cut-throats gargling with sea water mixed with grain alcohol.AARGH! Shiver me timbers Matey.
It’s Capt. Morgans and beads, so many beads.
Gasparilla is a Tampa tradition, even if the rest of the nation has never heard of it.
The locals tell me its about someone named Gaspar and then the story gets fuzzy. Was he really a pirate or a local bureaucrat. Nobody ever really gave me a straight answer, and honestly I didn’t care.
Some wench wobbling on the front deck of her home wearing an eye patch told me; “he was reportedly very well hung and had many mistresses.”
Regardless the reason for Gasparilla, Gasparilla is a hurricane of gross decadence in a city that is all ready riddled with sin.
So here I am, in the middle of a swash buckling Saturday, bathing in a luxurious 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.
I am on a dock lined with little hot dogs and cheese and crackers and crab cakes. There is nothing but a constant flow of beer and rum sloshing out of little Red Solo Cups. And in front of us, a river full of drunken sailors in all manor of motor boats.
I see eye patch wearing skippers, many suffering from bouts of scurvy navigating so dangerously close to shore, I felt like reaching out and manicuring their nostril hair.
“CANNON” a fat buccaneer shouts as he lights a small incendiary device in my direction.
I’m sure blowing off a cannon from a twin outboard is illegal in 48 states, but at Gasparilla, laws don’t really mean much.
Before I can shove my fingers in my ears…
BOOM
I am suddenly deaf and covered with smoke.
WTF?
Captain Cannon smiles as if he has just enriched the world with his bellicose auditory salute. I feel like taking a cutlass and slicing open his adam’s apple and taking a bite.
Gasparilla; nobody said it was going to be nice.
Meanwhile the onslaught continues as more drunken pirates idle by, throwing shiny beads at the wenches on the dock. Most of the beads land short sink into the darkness of the river. I imagine a bed of shimmery beads where fish lay eggs and mermaids sleep.
I also watch adroit pirates who launch beads using ingenious air propelled mechanisms.
Wenches wearing a smattering of clothing and high boots and garters are like so much confetti in a ticker tape parade. The woman wear their beads proudly, pirate’s booty don’t you know.
There is too much food and too much rum and too little law enforcement.
This is a massive gas can undulating near an open flame.
Then the gigantic pirate ship comes chugging up the river. There are hundreds of pirates and wenches and brightly adorned drunks clinging to this life size pirate vessel.
And then there is the armada of floating craziness following behind and along side. There is screaming and cannon fire and music blaring from somewhere. It is chaotic and visually intoxicating.
Locals call this the invasion and it is certainly a sight to behold.
The boats are bow to stern, packed in like bumper cars at the local fair. There are cabin cruisers and fishing vessels. Big boats and small boats. There are cigarette boats and 10 foot dingy’s. The river is so thick with exhaust fumes and rum and badly navigated vessels I believe I can literally walk across the river and never get wet.
It is a spectacle of danger and cut throat pirating.
I imagine hundreds of injuries each year. I am told nobody ever gets hurt.
Crazy.
Someone told me that open containers are prohibited in public. Yeah right.
The parade route along the harbor is one pirate ship looking float after another. There are high school pirate ships and car dealership pirate ships. Someone told me that one year exotic dancers from the local gentlemen’s club were on a pirate ship float. Apparently they were working their pirate poles much to the delight of all landlubbers.
From an upscale apartment complex over looking bayshore drive, the parade is so precise, so orderly, so delightful.
Oh Gasparilla. What a lovely lady you are.
But below, on the parade route, it’s like Vietnam during the Tet Offensive. Everywhere there is the stink of Agent Orange and lime flavored afterbirth.
It is a scene from Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. I feel like the prison doors have been left open and all the cretins of Tampa have escaped.
I see carts with beads and trinkets race by. I see stumbling college boys with shirts that say “Where all the sluts at?” It is a white hot spectacle of filth. I imagine that this is what the inside of Edgar Allen Poe’s brain must look like when he was writing the Tell Tale Heart.
I talk to a girl who will walk 3 miles against the parade crowd. She will tell me a story of traversing through this horde of hell. She said it was like a movie where the spot light was on her and she was fighting to find sanctuary. She describes people vomiting and fighting and getting arrested. She said she watched as one man ran at a trash can and attempted to leap over it, but only managed to run into it like a football blocking sled. She said it made a concussive sound as the man bounced off the barrel which tipped over, trash spilling everywhere. She said a nearby cop told him to pick it up and he acted like that was some one else’s job.
This too is Gasparilla. Drunken garbage can leapers who are just stupid.
There are tattoos and stink holes and puddles of vomit. The crowd is a scurvy filled wreck, wobbling, pillaging, falling down and walking a dead man’s plank.
At one point, I see a house full of gay men. There are hundreds of gay party goers, their event sponsored by the Captain himself. The funniest shirt I will ever see in my life is at this house. It says, and I quote: “Butt Pirates enter here.” There is an arrow pointing to the man’s back side. He wears it like you or I would sport a Nike Swoosh.
Hilarious!
The police are positioned on every corner, but there is little they can do to contain the stench of spoiled rotting flesh incubating in a rum stew of too much heat and too little intelligence.
I am told Gasparilla happens this time of year every year.
Why?
Nobody knows. Perhaps it’s because 3 weeks has passed since new years and Tampa residents need a reason to vomit on themselves.
As legend goes, Gasparilla once coincided with the weekend of the superbowl. That’s pirating all Saturday and then Superbowling all Sunday. That’s a lot of craziness to cram down one city’s throat.
Apparently there were so many fights, so many arrests, so much pirate debauchery, that the Tampa mayor said it will never ever ever happen again.
So Gasparilla lives on even if the super bowl won’t.
Gasparilla is a mardis gras at the end of a cutlass. It’s a reason to say AAARRGGHHH and dress like a sexy wench.
Make your reservations now and don’t forget to pack your eye patch.
All in all Gasparilla is a Gas, well hung or not.
Life’s crazy™