All photos taken by Anthony Martino at New World Brewery in Ybor City, Florida on November 6, 2016
Beloved Ybor City watering hole and live music venue New World Brewery could’ve landed near South Howard. Owner Steve Bird scouted the neighborhood over two decades ago, but there wasn’t a lot going on in SoHo then.
INTERVIEW: NEW WORLD'S SPIRITUAL JANITOR EXPLAINS WHY IT'S FULL SPEED AHEAD NO MATTER WHAT
“I mean, there was the Chatterbox,” Bird, 56, told CL, recalling the 70-year-old lounge that sat near the corner of Howard and Swann Avenues before closing in 2001. He found the site for New World Brewery — originally a collection of pea gravel and chain-link fence — by happenstance while visiting the old Oak Barrel Tavern in Ybor Square. These days, New World is an off-the-beaten-path oasis with a pine needle-covered floor and palm tree-laden ceiling. It’s incomparable to the Chatterbox aesthetically (the ‘Box was described as a dark “shoebox” by many endeared to it), but New World certainly stands up as an almost sacred gathering place for Bay area locals.
Still, it’s not uncertain that New World won’t go the way of the Chatterbox as well.
After rumors of New World’s demise or relocation began to surface, Bird — an Indiana boy who moved to Tampa thirty years ago — has cleared the air. He confirmed that he’s been operating on a month-by-month lease for about a year. Daryl Shaw, CEO of the Tampa-based BluePearl Veterinary Partners chain, is the registered agent of Ybor Marti LLC, which owns 1313 E. 8th Avenue (New World’s address). He, along with Ybor City developer Ariel Quintela, is spearheading The Marti, a four-story development that will feature roughly 100 apartments and 8,000 square feet of retail space. It will sit less than a block away from New World, but Shaw told CL that he is still very much in the thought process about the plan for the property New World is on.
“He doesn’t expect to have any definitive plans any time soon,” said Carrie O’Brion, communications manager at BluePearl, adding “he has left it up to Steve whether or not he wants to relocate.”
Bird says that every interaction he’s had with Shaw — who is widely regarded as a nice guy with a grand vision — has been pleasant and straightforward, adding that Shaw has even offered to help him find a new place at one of his many Ybor properties (including Tropicana Cafe and the old R. Monne & Bro. cigar factory, amongst others). Bird has said he will rebuild no matter what happens. In fact, the New World is behaving as if it's not going anywhere; there’s a new PA, new kitchen equipment, an evolving menu and almost weekly upgrades to woodwork there. Still, Bird is blunt about the prospect of keeping the address.
“We’re small in terms of [Shaw’s] long-term vision. What we have here is special, but I don’t expect him to value this as we do,” Bird said. The idea of an Ybor where folks “live, work, and play” gets tossed around a lot when conversation about re-development happens, and as a push for more residential starts to manifest itself in actual apartments and condos, it’s hard not to see the irony in uprooting the very things that have made the district the kind of place where people actually want to live and work.
“Losing New World would be a huge blow to Ybor and the Tampa Bay music scene,” Manny Leto told CL. Leto, 40, is the marketing director at Tampa Bay History Center. He majored in history, has a minor is music and was born and raised in Tampa. “All the music that’s been relevant to me, that’s important to me, happened there — I kind of grew up there.” That sentiment is not uncommon among thousands of regulars, which include workday lunchers, Sunday brunchers, hipsters, DJs, artists of every stripe and seemingly everyone in between.
Bird, admittedly a deep-feeling person, gets emotional when he talks about how well this bar, which he built to capture the vibe of Skipper’s Smokehouse (where he met his wife Nancy), seems to work on its own — it’s no secret to him that his staff if a huge part of New World’s success). His eyes are moist by the time he gets to talking about the countless community fundraisers, birthday parties, weddings, baby showers and even memorial services New World has hosted. The place is kind of like a community center where pints are served, a hallowed neighborhood bar in every sense. It was never meant to be a music venue either, but a regular, Will Quinlan, changed that when he told Bird that he was doing a show and charging a cover. “Will kept telling me, ‘it’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna work,'” Bird said, “and it did.”
“Worked” is an understatement. My Morning Jacket and TV On the Radio are just two of the thousands of acts who’ve cut their teeth on the patio. Thanks to trusted promoters, New World today serves as both a place for upcoming bands to test their mettle and a venue where well-established outfits can fill the venue to capacity, creating an intimate, wholly unique experience for fans lucky enough to get in. It’s hard not to feel a kind of familial acceptance after visiting the bar a few times, and now — as the greater Ybor family begins to grow — feels like a good time to consider the culture New World brings to this brick road we’ve all grown up on. Quintela, Shaw’s development partner, did not return requests for comment as of press time, but he’s been quoted as saying that, "Ybor City in the next five to 10 years is going to be a new world.”
Sure, it definitely feels like the tides are changing, but what kind of world is it going to be if we have to pack up so much of what made it home in the first place?
See more photos from Anthony Martino below.
This article appears in Nov 10-17, 2016.