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Life after the Masquerade: Where's Ybor heading now?

By JAY CRIDLIN
Published March 17, 2006

YBOR CITY - Twenty years ago it didn't exist. Today it's out of business.

But few places reflect Ybor City's ever-changing nightlife landscape like the Masquerade.

From its early days at 1902 E Seventh Ave., the current home of Empire, to the day it closed last month at 1503 E Seventh Ave., the Masquerade drew huge night and weekend crowds to Ybor City.

The venue was a playhouse, dance club and stage for acts like Phish, Mos Def, Dave Matthews Band, Smashing Pumpkins, the Killers and Ice-T.

The closing represents a big shift in an afterhours climate that has been evolving along Seventh Avenue for more than two decades.

During the 1950s and '60s, the once-booming cigar capital devolved into a rundown borough lined with empty storefronts. But in the mid 1970s, artists began returning to Ybor's quiet streets, drawn by the area's low rents and historic Latin charm.

By 1986, Ybor City's 100th year, the area was known for its eclectic punks and neo-hippies. Outsiders flocked to artistic and cultural celebrations like Guavaween, Tropical Heatwave and the Artists and Writers Ball. Yet Ybor City was perceived wrongly, some said, as a high-crime area, keeping many visitors away after dark.

"You could literally - and people did - shoot a gun up Seventh Avenue and not hit anything on a Saturday night,'' says Paul Wilborn, Tampa's creative industries manager and a longtime Ybor City regular.

Ybor scenesters had few entertainment options 20 years ago. There was the Ritz, a former X-rated movie house; Rough Riders, a popular pub in Ybor Square; and a new gay club, Tracks, in the El Goya building at the 1400 block of Seventh.

In 1987, Masquerade opened at 19th Street and Seventh Avenue. Over the next three years, the club booked rising alternative acts like the Sugarcubes, Jane's Addiction and Nirvana. These shows drew college kids from the Universities of Tampa and South Florida and offered hope that Ybor could flourish as a nighttime destination.

By the 1990s, a handful of dance clubs had opened in Ybor City. Some were alternative or avant-garde, like the Castle. Others played top-40 hits.

People started flocking to Seventh. Landlords saw the money to be made in the entertainment business, and Ybor's other mainstays - artists, small merchants - got squeezed out, clearing room for more bars.

The city started blocking traffic on Seventh Avenue on weekend nights, encouraging a Mardi Gras-like vibe at clubs such as Harpo's and Frankie's Patio.

A beloved record store, Blue Chair Music, closed to make way for a nightclub. Sweet Charity, an artsy clothing shop, burned and never reopened. Newspaper columnists decried the "barification,'' "yuppification'' and "EPCOTization'' of a once-hip hub.

In reality, Ybor City had never been hotter. The Foo Fighters and De La Soul played Masquerade; Mercury Rev and Warren Zevon played the Rubb next door. Chef Jeannie Pierola - now the top chef at Bern's - cultivated one of Tampa Bay's most buzzed-about new menus at the Latin restaurant Boca.

Yet with a club on every corner, a new reputation grew by the weekend: This was a place where college kids went to get drunk. "The bars ended up dictating the entire character of the district,'' said Manny Leto, outreach director for the Ybor City Museum Society.

In 1996, hoping to branch out, city officials lauded plans for a $38-million shopping, dining and entertainment complex in the heart of Ybor City.

The area is still a hot spot. Clubs like Code, Prana, Fuel and the Amphitheater are hugely popular, as are restaurants such as the Acropolis and Bernini. Centro Ybor's 20-screen cineplex and the Tampa Improv attract a diverse, if slightly older, crowd.

But Ybor now has competition that wasn't there a decade ago. Tampa has shiny new nightspots, like Channelside, International Plaza and the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Hyde Park and downtown St. Petersburg have surged to new life. St. Petersburg's Jannus Landing and State Theatre, for example, have absorbed the Masquerade's canceled concerts.

Moreover, Tampa has reopened Seventh Avenue to cars, enacted an 11 p.m. curfew for kids under 18, and adopted tougher noise rules - all of which has affected Ybor's afterhours marketplace.

"Five years ago, there were so many people here that with the streets closed, you could just open up your doors and make money,'' said club promoter Paul Gamache, 25. "Now it's so much more difficult. So many clubs have actually gone out of business, because they don't have a game plan.''

The Masquerade's closing came after the property's developers, Capitano & Garcia LLC, filed a lawsuit Feb. 22 alleging the club owed more than $90,000 in rent and other costs. Mark Wall, an attorney for the developers, said he doesn't know his clients' plans to pursue new tenants.

Nightclubs are "an essential part of Ybor's personality,'' said Deanne Roberts, whose marketing firm was hired by the city to remold Ybor's image. But a new ad campaign, set to launch by April, won't highlight the young partygoers who dot Seventh on weekends. "The businesses in Ybor want to reach a more affluent demographic, and that means older,'' Roberts said.

If the Ybor City of the future feels less unpredictable and more mainstream, so be it.

"I really think we're going to see Ybor City find its balance ... not the wooly place it was in the '80s, or as edgy as it was in the '90s,'' Wilborn said. "It's never going to be what it was before.''

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report, which used information from Times archives. Jay Cridlin can be reached at (727) 893-8336 or cridlin@tampabay.com.

[Last modified March 16, 2006, 12:18:36]