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Finding the right mix

Ybor City club owners say they've learned to balance fun and safety. But the deaths of two underage drinkers last year show how the scale can tip toward disaster.

By JOHN BARRY
Published April 27, 2007

Part of Alcoholic Beverage and Tobacco Lt. Keith Hamilton's (center in jean jacket) job involves sniffing out underage drinkers by calmly asking for ID. Tensions may rise, but he relies on law enforcement when it is needed.
	[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Daniel Wallace] At Club Prana, Ellen Snelling, in blue, co-chair of the Tampa Alcohol Coalition, makes regular trips to monitor the drinking at Ybor City. [Times photo: Jim Damaske] Jessica Rasdall confessed to killing her best friend, Laura Gorman, while driving home after a night of drinking in Ybor City's Club Skye. They were both 18 years old. No escape (4/8) Readers' comments Video: Jessica Rasdall talks to students about the fatal accident. To each, justice differs

Amphitheater owner John Santoro calls this the "Disney feel." "It looks like a free-for-all party," he says. "That's the intent."

What the drinkers don't notice, he says, are the black-shirted security guards moving in behind them, checking wristbands that prove they're at least 21. The drinkers also don't know that the women with the tequila are "trained, responsible vendors" in bikini disguise, who signal the guards when someone looks too young or too drunk.

Santoro says the guys aren't even aware that the tequila being poured down their throats is watered down. "It's 98 percent fruit juice."

Ellen Snelling stands deep in the crowd as the women pass the sombrero and tequila. She asks, "Are the Shake Your Booty girls highly trained, too?"

She looks way out of place. She's not drinking or dancing. She has a husband and a 7-year-old asleep at home. She's out doing her penance as co-chair of the Tampa Alcohol Coalition. About once a month she wades through the clubs, the grinding dancers, the servers toting trays of test tubes full of neon-colored booze.

This is not a new story. Ybor's nightly balancing act has existed for generations. Club owners balance entertainment and profit on one side, liability on the other: They balance Cancun mayhem with heavy security. After all these years, they say, it works out.

Except for the times when it doesn't work out. Then it can be catastrophic.

Snelling cites the 300 alcohol violations and 59 arrests for drunken driving last year in Ybor. She cites the June 2006 death of 17-year-old Sarah Rinaldi, who died of a drug overdose hours after drinking at Prana. She cites the February 2006 death of Laura Gorman, 18-year-old Eckerd College freshman, who died in a drunken car crash in St. Petersburg, minutes after leaving Club Skye. See a related story, "To each, justice differs ."

Everyone mourns those deaths. Santoro has his 20-month-old son on his lap as he explains his safeguards at the Amphitheater. "I have my family and my child," he says. "The last thing I want is to put a drunken driver out there to kill."

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On every block there are contradictions. Outside Fuel on Seventh Avenue, senior vice president Richard Mac Kizer pulls a driver's license out of his shirt pocket. It belongs to a 27-year-old woman who is 5 feet 6. But he took it from a girl who looked about 18 and was 5 feet 2 in heels.

If IDs aren't borrowed, they're faked. The fakes are good. "They're as good as counterfeit money, another big problem," Kizer says. "If you don't know what to look for out here, you're in a lot of trouble."

Kizer is standing right behind his security staff checking IDs. Several uniformed Tampa police officers are right behind him. A plainclothes state Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco officer is right behind all of them.

Along comes a young couple. The guy is weaving, arm draped over girlfriend for support. He weaves past the guards, the police. He gives the ABT officer a dirty look. "Keep moving," the officer tells him.

The guy blows up, starts cursing the officer. His girlfriend tries to pull him away. He turns to her, curses her, too, and slaps her sharply across the face.

He moves on, weaving, girlfriend holding him up.

The ABT officer, Lt. Keith Hamilton, says guys like that are just a "small percentage" of the clubgoers he sees. "Things are going to happen, just like slip-and-falls happen in department stores. But I don't think bartenders are doing quite enough. The bartenders are too busy; they're trying to make tips, and they're trying to do what the owners want them to do."

Ultimately, he says, parents may be the last and best defense. "It's kind of late at this stage, because society has gotten lax. If it's fun it's okay. Parents want to be friends with their kids.

"But there's just so much freedom kids can take."

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Snelling makes her rounds with another coalition volunteer, Karen Hernandez, who has a husband and two children asleep at home. They've been touring the Ybor clubs together since 2004. It's better now, they say. Enforcement is better. Cooperation is better.

The two aren't prohibitionists. They look to club owners to see the impossibility of the balancing act. They have allies, they say. One of them is Eric Schiller, who runs Gaspar's Grotto. He supports an age minimum of 21 for all Ybor clubs. When his kitchen closes at 11, he tells the youngsters to call it a night.

Snelling and Hernandez stop by the Grotto. Schiller isn't there. They see a sign in the window for all-day and all-night beer pong. It's one of the many Ybor drinking games the coalition would like to get rid of.

"Well, that's a surprise," Snelling says, looking at the sign. "Eric must be desperate."

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A few days later at the club, Schiller acknowledges the hazards of the balancing act. He's a member of the Tampa Alcohol Coalition, too. He thinks beer pong is no worse than darts, but he sees a lot of things in Ybor that "lead to abuses and irresponsible behavior."

After 11, he says, "There's nothing here but trouble for anyone under 21.

"It's a terrible thing to say to the parents (of the girls who died). My God, what's worse than losing a child?"

But he has this to say to all parents: Remember those dead girls.

"They were looking for trouble," he says.

"And they found it."

John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com.

[Last modified April 27, 2007, 06:41:03]