For the first time in well over a decade, Pride will be celebrated with a large parade and festival on the streets of Ybor City.
The first Pride event on this scale in Tampa in years will celebrate LGBT equality this weekend, as well as the businesses and nonprofit organizations that support it.
A lot has changed — culturally, socially, politically, economically — since the last installment of the event some 13 years ago.
Elected officials who refused to endorse it are gone, for the most part. The bulk of city and county officials, elected or otherwise, LGBT or not, support equality, recognizing that everyone ought to be treated fairly regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Across the bay, St. Pete Pride is the biggest celebration of its kind in the southeast. Mayor Rick Kriseman was the first area elected official to sign a proclamation honoring Pride years ago when he was a St. Petersburg City Councilman, and last year he was the first mayor to order that a rainbow flag be raised above City Hall in tandem with SPP festivities.
For Tampa Pride organizer Carrie West, it was about time to bring Pride back.
“This year, it was just natural that it comes to Tampa,” said West, a longtime activist who, along with his partner, Mark Bias, spearheaded the GaYbor Coalition.
The event will feature two Grand Marshals, Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor and Kurt King, Hamburger Mary’s owner and community leader.
West said he hopes to see a turnout as solid as it was before the festival shut down in 2002.
Tampa Bay Pride started in the early ’80s as a “picnic” in the sand dunes that once bordered the USF Tampa campus, according to LGBT activist and former CL editor Jim Harper. Over the years the event morphed into the biggest Pride celebration in Florida, and moved from USF to downtown Tampa and finally to Ybor.
The festival was successful despite a blatant lack of endorsement from the county, and despite the open disdain of Hillsborough commissioner Ronda Storms, who crusaded successfully to ban the county from promoting, endorsing or participating in Gay Pride events in 2005.
“That’s little g, little p,” Storms famously said.
U.S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor, a Hillsborough commissioner at that time, was the only dissenting vote, saying, “I think it’s inappropriate for government to promote discrimination.”
But the troubles that led to the festival’s demise a few years before that were financial, not political. The events had grown too big, the venues too grand, and festival organizers started charging admission. A Pat Benatar concert in Raymond James Stadium in 2002 was the final straw; the event didn’t fill enough seats in the stadium to make money.
“Part of the reason Tampa Pride folded when it did was that it got too preoccupied with making money off of a parade or a cruise and it wasn’t really community-based,” said Brian Longstreth, a founder of St. Pete Pride.
Harper agrees. “It was really sad that the people in charge of it lost their way.”
Taking notice of Tampa Pride’s failings, Longstreth developed St. Pete Pride as “a back-to-basics pride celebration that is more inclusive,” he said. “We thought, let’s get back to the real family-friendly event.”
St. Pete Pride, celebrated in June around the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, took off. Tampa held smaller events, such as Winter Pride and recently Pride on 7th, but its sister city across the bay became the center of attention.
“St. Petersburg, fortunately, picked up the baton, learned from those mistakes and developed a very vibrant Pride celebration,” Harper said, adding that he’s “delighted” at the return of Tampa Pride. “And I’m glad Tampa’s coming back as well, and it looks like they’re following those same lessons.”
Political support has also materialized. Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, the first openly gay person on the board when he was elected in 2008, led the charge in 2013 to end the county’s ban on supporting Pride events.
And save for Commissioner Stacy White, Beckner’s mostly conservative colleagues have signed a proclamation endorsing Tampa Pride this year.
Despite the size of St. Pete Pride, West said he doesn’t see the event as competition, especially since the two are several months apart.
Pride celebrations in Central Florida can actually work together, he suggests.
“We said it’s about time that we have what we call 'corridor prides.' The first pride would be Tampa’s Pride in March.
The second one would be St. Pete Pride in June. And the third would be Orlando’s Pride, which will be the 4th of October,” West said. “So it’s not competition. It’s actually bringing more people to the area, and awareness for the GLBT community, what we are and what we’re all about.”
On the festival’s website, St. Pete Pride and Tampa Pride are both listed as sponsors.
“St. Pete Pride has supported pride organizations throughout the state,” Longstreth said. “I think it’s important to support one another. I think it’s a matter of the more the merrier.”
Eric Skains, executive director of St. Pete Pride, pointed out that the events are also different. Where Tampa Pride occurs squarely within the lively Ybor City bar scene, St. Pete Pride, while it does travel along Central Avenue, passes only a few LGBT bars other than Georgie’s Alibi, which is adjacent to the parade’s staging area.
All the two events really have in common, he said, is that they both feature a parade and street festival.
“Our events, beyond that, are completely different,” he said. “Ours isn’t entrenched in the bar scene or the bar guild.
Ours is a very community-driven event put together with the neighborhood associations, parks, community centers.
There’s so many different groups that come together to make it, it’s just a different feel. Tampa Pride offers something we don’t have, and that’s great.”
Skains said the number of companies and nonprofits that have already signed up for tents along Central Avenue for St. Pete Pride 2015 has already exceeded that of prior years at this time; three months ahead of the event, 100 have signed up, double that of last March. The reason, he posits, is that the hype around Tampa Pride has kept the event fresh in people’s minds.
But while he doesn’t see Tampa Pride as a threat to St. Pete’s attendance levels, Skains said some of St. Pete Pride’s sponsors have chosen to sponsor Tampa this year instead.
“We’ve seen a couple decide to do Tampa Pride instead. And that’s fine. They’re Tampa-based businesses,” he said.
“We have to reevaluate our revenue stream to figure out how we can make up for that.”
The Tampa Pride Parade takes place Sat. Mar. 28 from 1-3:30 p.m. The parade will travel along 7th Avenue in Ybor between Nuccio Parkway and 20th Street. A street festival along 8th Avenue takes place from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission
is free.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.