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Fishers vs. merchants at John's Pass
By AMY WIMMER
© St. Petersburg Times, MADEIRA BEACH -- In the beginning, it was all about fish and fishermen. In 1980, merchants at John's Pass Village were looking for a way to honor the industry that made Madeira Beach the "grouper capital of the world" and the generations of fishermen who called it home. What better spot for an annual seafood festival than John's Pass, popular mooring site for commercial vessels unloading grouper, stone crab and other sea specialties, and the village, designed from its inception to resemble a fishing hamlet? "You look around here, and we're one of the examples of an old, old industry surviving among all these condos," said Bob Spaeth, executive director of the Southern Offshore Fishing Association. "And the way it's going, it doesn't look like we'll be here too many more years." Crowds that first year blew away organizers' projections, and the John's Pass Seafood Festival soon became a high-profile event, drawing tens of thousands of people each fall. But after a $1.6-million renovation of the village that merchants and city officials are nervous about opening up to mass crowds, organizers hinted that the famous fish festival might be a part of Madeira Beach's past. It's definitely off for this year, and was canceled last year because the village was under construction. Those associated with the festival say it will eventually return as something "more upscale." There's even talk of replacing the big festival in the grouper capital with an event featuring barbecue ribs. The party's popularity came with growing pains -- conflicts between the city and John's Pass merchants, between local restaurateurs and outsiders hoping to make a buck. Most heartbreaking was a rift between festival organizers and local fishermen, who dropped out of festivities in the early 1990s. "The biggest thing is the greed," said Pete Burkett, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Madeira Beach. Burkett, a longtime village merchant, was chairman of the festival for years. "That's what ruined the festival." Off to a good startAt the original John's Pass Seafood Festival at the village, space was so limited people sat on the hoods of cars to eat grouper. The fishing association, to this day a fixture in Madeira Beach, underestimated crowds and had to order an extra 500 pounds of fish after they filleted and sold out of the original 1,700 pounds. St. Petersburg's Evening Independent called the first seafood festival "the biggest thing to hit John's Pass since the 1848 hurricane," the monster event that created the pass and physically separated Madeira Beach from Treasure Island. Merchants were ecstatic. Fishermen were pleased with the recognition. Everyone had a good time. "It was a little nonprofit deal, and the VFW got involved, and we had a great old time. No sponsors," Spaeth said. "As the money got better and things started happening, a couple of the land barons came over and said they wanted to take over the festival because it meant big money." The second year, festival organizers formed a corporation and recruited sponsors, and competition for the festivalgoer's dollar was already evident. An ice cream vendor who made $3,000 at the first festival was told by Madeira Beach's police chief that she couldn't serve anything the second year, and only festival organizers could select the vendors. Still, the event was a raging success, though increasingly raucous. The fishermen and their families still served up grouper, and a series of seafaring-themed contests -- fish-fileting and oyster-eating, and fiddler crab races -- packed in the people. Then in 1987, eight people were arrested, including four in a brawl that began when a woman lifted her shirt. Police officers threatened to arrest her, so she took off the rest of her clothes. As she was arrested, the crowd booed police, and bottles began to fly. After that, festival organizers became more determined to make the event a family-friendly affair. "We had a momentum that we've built over the last 20 years," said Kathleen Hubbard McDole, special events chairwoman for the John's Pass Village Merchants Association. "For the last several years, we've tried to make it very family-oriented. Some debauchery and stuff has happened in the past, but those people are all gone now." Chief among the old traditions was "Guess the Shark's Weight." A shark, usually 6 to 11 feet long, was on display all weekend. "It would hang there and rot and stink, and it was morbid," McDole said. In later years, the dorsal fin, valuable because of its purported powers as an aphrodisiac, was removed first, making the dead and decaying shark even more ghastly. But the most anticipated part of the shark contest was when someone -- maybe fishermen, maybe festival workers -- deposited the shark on the lawn of someone who either worked for or, more often, against that year's festival. The mayors of Madeira Beach and Treasure Island received it. So did the St. Petersburg Times. One year the mayor of Redington Beach found the shark on his doorstep the day he was expected to cast a vote banning commercial fishing vessels in his town. In 1993, festival organizers threw out the shark tradition. Burkett recalled that the Humane Society and groups opposed to animal cruelty requested the change. Others said it was just a tradition that Madeira Beach outgrew. "Why are we looking at this dead animal? It's killing for amusement," McDole said. The same year the shark disappeared, so did the fishermen. Versions of this story vary, depending on whether you talk to the fishermen or the festival organizers. In 1993, for the first time in the festival's 13-year history, fishermen and their families didn't fry fresh local grouper at the festival's main tent. Festival organizers asked the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, which traditionally had donated the fish it fried, to pay a $10,000 participation fee. Other restaurants in the village were forced to pay the same amount. The association refused but held its own event up the street on Gulf Boulevard. Spaeth relishes that memory. "We sold a gazillion grouper sandwiches. People were coming in the rain," Spaeth recalled. "We had to keep going to the boat and getting more grouper." Burkett, from the VFW, said the dispute between the merchants and the fishermen is still difficult to talk about. "They're two different worlds, the fishermen and the retail world," Burkett said. "I'm not saying too much because I'm right in the middle, on both sides of the fence, with the fishermen and merchants." These days, no one is willing to toll the bell yet for the death of the John's Pass Seafood Festival. Though it has been canceled for consecutive years because of construction at the village, those who want to see it continue say they will find a way to bring it back. "We're going to have one; I can guarantee that," Burkett said. Said McDole: "It's a 20-year tradition. I've had people call me from all over the state of Florida. It's a way to get people to our area. I hate to lose that." Yet the recent improvements at John's Pass Village have given the area a new image, and Pat Shontz, the John's Pass merchant credited in early reports with the idea of a seafood festival, isn't sure the city wants to repeat the past. "I don't believe the city commissioners would want a festival down there in their new village," Shontz said. "Seventy-five thousand people trampling around on our new bushes? No." Either way, says Spaeth, the seafood festival he enjoyed has been gone for years. "It just got to be too commercial, and that's what you're seeing," Spaeth said. "They don't want that little festival feel anymore."
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