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The Castle calls

Tighten the corsets and grab the eyeliner. Years after Goth culture took hold here, moody partiers still gravitate to a dark club in Ybor City.

By EMILY NIPPS
Published August 17, 2006

[Times photos: Daniel Wallace]

Inside her Clearwater apartment, Summer Gray, 22, and Dwight Hatfield, 30, prepare for a night out at the Castle.

	Approaching midnight on the eve of 6/6/06, the Castle in Ybor City is packed. Bartenders pour drinks, and Prodigy’s Firestarter spills from the speakers as images are projected onto the video screens.
	Clubgoers gather on the brick-paved street in front of the Castle after closing time. They often cross paths with the “Seventh People,” who sometimes point and laugh.
	After gluing eyelash extensions below his eyes, Dwight Hatfield curls his real eyelashes as he preps for a night out at the Castle. Hatfield, who was vice president of his high school class in West Virginia, moved to Florida five years ago. “I think most people want to do what we do,” he says. “We actually do it.”
	Summer Gray helps remove lint from Aaron Bakers black jacket as they make the finishing preparations for a night out at the Castle.

A couple of blocks away from the strewn dollar-beer cups, the girls gone wild and the thumping bass of Ybor City’s Seventh Avenue, a quiet, somber line formed outside the Castle.

Inside, bartender Teresa Perricone, 33, was organizing liquor bottles behind the bar in her usual Castle garb, a skintight corset, black hose and thick false eyelashes.

Her 35-year-old husband, Sean, a Castle DJ , sorted through her makeup box at the bar, plucked out a black pencil and traced thick lines around his eyes.

After 15 years, this still hasn’t gotten old: the black, the heavy makeup, the darkness, the sheer weight of being Goth.

They thought it would end when they were in their early 20s and working as bouncers at DNA, a now-defunct alternative club on Nebraska Avenue. That’s when Teresa, a former punk rock girl, got pregnant. That’s when Sean, a former skater kid, had to be a man. “We swore we would never work in nightclubs again,” Teresa said.

They had a baby boy (now 12) and got real jobs, she as a pediatric dental assistant, he as a supervisor for a manufacturing company. They wiped off the heavy eye makeup, shed the chunky silver jewelry. They moved to the Tampa suburb of Carrollwood and got a dependable Volvo and a sport utility.

It was a nice life. But six years ago, a love for morose-sounding music and a taste for the morbid drew them back to the Castle, Tampa’s Goth headquarters.

And now here they were, 30-something parents on a Saturday night. Teresa served drinks to men with fangs and women with Mohawks. Sean played punk and industrial classics and pumped his fist in the air as he watched everything from dreamy interpretive dancers to half-naked old men to break-dancing zombies below him.

He can count on this scene, and usually the same exact people, night after night. They are like one big, dysfunctional family and this is where they’re at home.

“They’re the most loyal,” Sean said. “They always come back. They’re always like, 'I’m moving to California!’ and then they’re back in two weeks.”

*** 

Goth never died in this town. The Castle itself is a Tampa institution, every bit a part of Ybor City culture as cigars and trolleys. It outlived Tracks, one of the first gay dance clubs in Tampa, and it outlived the Masquerade, once a favorite of the ’90s rave scene.

It survived the addition of the $45-million Centro Ybor complex six years ago, when Muvico, Starbucks and Gameworks moved in across the street. While the rest of Ybor has been trying to find itself, the Castle has stayed exactly the same.

Tom Gold, the Friday “Coffin Classics” and Saturday “Communion After Dark” DJ, has been playing the same music night after night for the past 10 years. He’s pretty sure he holds some kind of record.

For some at the Castle, the scene is warm and comfortable, an escape from the drudgery of suburban life and working for the man. For others, the scene represents self-expression and a lack of inhibition.

“It’s the only place where you can tie up a woman and she won’t call the cops,” said Kurtis Marsh, a 42-year-old New Port Richey man who wears a top hat and black nail polish. He lives with his mother and walks with a cane after hip replacement surgery.

“You can come however you are, no matter who you are or what you’re into,” said Steve Huff, who wears a dog collar and carries a whip. One Clearwater professional likes to use the word “survivor,” especially after a recent divorce, and prefers hanging out in his long black robe and pentagram pendant around other survivors like him.

That familiar weight-of-the-world expression is worn by nearly every patron, old or young, who lines up outside the Castle after dark. They  come for the like-minded company and the chance to pull the leather pants out of the closet. They come to hear Skinny Puppy, Christian Death and the Cruxshadows.

They share a love for songs about bleakness and corrosion and bloody coffins, and they enjoy the enduring friendships and warm memories, the good times that happen when they’re trying to be sad.

***

Some say the bay area Goth movement began, oddly enough, at a Bennigan’s on Tyrone Boulevard in St. Petersburg. In 1991, a few disaffected kids started renting space in the patio area on Tuesday nights and playing old wave and dark alternative music, drawing increasingly large crowds. Eventually, a DJ from the Castle approached the group about starting a Goth night there.

“On a Friday night, no less. That was huge,” said Aaron Baker, one of the Bennigan’s originals. He now wears a dress shirt to work at a software consulting firm, but still dips into his girlfriend’s makeup before heading to the Castle.

The place boomed in the early years, drawing people who thought they didn’t fit anywhere else — the dark and depressed, the gays, the punks. It became the hangout for a guy who dresses like Peter Pan and another man, now in his 50s, who wears revealing lingerie and goes by “the Senator.” Some take freaky in a whole new direction, dancing in cupcake or foam McFry Guy costumes.

Tampa’s Goth scene seemed to reach peak fame in 1997, when Saturday Night Live began running a recurring sketch called “Goth Talk.” The sketch was about a cable access show broadcast from the Tampa home of two brooding, melodramatic Goth teens who called themselves Azrael Abyss and Circe Nightshade. They opened their show to a Bauhaus song, talked about death, darkness and Azrael’s job at Cinnabon.

 Azrael’s jock older brother would wreck everything by walking on the set in a Lightning jersey and calling Azrael by his real name, Todd.
Saturday Night Live cast members have said that they set the skit in Tampa because it was the most non-Goth place imaginable. Many area Goths don’t buy that, and some even claim to know the people who inspired the sketch.

About the same time, Florida’s Marilyn Manson climbed his way from small Tampa rock gigs to stardom. His shocking appearance and bizarre, bloody performances brought a Goth icon to the forefront of American culture. Thanks in part to Manson, kids are still discovering Goth. They buy some of their clothes at a Nasdaq-traded company called Hot Topic that sells Goth gear at the mall.

“Now any 12-year-old kid can go in and buy a devil-worshipping T-shirt,” Baker said. “They think, 'Weird is good because my parents don’t like weird.’ ”

The older Goths worry that the kids have diluted the scene. Goth is not necessarily underground or alternative or even dark anymore. It’s a mishmash of raver kids and Napoleon Dynamite T-shirts and grunge rockers and Harry Potter enthusiasts.

“Now kids look at it as just another style,” Baker said.

*** 

It’s no wonder “Goth Talk” feels so familiar to the Goths. They’ve suffered this kind of teasing for years.

Late at night in Ybor City, the line between Seventh Avenue and the Castle blurs and the two worlds collide. From time to time the more courageous Seventh Avenue partiers venture inside the Castle.

“ 'Let’s do this,’ ” assistant manager Rob Ballistera said. “That’s what they say when they come in here: 'Let’s do this!’ ”

Goths like to see themselves as diverse and open-minded people. They say they hate to be judged, and likewise, try not to stereotype others. But sometimes, the “Seventh People” can be real jerks.

“Usually, if we have any fights break out here, it’s college night on Seventh,” said Cynthia Williams, the Castle manager.

The Seventh People point and laugh. They yell at the bartenders. They touch the hired dancers, who don’t mind being ogled or tipped, but would rather not be groped by some jock in a Gators hat.

“Pretty much anyone with a Polo shirt is a red alarm,” said 22-year-old dancer Sheena Wiley.
Worst of all, the Seventh People judge. They gawk at the people in line and ask stupid questions at the door.

Y’all gonna cut each other up?

Y’all worship the devil?

“We’re like, 'No,’ ” Williams said.

*** 

On a recent Saturday evening at a Clearwater apartment, Baker and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Summer Gray, and friend Dwight Hatfield, 30, were getting all Gothed out.

It took them nearly two hours to transform. They tore through mesh stockings, vinyl and white powder. Trails of glitter, fake hair and mascara tubes littered the carpet.

Hatfield, who arrived at Gray’s apartment wearing a white T-shirt, shorts and sandals, was the first one ready. He wore a tight black corset, bikini panties, fishnet stockings, blue mesh sleeves, blue hair extensions and white feathers under his eyes.

“I think most people want to do what we do,” he said. “We actually do it.”

Gray, who works as a costume designer, had the most elaborate get-up: a head-to-toe vinyl and gauze outfit, long blond pigtails behind a headband and glittery pink lips.

“The first time I went to the Castle, I just wore black pants and a shirt,” Gray said. “I thought, 'Okay, I’ve got to work on this. I can’t let this happen again.’ I at least went with black, though. I kind of knew.”

The three left Gray’s apartment in their feathers, leather and mesh, drove to Ybor City and drew stares as they walked from their cars to the Castle.

But once inside, they blended in like camouflage in the jungle. The stage dancers slithered in their garter belts and corsets, and one guy was binding people’s arms with rope for fun. Scenes from Silence of the Lambs played on overhead screens. Sean Perricone blasted heavy industrial and techno noise and pumped his fists during the good parts.

It didn’t matter that before these people came here, they had careers and kids to tend. Or that some live in the suburbs and drive Volvos, others work in sales and keep their hair neatly groomed.

Because here, they are Goths. They are deep and dark and mysterious, or at least mysterious-looking. They are zombies and vampires, dominatrices and fairies. They are poets and atheists.

They are cupcakes and french fries.

So it went until 2:30 a.m., when the music came to a jarring halt  . . .  with a twist.

For 10 years, the Castle has blared an obnoxiously popular top 40 hit — by Missy Elliott, Spice Girls, Jay-Z, Pussycat Dolls, whomever  — as the closing song. It’s one final thumb of the nose at the shallow and loathsome society outside the Castle doors.

On this night, the finale was Ridin’ Dirty, a rap hit by Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone. The song, which uses “bone” as a verb, is distinctly not this crowd’s style.

The lights came on, adding to the cruelty. Pasty-faced Goths gathered their whips and ropes from the floor, their coats from the coat rooms, their packs of clove cigarettes from the bar. They headed for the exits and spilled into the streets, where they were likely to cross paths with the Seventh People on their way back to the land of the living.

Y’all worship the devil?

Emily Nipps can be reached at (813) 269-5313 or nipps@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 16, 2006, 21:26:48]