Popular downtown Tampa sports bar and restaurant Ducky’s is in the crosshairs of social media users, after a video shows crowds of unmasked patrons dancing to the sounds of Joey Franchize on Sunday.
Some of the videos reshared on Franchize’s own Instagram story show unmasked folks straight up doing the electric slide on the dance floor at Ducky’s, located at 1719 W. Kennedy Blvd., near downtown Tampa.
An email sent to the venue—which bills itself as a “Spacious sports bar with craft cocktails, upmarket bar food, mini-bowling alleys & an outdoor patio”—has yet to be returned, but CL will update this post if a response comes in.
In an email, a spokesperson for the City of Tampa told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that their inbox is also full of Ducky’s videos and that they expect the issue of enforcement to come up at today’s scheduled meeting of Hillsborough County’s Emergency Policy Group (EPG).
On Sunday, Florida broke the U.S. coronavirus record for most new cases in a day when it recorded 15,300 new cases (the previous one-day high of 12,274 was set at the height of the outbreak in New York in April). The videos from Ducky’s went viral less than a week after the EPG voted to relaxed penalties for businesses if customers refuse to wear masks.
As a result of the vote, Hillsborough businesses no longer face criminal sanctions if their patrons don’t wear face masks so as long as the businesses make “reasonable efforts” to enforce the county’s mandatory indoor face mask policy.
Under the face mask order adopted on June 22 (and implemented on June 24), business owners were supposed to deny entrance to people not complying and remove customers who refused to comply once inside the establishment. Pushback came as it became clear that retail employees don’t get paid enough to police face mask truthers and purported patriots who are too scared to wear masks in public.
The Ducky’s videos also arrive as bars that aren’t restaurants are barred from providing on-premises consumption as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’ efforts to curb the latest uptick in coronavirus cases.
Last week, ER physician Dr. Jason Wilson an anecdotal, told the Hillsborough EPG that the known science of coronavirus “is really starting to coalesce around the idea of us being together in close proximity in a normal social type environment where there might be touching a lot of talking… intimacy, all those kinds of things I think are the things that are becoming the real way the virus spreads around.”
On Monday morning, Tom DeGeorge—owner of Ybor City live music venue Crowbar, which is barred from having folks on site—said that, “The reason why they don’t want bars and places like mine open is because they believe bars and nightclubs result in extended socialization in close quarters. City legal has told me this. They feel like bands or DJs at my place would result in people getting sick.”
He added that the city may not have the time to filter out the good from the bad, so they shut down the entire industry instead.
“If you’re a restaurant and you’re doing more than being a restaurant then you’re helping keep us closed longer and likely forever because we have all been shuttered for 4 months,” DeGeorge wrote. We cannot safely open If the numbers don’t go down. If you go to places that are doing more than acting as restaurants you are also putting the nail in all of our coffins. I have begged the city for enforcement and there’s just not enough of it so I’m begging my fellow businesses that are open for MERCY and DECENCY. Please think of this when you’re operating this coming weekend.”
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This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2020.