1/29/2022

I made it to Tampa, Florida, and whoa! It’s pretty wild. Definitely different from everything I’ve experienced so far on this trip.

My sister Sam and her husband Trey bought a condo here a few years ago and honestly, their place is amazing. It’s classy, upscale, and overlooks the Port of Tampa. My sister is in art and marketing, and her eye for color, art, and design is evidently as strong as ever as it’s seen everywhere in their place. I’ve watched my sister grow up over the years (obviously being her older brother…), and seeing for the first time where she now lives and how far she has come almost had me in tears. I am so freaking proud of both Sam and Trey and wish them continued success in life! Their dog Dixie is pretty great too.

We worked hard to coordinate my time here to line up with Gasparilla, which is a huge parade and pirate festival that occurs each year in Tampa on the last Saturday of January. The tradition goes back to the early 1900s. But emphasis on this thing being huge! About 300,000 people attend Gasparilla each year. That’s 300,000 people wandering the streets! No, not wandering. Pirating.

The weird thing about Gasparilla is that no one really understands why it is celebrated, and the more I dig into it, I’m really not sure that there is a real ‘why’ to it. It may very well just be a fun thing that exists. But…from what I can dig up, the Gasparilla festival is inspired by a possibly fictional Spanish pirate named Jose Gaspar. Gaspar supposedly fled Spain and decided to live in the virtually uninhabited coast of Florida near Tampa Bay in the 1780s. He apparently declared it his “pirate kingdom.” Over the years, he allegedly did a bunch of pirate stuff – plundering ships and taking women hostages back to his kingdom. Legend has it that when he was finally caught by the US Navy in the 1820s, he threw himself overboard, shouting, “Gasparilla dies by his own hand, not the enemy’s!”

The problem with the legend is that there is no actual evidence of any of this stuff actually happening… There isn’t even any evidence of there being an actual Jose Gaspar. In fact, the first written account of Jose Gaspar does not appear until the early 1900s, and then only as part of the advertising brochure for a hotel. But, whatever! We’ll celebrate him anyways here in Tampa! And oh my gosh, what a celebration. I don’t think I’ve seen people going this hard since my days at UC Santa Barbara, back when I was wandering the streets of Isla Vista. Also, maybe you can’t tell from these pictures, but Florida has a political position that may not line up with the current federal government’s administration. You’ve been warned.

After a bunch of fun and shenanigans at Gasparilla, we decided to get away from downtown and grab dinner at a German restaurant. It seriously had great food! I had an authentic German dinner of schnitzel, cucumber salad, and potatoes. I also had a few Yuengling beers as a hark back to my time in Pennsylvania. Yum!

As fun as today was, I’m glad that things are going to now calm down a bit from the crazy high energy of Gasparilla. I will be here in Tampa until Tuesday, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of the more down-to-earth things that the city has to offer. Pretty epic place though, yeah?

Cheers,

-Rob