Old haunt loses its bite

The Halloween celebration crowds more than 125,000 people into Ybor City. But some longtime revelers wish for the time when the costumes were more clever.

By ANGELA MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 31, 1999

TAMPA -- Ybor City on any Saturday can overwhelm the senses with its pounding sea of music, lights and people.

Guavaween is Ybor City on steroids.

Every year the celebration gets bigger. Every year it gets raunchier.

And every year the artists, musicians and local intellectuals who started the Latin-style Halloween festival 16 years ago say the celebration just isn't what it used to be.

But the estimated 125,000 people who danced in the streets in one of the sweatiest Guavaweens ever didn't care. Perhaps they were to drunk to notice.

Bud Parsons, longtime Tampa resident, has come to Guavaween dressed as Willie Nelson for every year of the celebration's existence. Maybe dressing in the same costume year after year doesn't give him much room to talk, but Parsons thinks the festival's lost the creative juices that used to power it.

"It's a lot bigger, a lot pushier, a lot more expensive and not as much fun," Parsons said. "It used to be very political. The costumes, the floats, everything had a message."

Parsons noted that a lot of the costumes he saw weren't costumes at all, but merely a chance to wear even less clothing than one usually does in Ybor, if that's possible.

"This is my nightgown," said Dottie Spangler, who wore glittery green lipstick, multicolored glitter and stiletto heels with her lacy, silky black slip. When asked what she was dressed as, Spangler shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know," Spangler said. "I just threw on some s---."

Many others did the same thing. Women wearing tight vinyl miniskirts or leopard-print body suits, men wearing loud hats, crazy shirts, or dresses didn't seem to have a particular theme in mind when they picked out their costumes.

Parsons and other Guavaween purists would have been proud of James Rhodes and Larry Plank, who didn't buy a costume like the hundreds of Austin Powerses or genies roaming around Ybor. They dressed in Florida State University football jerseys -- No. 7 and No. 9 -- and came to Ybor toting several Dillard's shopping bags.

On the back of Plank's Peter Warrick jersey, a sign was taped: "It's not like I killed the president," which Warrick said after he and teammate Laveraneaus Coles were caught buying about $400 worth of clothing from a Tallahassee Dillard's store for $21.

Gator fans? Nope.

"We're FSU alumni," said Rhodes, a 1997 graduate. Plank graduated in '98. "We're just mad as hell at certain members of the team."

Another couple mocked the notorious sewage problems aboard the cruise ship Tropicale. Wearing Hawaiian shirts, the couple had toilet lids labeled Tropicale around their heads.

CC Event Productions, the company that has organized Guavaween for six years, tried to restore the festival's politically satirical roots this year. In float applications for the Mama Guava Stumble, the company asked that people have a political theme for their floats.

From the look of the heavily commercial parade, few followed through.

Jerry Taeger of Wesley Chapel did his part with one of the most talked about costumes of all Guavaween. Dressed in a President Clinton mask and a navy suit with a cigar in the pocket, Taeger attached a blow-up doll wearing a beret and a stained blue dress to his mid-section. The doll bobbed up and down as he walked.

"It works well because I can stand right here and do this," Taeger said, using his knee to make the Monica Lewinsky doll bounce wildly. People stared. Some strangers took pictures.

"I guess it's sort of offensive, but that's what this is," Taeger said. "This is real life."

-- Times staff writer Linda Gibson contributed to this report.

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