The Christmases when he was a little boy in the Milwaukee suburbs, painstakingly decorating the tree with his beloved grandmother, Lois, who every year gave her grandchildren a Piggly Wiggly box full of art supplies.
The Halloween mega-parties he threw as a teenager new to Bloomingdale High in Valrico, winning friends and even the begrudging approval of his father, a military man stationed at MacDill who never quite accepted his “unique” son.
The Homecomings and Movies on the Lawn he organized as an undergrad at USF, the traffic-stopping window displays he’s done for The Honeypot and other Ybor businesses, the art gallery he ran for a while on 15th St.
But the key butterfly-out-of-the-cocoon moment in the evolution of Mathieu Stanoch was the time when, at the age of 16, he was smuggled into an Ybor gay bar by a drag queen he’d met at Sacred Grounds Coffee House. She stuffed him into a rolling suitcase — her “drag bag” — and he hopped out of it into a whole new world.
“She put x’s on my hands and I was 18 years old immediately,” he says, his eyes widening with the childlike enthusiasm he still exudes at age 34. “I was eager to meet everybody… I wanted to experience everything!”
Which, by now, he has. Over the years, he has translated his infatuation with Ybor into a full-on crusade to create events that reflect the community’s exuberant creative spirit, and to allay fears that the district is too dangerous and “adult” a place to take your kids. Snow on 7th, the winter holiday celebration he spearheaded in 2009, and the Little Monsters Pumpkin Patch, which brought thousands of kids to Centro Ybor and environs for a fifth year last weekend, have accomplished both goals. Now he’s facing his biggest challenge yet: Saturday’s March of the Pumpkin King, a step toward reviving Ybor’s status as a nationally ranked Halloween destination.
Guavaween isn’t going away — yet. The once-notorious event has moved through multiple incarnations since its inception in 1985, from Mama Guava Stumble to music festival; from street party inside chain-link fences to Guavaween: The Apocalypse inside the Cuban Club; from parade to no parade; from family-friendly to family very-unfriendly; from Ybor Chamber of Commerce fundraiser to private party run by Big City Events.
This year, Guavaween has been reduced to the Guavaween Zone — a ticketed, fenced-in, wet-zoned area at 7th Ave. and 14th St. (again operated by Big City) where the after-party and costume contest will be held. The main event is the March — the first Ybor Halloween parade since 2011. There’s no cost to watch, but if you want to ride or walk in the parade you have to wear a costume and buy a ticket, which gets you a wristband for discounts at area bars and restaurants and also gets you into the Zone. Ybor (except for the Zone) will not be fenced in.
Having the event back on the streets should be a big plus for the district’s merchants. Last year, says Stanoch, fundraising for Snow on 7th was particularly tough because businesses were missing more than ever the “slam-dunk” post-Halloween financial bump they used to experience during Guavaween’s heyday. He didn’t really want to do another event; “I don’t need any more stress in my life,” he says. But in December of 2015, “I was decorating Santa Claus’s float, and I thought, ‘You know what, we’re going to do this one!’” And the next day he was in the city’s special events office getting a permit for a Halloween parade.
Which he didn’t do for his first Snow on 7th parade, organized with the support of Centro Ybor, the GaYbor District Coalition and the Ybor City Development Corporation after the district lost its annual SantaFest to downtown Tampa. The inaugural edition wasn’t much — it consisted of 10 snow machines and Mr. and Mrs. Claus on the back of a fire truck — but he made it happen, minus some important steps. “That’s called a parade, Mathieu,” a city official told him afterwards. “Next time you’re pulling a permit.”
Snow on 7th has evolved into a spectacle of 52 snow machines (on balconies from The Bricks to Acropolis), 22 of Hillsborough’s 25 high school marching bands (all of whom are paid to march), 55 gallons of hot chocolate and “thousands of candy canes.” It has become the centerpiece of a district-wide revival of winter holiday traditions, including a community decorating day and a tree lighting. YCDC, recognizing the need to supplement merchants’ contributions, awarded a grant of $60,000 to Stanoch to stage it in 2015, a contract that has since been extended for two more years.
Stanoch credits two men with helping him to find his way from club life to civic engagement: Steve Donahue and G. Stephen Moss of Florida Entertainment Group, the business partners who launched The Honeypot and other successful nightspots in the early days of the GaYbor boom. They spotted his potential, hiring him to do window displays and party concepts. According to Ernie Webb, an FEG partner and operations manager at Honeypot, Stanoch worked wonders: “We’d give him a small budget and he would make a huge impact.” Webb remembers in particular an “Under the Sea” party that was “like being in an underwater cartoon. It was spectacular.”
But Moss and Donahue also encouraged Stanoch, he says, to do things “larger than just the four walls of the club — to take my passion for this community and grow it.” The gallery arose from that impulse, as did Historic Holiday Spirit, the company co-founded by Stanoch and Moss to oversee the Christmas (and now the Halloween) celebrations — or, as Stanoch put it, “to bring back what Tampa used to do during the holidays when we were cool.”
Moss is confident Stanoch can work his magic again. Guavaween, in his view, “lost its focus and became just a vehicle to generate a profit which ultimately led to its failure,” he said in an email. “The March of the Pumpkin King… with Mathieu’s extraordinary vision and his commitment to Tampa… has the potential to give birth again to one of the greatest Halloween events in this country.”
Stanoch has had to once more seek support from local merchants and other sponsors (including Creative Loafing) to pull off the March, which, like Snow on 7th, will cost about $60,000 (including a bill for services from the City of Tampa for $30,000). He says Historic Holiday Spirit expects to break even in this first year of the March.
But it’s important to note that while Stanoch may be the king of fund-raising, parade-planning, float-decorating, and other varieties of cat-herding, he is not The Pumpkin King.
“That’s one of the things Lois taught me,” he explains. “The key to throwing a good party is never make it about yourself.”
The King will head up the parade, but his identity will remain concealed beneath a grinning, coronated pumpkin head. The reasons for that, and the method that was used to select the royal honoree, reflect the guiding principle behind the March. Stanoch collected nominations over several months, some from friends, some from strangers in bars. Then he threw all the names in a hat and selected the winner at random.
Why? Because, he says, “At the end of the day, we are all the Pumpkin King.”
The parade, like every event he organizes, is about “community spirit.” He’s a working resident of Ybor — he lives above La France, the vintage clothing boutique on 7th, with his 95-pound mutt, Roxi Bear — and every day that he smells the smells, walks the streets, talks to his neighbors, he’s aware that, more than any place he’s ever lived, Ybor — for the former club kid who found kindred spirits when he leapt out of a suitcase — is home.
March of the Pumpkin King, Sat. Oct. 29, 7-9 p.m., Ybor City. The parade begins at 20th St. and 7th Ave. and concludes at 14th St. & 7th Ave. Free to watch, but those who want to join the fun by walking in the parade or riding a float must register at marchofthepumpkinking.com. Walkers: $20. VIP (includes VIP pre-party): $100. (Costumes mandatory for parade participants; categories are listed on the site. Beads can also be ordered ahead of time on the site.) Parade participants receive wristbands that grant free admission to the Guavaween Zone and costume contest, and discounts at Ybor area establishments. Admission to Guavaween Zone only: $10.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 3, 2016.
