Opinions to go Online

            Another Gasparilla Parade parlay, the children’s’ variety and the “adult” Ye Mystic Krewe version, has come and gone. But what is increasingly obvious lingers on: Something in this scenario needs to change.

            Some context.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Children’s Parade was a token gathering for little kids and their parents. Strictly a family affair. And how quaint it was to see those little red wagons transporting small children, not alcoholic provisions.

Now it has morphed into a really big deal – which is fine. Actually, it’s great. Tampa has proven that it can put on an impressively large parade – with all the trappings – sans drunks and punks and marauding trespissers weaving into the adjacent neighborhoods. Chi-chi corporate tents don’t crowd out the hoi polloi. There’s no need for a “safe house” that annually announces, in effect, that drunk and drugged teens are fully expected again.

            The Gasparilla Children’s Parade down Bayshore Boulevard now attracts 200,000 spectators, 100 floats and 50 participating krewes. It features marching bands and dance squads. It even warrants its own air show and fireworks extravaganza. And beads are bestowed without breasts being bared.

            And much to its credit, the mega-sized Children’s Parade hasn’t altered its family orientation. It looks like Tampa: black and white and brown. Parents and their kids. What a concept. Only downside: the scheduling needs to be more compact. It’s too long a day for most of the children. But this is not, to be sure, the Bud Blight crowd.  

            Then there’s the Ye Mystic Krewe parade, which draws at least 350,000, among them countless besotted teenagers with a parental free pass for the day. Ye Mystic Krude has outgrown its Bayshore Boulevard parade route. It’s an unfair invasion of the residential areas that adjoin Bayshore – and the various impacted neighborhood associations are increasingly up in arms.

And let’s spell it out. “Impact” includes public sex, urination and defecation. Plus generic fights and ad hoc vomiting. The good news: the St. John’s Episcopal Church’s “Safe House” reported only one case of alcohol-induced coma this year.

At least one attorney has been heard warning that if his kid were to get hurt at the “adult” Gasparilla, he’d like his chances bringing an “attractive nuisance” case against the city and EventFest, the co-sponsors.

And by way of full disclosure, I live in one of those parade-route neighborhoods. Across from the St. John’s “Safe House” and abutting a ground zero intersection.

            I say move Ye Mystic Krude. If not back to Monday or a more innocent era, then to a more appropriate route. I would urge from downtown to Channelside, where there is more open space, more parking and less likelihood of property trespass and homeowner-teen drunk confrontations. Absent back alleys and a maze of side streets, it’s also easier to police – and deter.

            And do it before somebody gets seriously hurt or killed.

            Although 141 people were hauled in for various offenses at the “adult” Gasparilla Parade, there are no statistics, perforce, on how many were overlooked because, well, you can’t haul them away by the thousands.    

Yes, Ye Mystic Krude is now behind us for another year. But think of it as a bullet dodged. Nothing’s been disarmed.

            My initial reaction was doubtlessly the same as many others when I heard about Florida spending $100,000 to upgrade 1,500 televisions to accommodate the national switch from analog to digital broadcasts.

            During such dire budget straits, we’re spending $100,000 for what? If prisoners don’t have television, too bad. Let’s call it part of the punishment. Don’t want to do the time? Don’t want to miss “Boston Legal”? Don’t do the crime. Next case.

            But I also hearken back to a tour I once took of Tampa’s Orient Road Jail.  We saw the televisions, which seemed to reinforce the label of the “Orient Road Country Club.”

            What we found out is that those TVs are more for the guards than the prisoners. The guards will tell you the TVs can help make the prisoners more malleable and manageable. Which equates to safety.

That’s especially relevant now with burgeoning prison populations and personnel cuts creating ever higher prisoner-to-guard ratios.

            Recently I wrote a piece about the Gasparilla parades, both the children’s and the adult, Ye Mystic Krewe version. In short, I said that Ye Mystic Krude  – for self-evident reasons – needs to be moved. If not back to Monday or another era, at least to downtown – and then through to, of all places, the entertainment districts. That would ensure that what’s invaded won’t be residential neighborhoods.

Still seems like a reasonable enough alternative.

            Last Saturday’s invasion of the 350,000, including the usual besotted teens, came and went, and we all survived. In fact, the St. John’s Episcopal Church’s “Safe House” reported only one case of alcohol-induced coma. And no incidents of copulation in the church itself. And, yes, there is precedent.

Officially, 141 people were hauled in by authorities for various forms of wayward conduct. But because you can’t prove a negative, no statistics are available on how much was countenanced because, well, you can’t haul them in by the thousands.

Of course, most Bayshore Boulevard intersections – especially the one at Willow Avenue — were alcoholic mosh pits with the Bud Blight spillover filtering across residential lawns and through side streets and alleys. They, in turn, became the de facto domain of the usual trespissing and canabissing suspects.

But no deaths or serious injuries. Not unlike recent hurricane seasons, we dodged that bullet again this year. And part of that bullet’s trajectory is legal. At least one attorney has noted that if his kid were hurt at Gasparilla, he’d like his chances with an “attractive nuisance” case against the city and EventFest, the co-organizers.

The operative word here is “dodge.” Nothing’s been disarmed.

Actually, I wasn’t going to do this recap until I recently read some public statements by those who should know better.

Shannon Edge, Tampa’s director of neighborhood and community relations was incredulous when told of accounts of parade day hijinks that included public sex and indiscreet bowel movements. Plus the more pedestrian tales of fighting and landscape urinating. Her response when confronted with resident accounts of dissipation and disgust: “We were like, ‘Wow, we didn’t realize that was going on with you.’” According to the St. Petersburg Times, Edge characterized the accounts as “eye-opening” and “disturbing.”

Now, it’s official. Edge, who is an affable, conscientious liaison between City Hall and the neighborhoods, is like, in the know now. She won’t be pooh-poohing resident complaints.

The comments of Darrell Stefany, the president of EventFest, are disingenuousness at best. He told the Times that both parades are “family events from the start to the finish.” Sure, Swiss Family Robinson one week, the Manson family the next. The Ozzie Nelsons and then the Ozzie Osbournes.

He pointed out that, if indeed, residents were seeing more than they used to, it was merely a reflection of what’s seen in the popular culture.

“I think that’s more of a statement about society and culture today than it is about Gasparilla,” he noted to the Times.

No, Stefany’s dumbfounding rationale – an excuse-mongering exercise in enabling mass misconduct – is the real statement. One that truly speaks volumes about society and culture. It says that in confrontation with all that’s most deplorable about the popular culture, we adults surrender. If it’s on cable and online, it’s off limits to challenge, let alone change.

Thanks again, Darrell, for helping make it all worse.

            That bizarre reaction of family members of the St. Petersburg teen accused of shooting that undercover cop is still reverberating in that community. But the implications are disturbing for all of us.

             To recap: Two undercover detectives — on high alert because of a rash of convenience store robberies, some violent — took note of three suspicious teens. Their suspicions were confirmed when two of them covered their faces, went inside a Suncoast Exxon gas station, and robbed it at gunpoint.

            They were confronted outside. Accounts vary – but not this part: one of the officers was shot four times. James Seay, 18, of Gulfport is accused of being the shooter.

            Seay’s relatives reacted as if Seay were the victim.

            “If you were dressed undercover – they are not in uniform – and you grab my arm, I’m going to defend myself, too,” asserted the suspect’s sister. Presumably, the suspect was downright lucky to have been packing heat when his arm was grabbed.

            The suspect’s uncle, the Rev. Daryl Seay, upped the rhetorical ante.

            “I think it’s just as much their fault as it is the boys,” noted Rev. Seay.

            Indeed, the Rev. really said that.

And now a 42-year-old married father is in serious – but stable – condition after taking four bullets in the aftermath of an armed robbery. Worse yet, some folks apparently think he had it coming.

 How disgusting is that? Moreover, how worrisome is it for police officers and law-abiding residents of St. Petersburg — already troubled and frightened by a mini crime wave — to learn that this sort of criminal rationalization is also preying on their community?