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Bright lights, big beads

Sant'Yago has floats, music and beer, but, really, it's about beads.

By EMILY NIPPS
Published February 11, 2007

TAMPA - Willie Hendry learned his lesson at last year's Sant'Yago Knight Parade. Another man elbowed him in the nose and spilled beer on him just to get to a string of beads, and nearby police hauled Hendry away when it almost turned into a brawl.

This year, 22-year-old Hendry decided the beads weren't worth that kind of trouble. Still, it was hard to resist the sparkly strings of purple, blue and red raining around him, so he had to reach for a few.

"I'm out for one of the big, fat, round ones this year," said Bobby Marshall, 52, who went to the parade with Hendry and wore strings of chili peppers, shamrocks and hearts that he caught at the Gasparilla day parade two weeks ago.

While many of the thousands who partied at Saturday's Knight Parade might say they came for the fancy Krewe floats, the music and the booze, the predominant theme of the night was the same as always: beads, beads, beads and the things people do for them.

John McCloud, a part-time worker for Tampa's Bead Barn who was at the parade just for fun, knew well enough to bring along three huge bags of beads. Especially pink ones.

"That's what girls like, I guess," he said. "We sold out of everything pink at the store. Guys buy the pink ones, too. Whatever the girls want."

As hundreds of floats and marching groups dispensed free beads into the Ybor City streets for hours, bead vendors were still able to sell their wares for as much as $15 a string. These were the beads that were harder to get, ones that were big or blinking or X-rated.

"Drunk people like the bright lights and the noisy ones," said Jimmy Ellis, who came down from Connecticut to work a photo booth at the Florida State Fair and sell beads at the parade. His assistant, Peg Black of Sarasota, was trying to sell a "light-up horn blaster" to a young man, and when he turned that down, she showed him one with a medallion that read "F.B.I." female body inspector.

A mother walked up and bought her teenage children two fabric leis strung with likenesses of marijuana leaves. "At least they're buying the fake stuff and not the real stuff," Ellis said. "You hope."

When a teenage girl didn't want to spend $8 on a string of squeaky elephants, Ellis lowered the price to $5. Sold.

And when a woman fell in love with the horn blasters, she was happy to shell out the $6 for some noisy plastic. "What color?" Ellis asked.

Without hesitation, she chose pink.

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

[Last modified February 11, 2007, 01:11:02]