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Getting into the spirit of Gasparilla? You won't be alone

By SUE CARLTON
Published January 27, 2006

In the spirit of the thousands of pirates and partiers who will descend on South Tampa on Saturday, a few fun facts about Gasparilla:

Number of Tampa police officers attending: 820, plus 300 Hillsborough sheriff's deputies, plus 181 off-duty officers working parties, homes and businesses.

Number of parking tickets last year: 289.

Length of the parade: 3.5 miles.

Who's in it: 90 floats, 14 bands, 30 krewes.

Historic fact: Gasparilla used to be celebrated on a Monday, with schools and local government closed.

Another historic fact: The first Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla mock-captured the city in masks and on horses in 1904. Today, the krewe just drops in on the mayor and gets the key.

Number of black men in the 800-member Ye Mystic Krewe, which integrated in 1992: One? 10? 20? The krewe won't say. Maybe that's the "mystic" part.

Estimated attendance: Tampa police Maj. and Gasparilla veteran John Bennett guesses 500,000.

Most common arrests: Disorderly conduct, fighting.

Number of boating under the influence charges last year by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission: 15, half as many as 2004.

Interesting legal fact: To make an arrest for baring breasts for beads, police must have a complaint from someone who is offended.

Related fact: Almost no one ever complains.

Non-Gasparilla things cops have to think about tomorrow anyway: How to get theatergoers to and from the jam-packed matinee of Wicked at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, smack in the middle of party central. Also, how to get bodies to the morgue downtown should they need to.

Best way to get a cop to take away your beer: Carry a glass bottle.

Most enterprising sights spotted by Maj. Bennett last year: 1. Parade squatters who camped out at dawn, put up plastic mesh fencing to square off a huge compound and moved a public portable toilet into their commune. (Not allowed.) 2. Young men pushing a keg in a shopping cart and selling beer by the cup. At 9 a.m.

Number of kegs confiscated last year: 15.

Number of Cuban sandwiches expected to be sold at La Tropicana restaurant in Ybor City: 600 .

Amount of Guinness expected to be sold at Four Green Fields Irish Pub, just off the parade route: About 4,000 pints. At five bucks a pint, and a $10 cover. And it's not even a day when people drink Guinness.

Number of pieces of furniture - bar stools, tables, chairs - Four Green Fields will keep inside the pub for Gasparilla: Zero. "There's just no room," says owner Colin Breen.

Why otherwise sane grownups with jobs and college degrees will scream and dance and do just about anything to get a pirate to toss them a 50-cent strand of beads: Kristen Salomon, a social psychologist at USF, points to deindividuation - "the idea that in a large crowd you become more anonymous, and you're much more susceptible to doing things that the crowd is kind of telling you to do instead of your own personal values and beliefs and attitudes."

Um, might alcohol help?

"Absolutely."

Forecast for Saturday: Beautiful.

Research by Cathy Wos of the Times. Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 27, 2006, 01:20:12]