Fiesta Day in Ybor City

We all have large and small annual events we like to attend. You may already know of my affection for Tampa’s Gasparilla celebration. My other favorite Tampa event is just weeks later in the city’s historic Latin quarter, known as Ybor City. It’s Fiesta Day, a celebration of diverse ethnic cultures that influence and strengthen the area’s character. You can count on Spanish, Central and South American and Caribbean influences all coming together to make for a grand party.

For as many years as I can remember, the event followed Gasparilla Day by a week or two and always marked the last weekend of the the Florida State Fair. For whatever reason, it came later this year, on Saturday, February 28th. Maybe that was a blessing. The weather was perfect. Last year the event was cancelled due to rain.

I can’t quite say what distinguishes this event from so many like it. For me, I suspect it has to do with my youth. Both my parents worked just beyond Ybor City’s border and I attended kindergarten and elementary school there. Every week day, until I graduated from high school in 1972, there was a pretty good chance I drove through or near the area. Years later, I continued to shop there for Cuban bread, wine and Latin-influenced groceries. You can only imagine the changes I have seen through the years.

The event is free, parking is easier than ever with the new parking garages, and you may spend as little or as much as you want on food and drink. I just love walking from one end of La Septima to the other, and then back again, taking detours to visit vendors along the side streets and in Centennial Park. La Septima? No, I never called it that either. It means “the seventh,” referring to East Seventh Avenue. When I was young, we just called it Broadway. One of my father’s closest friends worked at the Broadway National Bank. That’s one way I remember the old name.

I won’t really brag about all there is too eat as you walk the street. Some food vendors are better than others. It was good to see Pipo’s serving roast pork, yellow rice and black beans (the Holy Trinty of Cuban Food), and no Fiesta Day is complete without sampling a cannoli or other Italian treats on the street in front of the magnificent Italian Club. But before you eat anywhere, you must enjoy a free bowl of Spanish Bean Soup, a piece of Cuban bread and a cup of “cafe con leche.” They dish it out at the western end of the street and it is some of the finest you will ever taste. It used to be only for out-of-town visitors. You had to show your driver’s license. My family didn’t move to the beach just to get free soup in Ybor City, but it was some consolation for being so far from somewhere I feel so close to. These days, the free soup is for everyone.

For many years, at the other end of Broadway, the bigger treat was the Columbia Restaurant’s annual spectacle of cooking the world’s largest paella. If I recall correctly, that, too, was free, at first. But even when they began to charge for it, you would be hard-pressed to eat better anywhere in the world. Somehow, I never made it to the other end of Broadway this year, which is a little disappointing, but I am not certain Columbia is making paella out on the street any longer, so it could be worse.

So after the free food, the things I liked best about this Fiesta Day was watching all the people, marveling at all the well maintained or restored architecture, hearing all of the Latin-influenced music, and ending up face down in a bowl of flan.

Say what?

In recent years, Fiesta Day has expanded significantly into Centennial Park, and now features a competition known as Flan Fest, where real people compete to create the most beautiful, and tasty flan, a carmel-crusted, egg custard dessert that is beloved in Spanish cultures. A local Spanish radio station was was holding a flan-eating contest, just as I was passing the stage. They called for volunteers and I didn’t hesitate to respond. With both hands behind my back, I sucked a complete flan from the bowl in just seconds. Alas, others apparently suck more than I do. It was good fun, and the flan was great, too!

Two of my favorite memories of Ybor City were the Silver Ring Cuban Sandwich Shop and Las Novadades Restuarant. Both are closed now, though the Silver Ring made a second go at it a couple of years ago, ironically, in the same building that began as Las Novadades. The building has housed any number of restaurants and night clubs through the years, including the provocative La Goya, if I remember correctly. Today it is home to The Nest, a Mediterranean Tapas and Pasta Bar which Elena and I agreed to try for a late lunch.

To begin with, this place has something of an identity crisis. A sign on the window directs you to a web site called thepastanest.com (the site seems to be under construction). The thing is, there isn’t any pasta on the menu. Speaking with the waiter, he indicated that customers didn’t respond well to the pasta offerings, so the restaurant is retooling. There are currently only five entrées on the menu for either lunch or dinner, but there are a respectable number of tempting tapas and salad offerings that seemed ideal for a late afternoon lunch following a face full of flan.

I ordered an Italian draught beer called 1812 ($5.00) and the Piquillos Rellenos ($7.00), three sweet Spanish peppers stuffed with mushrooms, spinach and goat cheese, all swimming in a pool of yellow pepper coulis. In a word, perfection. The beer was quite smooth and rich. Elena had the Arugula Salad ($7.00) with Manchego cheese, Granny Smith apples and walnut vinaigrette. The salad, too, was perfect. Served with bread and olive oil, the tab came to a mere $19.00, a fact I am certain our waiter found wanting. Still, we liked the place and how they had decorated it. I wouldn’t hesitate to return.

As we walked back to the car in the mid-afternoon sun, the blue sky offered sharp contrast to the aging, but beautiful, red brick buildings that make Ybor City so distinctive. It was a fine day, and if it fits your schedule next year, I recommend you go celebrate.

You are invited to see 36 of my favorite 2009 Fiesta Day photos on the Parsons-Wilson Picasa site.

The Pasta Nest (or maybe just The Nest, by the time you read this) is at 1430 East 7th Avenue, in Ybor City, just a block or two from the Centro Ybor Parking Garage.

Gasparilla Before There Were Beads

I was born and raised in Tampa. My childhood home was on Channel Drive, on Davis Islands, along the main shipping channel. The mock-pirate invasion of Tampa known as Gasparilla was something I looked forward to each year. Even though I now live across the bay, on St. Pete Beach, I haven’t missed a Gasparilla invasion in 54 years.

While the celebration was founded in 1904, the pirate’s ship, named Jose Gaspar, was not built until 1954, the year of my birth. The invasion passed in front of our house each year, we had reserved seats for the parade on Bayshore Boulevard, and we almost always watched the night parade in Ybor City, where both my parents worked and I attended elementary school.

Nothing ever stays the same, and that is true for Gasparilla, too. For decades, the invasion and parade took place on the first Monday in February. It was a school holiday for children in Tampa. Many businesses closed as well. It seemed huge to us, it was family-friendly, and it was our event.

There was never any doubt that Tampa’s wealthy civic leaders, dressed as pirates, had been drinking. We later came to recognize that Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla discriminated, was exclusionary, and all those bad things they have largely outgrown. Actually, come to think of it, I did miss Gasparilla in 1991 because the Krewe cancelled the event, rather than integrate. With Superbowl XXV in town, the city hastily put on something called Bamboleo. It was a huge, embarrassing bust, and a black eye for my home town.

Other than that, there have always been boats and parade floats and marching bands and important people sitting in antique cars and convertibles, waving warmly to happy crowds. As kids, we covered our ears as the pirates fired their guns in the air (blanks, of course), and then ran to catch the gun shells they threw to the pavement. If we were particularly lucky, they threw a gold doubloon. My collection of doubloons, which I still have today, was my most prized possession.

There were no beads.

In 1988, to make the event accessible to far more people, Gasparilla was moved to the first Saturday in February, (unless Tampa was hosting the Superbowl, in which case they rescheduled it to accommodate the game). Many new krewes of all stripe and color now participate, symbolizing that Tampa embraces diversity like it never did before. Southwest Airlines became the event’s “name sponsor,” and companies that produce alcoholic beverages seem to play an ever-increasing role in making the event possible. Many residents along or near Bayshore Boulevard have grown to dread the day.

Oh, and almost everyone throws beads now.

Most people attending Gasparilla today would probably think the absence of beads was the denial of some basic human right suffered during barbaric times. Maybe we just didn’t know what we were missing, but we all seemed happy, just the same. Those of us who remember those days, roughly prior to 1986, can’t help but notice the influence beads have on today’s Gasparilla. To be honest, it’s a mixed blessing. Like an invasive species of plant, there’s good and bad. Pretty to look at, but you can’t get rid of them. Beads are here to stay.

There is certainly joy in both giving and receiving. Beads have become the great equalizer for many. The giving is no longer limited to pirates. As hundreds of boats pass by the seawall, many on board throw beads to the glee of spectators. I often witness grown men and women making fools of themselves to attract a throw. Often, I see those catching the beads quickly share them with children and senior citizens around them, experiencing both the joy of receiving and giving at the same time. It’s a good thing.

The competition for beads also brings out the worst in many people. Greed and a lack of consideration for others is the obvious culprit, but I think it goes deeper than that. People who are particularly competitive about attracting or catching beads invariably inconvenience those around them. Small children and elderly spectators frequently fear for their safety or grow weary of the repeated yelling for beads. For too many, it’s no longer about enjoying the show...it’s about getting something for nothing. While I still come to see the invasion, that’s largely why I quit attending the parade 20 years ago.

It gets worse. Along the seawall, some come armed to pay back those who don’t reward their call for beads. Maybe they are envious and resentful of the boaters’ good fortune. Too often, I see water balloons thrown at passengers in passing boats. And, in turn, I often see those passengers fire back with water balloons. Understandably, it is more difficult to throw something accurately from a moving boat. This is when it really begins to quit being as much fun for the rest of us.

Please let me be the last person to deny others their fun at Gasparilla. We all need all the fun we can get. Like I said, nothing stays the same and beads are here to stay. The obvious charge I am guilty of is getting older and nostalgic. Personally, I don’t think I’m any less fun. I definitely plan to return next year for my 55th Gasparilla invasion.

And I will always have my doubloons and childhood memories from before there were beads.

You are invited to see 36 of my favorite 2009 Gasparilla photos on the Parsons-Wilson Picasa site.