"Ybor’s dangerous. Ybor’s dirty." Well guess what, fuckface, I think you’re dirty. And when you’re texting on your iPhone while driving your Beamer around Hyde Park, you’re pretty dangerous yourself. I’m not gonna lie: I was out at Gbar one night many months ago, and my best friend – who is a heterosexual male, by the way – was leaving the club. Instead of being a good friend and walking him back to his car, I let him walk by himself. I mean, no big deal right? He walked down an alley to take a piss and was jumped…dick in hand. The punks didn’t steal anything – they just beat him down and left him. So, yeah, Ybor can be a bit dangerous, so here’s a lesson: walk in groups at night, and don’t pee in the street. Done.
Ybor is also fucking fascinating. Walking down the street on any given night is like watching a movie with hundreds of characters. And when I say characters, I mean characters. I always tell people that I can feel my ethnicity change depending on what part of Seventh Avenue I’m walking down.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2009.