists of time.
The balls ended their 11-year run in 1988, falling to economic concerns, changes in the lives of their founders and exploding nightlife in revitalized Ybor City.
But now the Artists and Writers Ball is back.
And the artists and writers are pretty bummed about it.
* * *
The creators of the old ball got wind of the new ball in January.
Photographer Bud Lee, the founding father of the Artists and Writers Balls, had suffered a serious stroke, and friends had gathered at a benefit for him at the Lotus Room in Tampa. Most of the old party gang was there, including Bud's wife, art teacher Peggy Lee; David Audet, special projects manager at Hillsborough Community College Ybor campus; and Paul Wilborn, creative industries manager for the city of Tampa.
Naturally, they reminisced about wild days. Peggy Lee says, "So many people came up to me . . . and said, "Oh, this reminds me of the Artists and Writers Balls.' It was a great feeling to know that people had such fond memories."
She also heard something that distressed her: The ball was being revived.
"These two ladies were just telling Peggy what they were going to do," says Beverly Coe, another of the ball's founders and administrative assistant to artist James Rosenquist. "They were nice about it, but it was clear they had already made up their minds."
Soon, announcements started popping up of an Artists and Writers Ball on May 22, at the Italian Club in Ybor City.
It would be a benefit for the Mental Health Care Foundation. Its theme would be "Bohemian Bubbas "n Babes" Hardly anyone, it seemed safe to say, would be stoned or naked.
Judy Dato, a retired school administrator, is ball co-chairwoman and a member of the foundation's board. She says the board decided to use the Artists and Writers Ball name because its first fundraiser, last year, was called Starry Nights. "We thought, "Why don't we continue with the theme of artists?' "
She says she attended some of the original balls and remembers them as "so much fun. There are so many formal events, we thought this might be a breath of fresh air, let people dress as they would."
Dato says, "We spoke to the group that Bud Lee headed up. We contacted them to see if they had a copyright, and nobody did."
Ken Walters, who runs a company that makes promotional products, is co-chairman of the event. He says organizers talked to Wilborn about using the name. "Paul wrote a little story for us about how it all started, for the invitations," he says.
Walters says using the name isn't likely to create confusion between the new ball and the old ones. "So few folks here are natives that hardly anyone will remember them."
And he says the foundation's use of the name could help if the original organizers have another Artists and Writers Ball. "The more people hear the name, the more familiar it is."
Some might think the 50-something hipsters who founded the ball are just being cranky about the foundation borrowing the name of a party they haven't thrown in 16 years. But the irony of the event being hijacked by the very establishment it was created to mock seems to have revved up their attitude.
Peggy Lee says, "I'm not trying to diss the mental health people. They do great things. But so many people have said to me, "Hey, I heard you're doing another ball.'
"They've had a taste of the real Artists and Writers. We have a reputation to uphold."
Audet says he asked organizers not to use the name. In March, he received an e-mail from Walters agreeing to use "the description "honoring the spirit of' the Artists and Writers Ball" in ads, press releases and invitations.
But most ads and announcements call the event the Artists and Writers Ball, with no qualifying phrase. Audet says relations with its organizers have been contentious.
"One woman said to me, "We're going to do it better. And we're going to do it without the debauchery.' And I thought, well, what's the point?" he says.
* * *
Bud Lee says inspiration for the Artists and Writers Ball grew from an assignment to shoot photos of Mardi Gras for Geo magazine.
He had settled in Tampa in 1976 after a globe-trotting career as a photographer for Life, Esquire and other magazines. He fell in love with Ybor City's mix of cultures and was living and working in a space on Seventh Avenue. Bud and Peggy had one child and twins on the way when he threw the first Artists and Writers Ball, "Dante's Inferno," at the Cuban Club in 1978.
"We only had about 300 people," he says. "I sat on the steps and cried."
But he didn't give up. He held meetings with a small group of co-conspirators at the Don Quixote, a venerable Cuban restaurant in a building that is now part of Centro Ybor.
"It was just this ragamuffin bunch of people," he says. Among them was Audet, who had been a student at the University of South Florida when he won a photo contest judged by Bud Lee. Also on board for the second ball was Wilborn, then a reporter at the Tampa Tribune and a professional musician. He says Lee's embrace of all kinds of artists was an inspiration. "He saw no difference between Rosenquist and a little kid on the street who had some talent," Wilborn says.
Coe, who had met Bud Lee through her job at the Tampa Museum of Art, served as secretary and treasurer. Bud Lee, she says, "believed in the human theater of art. I felt privileged to work with him."
The second ball, in February 1979, was "Daughters of Bizarro."
"That's the one everybody remembers," Wilborn says.
Because of the low attendance at the first ball, this one was held in a smaller space in the Centro Espanol building. But word had gotten around.
Wilborn, who booked the bands and handled ticket sales, says, "To everyone's amazement, we sold 600 tickets. It was a complete and utter sellout.
"We had a mock coronation, kind of spoofing Gasparilla, Tampa's whole social mystique." Bud and Peggy Lee were king and queen.
Wilborn says of that party, "It was like, man, there are 700 cool people in Tampa, and they're all in this building. They all get it."
Bud Lee remembers staging "elaborate nude tableaux, with real people."
Wilborn remembers those, too. "You walked in and on the stairs there were two seminude girls and a seminude guy, you know, with the appropriate parts covered, but they were all wrapped up in a giant boa constrictor." His eyes get a little misty. "I ended up dating one of those gals."
All the decoration was done by local artists, who used whatever materials they could scrounge. "That ball was always Dumpster-driven," Audet says.
The next year, the ball moved back to the Cuban Club, a large building with a basement cantina, a first-floor theater, a third-floor ballroom, an outdoor skating rink and numerous other spaces.
Decorating took enormous effort and ingenuity. Volunteers ranged from the kids in Peggy Lee's art classes to welders and carpenters. They created things from a New York skyline made of refrigerator boxes to a giant spaceship so heavy it nearly pulled the ballroom walls down.
"We always went for the tacky," Audet says. "We were really serious about it. If something looked too good, we spray-painted it.
"We used every nook and cranny."
And they needed them. From 1980 to 1988, the ball drew between 2,000 and 3,000 people each year.
The ball even brought in the upper crust it set out to spoof.
"The pirates were our best customers," Wilborn says. "The pirates are the ones who are most nostalgic about the party. I run into those guys all the time."
Audet says, "What I remember from the balls is the smiling faces, the strange mix of people. That was the best thing: the cross-cultural aspect."
Goddesses swayed in swings hung on the stair landings, and Seminoles came in tribal dress. Pirates shared rum with kids tricked out as intergalactic trailer trash. Performers from the legendary drag shows at El Goya dropped in, Judy Garlands and Barbra Streisands in sequins and makeup, for once the underdressed people at the party.
There might have been a bebop poetry reading on one floor, a hard-core punk group playing to pogoing dancers in the cantina, an impromptu chorus line high-kicking to a big band's New York, New York in the ballroom, a man at a grand piano on the sidewalk playing Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
Costumes were crafted from feathers and palm fronds, satin and velvet, bones and bubble wrap, spangles and strategic body paint. The only thing you weren't likely to see was a rented costume.
"The balls were always a mix of creativity and debauchery," Wilborn says. "Unfortunately, a lot of the creativity fell away in the new Ybor."
* * *
Bud Lee says it was always his hope that the Artists and Writers Balls would serve as inspiration for other events, and they did. In different ways, they were a progenitor for Guavaween, Tropical Heatwave, Gala Corina and others.
Wilborn says, "The last year we did it, Ybor Square was throwing a free party the same night; there were other parties going on. I thought, our mission here was done.
"But we never figured it would be a forever break."
The balls never made money. Admission was set low to attract all kinds of people. Ticket sales usually just about covered expenses, organizers say. The big profits went to the Cuban Club, which operated the cash bars.
Audet is considering throwing another Artists and Writers Ball as a benefit for Bud Lee. The four Lee children, now grown, helped put on the January benefit and, he says, got a taste of the joy of creating an event like that.
"The balls are not over. They're on hiatus," Audet says. "I never thought they were done."
Dato, co-chairwoman of the Mental Health Care Foundation's event, says, "This is not going to be like the other Artists and Writers Balls."
It will include an open bar, hors d'oeuvres, valet parking, entertainment and a silent auction. "Most of our silent auction items are art," she says.
Walters, the co-chairman, says several writers will sign books for the auction. "We have some books from Bob Miles, who has written two books on Warren Buffett."
As of last week, about 350 tickets had been sold. Walters says the folks that went to the balls probably won't go to this one. "The original ones appealed to a certain group of folks at a lower cost. This one is more for the conservative folks who think they're being nonconservative," he says.
For the original organizers, who goes isn't as important as whose vision it was. Coe says, "Bud created the ball. It really was his idea, his perception and conception. It's just not too cool to take it over.
"I wish them well raising funds for their cause, but I wish they had opened a dialogue."
Audet says, "It takes a lot of chutzpah to just take the name of something like that. It's like deciding you're going to call your band the Rolling Stones, and you say, "Hey, Mick, is that okay? I don't have a drummer, and I still need to learn to play guitar, but I'd like to use your name.' "
Bud Lee calls it "kind of sad."
Peggy Lee is thinking about the next party. "You have to one-up yourself. And I'm afraid if people go to this, they'll come away thinking, "Boy, those Artists and Writers people, they've gotten really old and tired.' "
-- For information about the Mental Health Care Foundation's Artists and Writers Ball, call (813) 272-2878, ext. 246.
-- Colette Bancroft can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com