Tampa Gasparilla 2025

As Saturday January 25 arrived it was going to be an action packed day holding both the birthday of my girlfriend and the official Gasparilla parade. This was going to be my first ever visit to the parade and I've lived in Tampa for 9 years so it was finally time for me to experience a Gasparilla alongside a birthday girl.

I checked the official website being a newbie to this and it appeared to a set of major events ranging from:

• A kid parade a week earlier.
• The arrival of pirate ships into the bay.
• A massive 3.5 mile parade on Bayshore.
• A concert/party at a nearby park.

The only thing on my mind on the days leading up to this event though was the weather. Each day prior had this near freezing 40 degree rain making each day just depressing.

As Saturday arrived though we got extremely lucky with a cold morning ramping into the 60's for the parade. So I felt I could get away with shorts and just a sweatshirt that I could take off later on.

As breakfast was being eaten alongside mimosas being drank we prepared some necessities & drinks before starting our walking journey to a party. We were prepared to walk because the city was starting to close streets in preparation for the parade routes.

I have no experience from previous years to make this assumption, but each road closure had an army of parked police vehicles sometimes joined by trash/sweeper cars helping reinforce the "road closed" signs. I was wondering if this was normal or a reaction to what occurred in New Orleans. Since it would be extremely difficult to drive through say a City of Tampa trash dump truck.

As we left the neighborhood walking the amount of people I saw went from 10 to 100 to a 1,000 relatively quickly. The craziest thing outside was seeing these huge jug's of red liquid labeled "BORG" in nearly every single college kid's hand. Of course I was also a bit surprised to see women barely dressed in any clothing as the morning was still in the 40's, but I guess they were anticipating the warming up later on. It was pretty easy to tell those in the 20's vs 30's just based on their attire.

Throughout the day I learned what these jug's were from various folks around. They stood for "Black Out Rage Gallon" and were a combination of a variety of things.

• Starting normally with a gallon jug and dumping half of the water out.
• Fill it with a 1/5th (750ml) of liquor (Vodka commonly)
• Add flavoring (Mio, Kool-Aid powder, etc)
• Add electrolytes (Gatorade, Pedialyte, etc)

I was having a tough time following why these were so popular because I just imagined lugging around a heavy jug of liquid in an increasing heat with no ice. Once again learning from others the perceived benefit of this method of binge drinking.

• You have your own drink the entire day - your chance of getting your drink spiked is near none since you made your own drink for the day.
• The price is far cheaper than getting the $8-20 drinks scattered around the venues.
• You always have a drink which also provides your hydration no matter where you are at.

I guess kids are getting creative each year, but I couldn't imagine walking around with a jug of basically ~17 drinks worth of alcohol as my form of partying. As I saw folks either passed out on the grass or being held up by their friends I was wondering if those folks drank too much of their BORG too fast.

As we finally hit the public part of the parade it was insanely packed nearly shoulder to shoulder with people everywhere and my first thought was the immense urge to have to pee.

I saw a group of bathrooms across the street and quickly learned those were only for the people who paid to have access to the bleachers / other side of the road. I was then stuck in a line of roughly 30 people to use a bathroom. As my mind locked up thinking about nothing outside of the bathroom I became oblivious to the fact I could have just gone down a side street where 2 bathrooms became a set of 8.

Looking back at the situation with a calmer mind - I majorly messed up in the understanding of where a bathroom would be, but also put some blame on the city organizing this. With the website quoted with:

Port-o-lets will be located throughout the event site, parade route on both sides of the street, near all reserved seating sections, and downtown at the pirate street fest.

I figured with that I would see bathrooms accessible everywhere, but as far as my eyes could see I only saw groups of 2 bathrooms with massive lines on each side of them. So once we walked back through side streets and found groups of 4 & 8 bathrooms littered every block I seriously wondered the reasoning for that organization.

Side street bathrooms had no lines and were open with so many more bathrooms than the main parade route with no indication that any of the other people waiting in line for 20+ minutes were aware more bathrooms were available a few minutes away.

As we returned to a party the journey back from the parade showed the side of these massive parades that aren't cool. Cutting through alleys and seeing people just peeing on the ground or clearly throwing up in a corner showed the downside of alcohol consumption. I'm fairly sure also witnessing some hard drugs being cut and sniffed was among those partygoers hiding amongst the alleys behind homes.

I now understood why most homes on the route had erected these massive reinforced temporary fences - whether it was the city or themselves. They were preventing the army of folks descending onto their property.

It was time to jump to another party as we were running late on our schedule and risking getting trapped on the wrong side of the bridge. I learned what a "Rickshaw" was as we paid to ride on a little 3 wheeled bicycle as some driver weaved around stuck car traffic to get us to our destination in roughly 10 minutes.

We now had another walk ahead of us towards our 2nd party and this time the weather was heating up. Cold in the shade & too hot in the sun led to an interesting walk encountering an increasingly intoxicated crowd of people. Thankfully I was doing a glass of water after every drink so I was still basically sober and not one of those kids passed out on the ground.

As we arrived to our next private party this was a bit more of a smaller gathering with food being grilled and drinking games being played. With some friends having kids now this was a far more relaxed party with quiet music. The hours went on and we missed the parade itself, but I was among folks that had lived in Florida most their life who probably didn't need to experience those crowds again.

As the night fell so did the temperature and it was time to start our walking journey back home. We tried to wait for a trolley, but every single northbound trolley skipped the stops we were at. Sadly they were getting full from the earlier stops downtown so we had no chance of waiting for a trolley.

Uber's were surging with inflated prices and the estimated arrivals ranged from 20-33 minutes just for the pickup, which then may take as long as that for a destination not even more than 2 miles away.

I'm guessing after witnessing cars parked where they shouldn't have been - they turned neighborhood streets from having 2 lanes of traffic to 1. This of course turned into pure chaos as cars fought for turns to go down a 1 lane road. Hopefully the cars responsible for parking where they shouldn't got heavy fines as their actions alone caused massive delays for folks getting home.

So walked we did all the way back home getting glimpses of the city working throughout the night to re-open the roads and clean the streets. I guess with an event that has happened over 100 times the city has mostly got the event down to a process.

Maybe next year I'll see the parade.