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Once king of Halloween revelry, Guavaween returns to roots as a kitschy parade, after party

 
The March of the Pumpkin King is the latest attempt to keep Halloween alive in Ybor City, where the Guavaween celebration once drew crowds of 50,000 to 100,000 people and the problems that came with them. [Courtesy of the March of the Pumpkin King parade]
The March of the Pumpkin King is the latest attempt to keep Halloween alive in Ybor City, where the Guavaween celebration once drew crowds of 50,000 to 100,000 people and the problems that came with them. [Courtesy of the March of the Pumpkin King parade]
Published Sept. 28, 2016

The days when Ybor City was mobbed for Guavaween and a raucous Mama Guava Stumble parade are long past, but the name lives on this year as an after party for a kitschy new parade — the March of the Pumpkin King.

Mathieu Stanoch, organizer of Ybor's Snow on Seventh parade at Christmas time, came up with the idea of a costumed "people's parade" down Seventh Avenue, with themed floats as well on Oct. 29. It harkens back to the origins of Guavaween, he said, and in another nod to Tampa Bay's kitschy history the grand marshal will be Dr. Paul Bearer II. (Winter Haven resident Richard Koon, who dresses as the beloved host of WTOG Ch. 44's Saturday morning Creature Feature.)

The Guavaween of yore "was supposed to be a theatrical kind of mockery," Stanoch said. "They made fun of politicians and the mayor. It was supposed to be a spectacle of costumes and it turned into spectacle of debauchery."

Tickets to join the parade and after-party are $20 at marchofthepumpkinking.com. The after-party called Guavaween put on by Big City Events will be at the parade's end, 14th Street and E Seventh Avenue. If you just want to go to the tented party, it will be $10 at the door or at guavaweentampa.com.

The parade has a relatively early start of 7 p.m. The after party, which will have a $1,000 costume contest and a Kiss cover band, will wrap up by midnight. The idea is to keep the Guavaween tradition alive but also to funnel the costumed partiers to bar-hop down Seventh Avenue, said Ferdian Jap, partner with Big City Events, the after-party host.

"It is kind of a tradition for people to get in costume and go bar hopping through Ybor," Jap said, "and we like the idea of keeping the name of Guavaween alive for history's sake, and keeping that festival atmosphere alive."

Guavaween traces its roots to the late 1970s when an artsy, fun-loving group created a tongue-in-cheek response to Tampa's snooty social scene. But it grew well beyond poking fun at the Gasparilla Krewe and by the '80s was drawing thousands of revelers to Ybor on the Saturday before Halloween.

What people forget, said Stephen Michelini, a consultant who helped the Ybor Chamber of Commerce get its first permits for Guavaween in the early '80s, was that Ybor City was dead as a party scene back then.

"Guavaween was the first one that showed you could have a big event in Ybor City and it worked," Michelini said.

Boy, did it work. Some estimates put the number of people mobbing Ybor City for Guavaween at 50,000 to 100,000 people. People came in by the busload from as far away as Gainesville and all over the Tampa Bay area.

There were wall-to-wall revelers and musical performers on eight stages and live bands in some of the bigger venues like the Cuban Club. As it got bigger, it got bawdier. There were more than 100 arrests and nearly 40 rescue calls one year.

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It started getting more expensive to pay for insurance, police and emergency medical units, Michelini said. The chamber blanched at a bill for $50,000 to put on Guavaween and started looking for alternatives to pay the bills. They fenced off parts of the party zone so revelers had to buy a ticket to get in.

Merchants said the fence killed business and cut the crowd numbers in half.

In 2012, sponsors tried a different tactic, removing the fence and creating a music festival. The Mama Guava Stumble Parade, with its legalized outdoor drinking, was no more. Instead, it became a festival where more than 20 bands performed in Ybor City venues and a $20 wristband got you.

When that didn't work, it was changed again in 2013 — this time into more of an afternoon street fair called Fantasma Fest aimed at families. The day event plus a nighttime costume contest brought little business.

By 2014, the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce had decided to seek bids from companies interested in taking over the Guavaween brand and that's when Big City Events stepped in.

For the past two years, the private party-promotions company, which also hosts the Margarita Festival at Curtis Hixon Park and Sushi Battle Tampa Bay, made Guavaween a ticketed event at the Cuban Club. Despite elaborate shows and live bands, it still couldn't draw big crowds, Jap said.

A look at the party landscape then and now explains the absence of crowds, Michelini said.

Busch Gardens got into the scare game with Howl-O-Scream in 2000 and these days, every bar, theme park, zoo and aquarium has a special Halloween event. Haunted houses have become big business.

"There are a lot of opportunities that were not present then," Michelini said. "It has became less unique and there is more competition and more variety as people found out Halloween sells."

Contact Sharon Kennedy Wynne at swynne@tampabay.com. Follow @SharonKWn.