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Here’s my account of Saturday’s Gasparilla Parade of Pirates. It will run as as a Bar Tab column in the Creative Loafing that hits newsstands Wednesday. Pictures taken at the event by a co-worker should appear here tomorrow.

Pictured left to right: Me, Lola and Lyndsay.

Just another day of debauchery.

There are few things more horrific than being in the midst of 400,000 drunks. Positioned near the corner of Bayshore Boulevard and Willow Avenue Saturday afternoon during the Gasparilla Parade of Pirates, I can’t help but think that this might be the closest many of us will ever come to entering a war zone. It’s chaos on a greater level than I can typically handle. Fortunately, I have achieved a perfectly calibrated buzz: It minimizes my claustrophobia and creates a sense of euphoria that allows me to tolerate the fat, beered-up beast who just bumped into me — again.

Tampa’s most depraved annual tradition, the Gasparilla day parade is an event so hedonistic and ugly that it should probably be banished to one of those backwoods clearings up in Zephyrhills where 98Rock formerly threw its equally wanton Livestock orgy — far away from the eyes of polite society.

Instead, for the past century, Tampa civic leaders have marched the swashbuckler-honoring bacchanal right through the city’s oldest, richest and most venerable neighborhood. And I like that. There’s something perversely appealing about witnessing the affluent members of South Tampa subjected to all manners of alcohol-fueled savagery. I also enjoy watching those pillars of the community who embrace the day of debauchery — the prosperous dirty old men who stumble and lurch across their roped-off Bayshore lawns, leer at the young gals in bikini tops walking past, and then when the old lady isn’t around, offer the loaded coeds sets of monster-sized beads in exchange for a quick flash of perky boob.

Gasparilla is an outing rife with madness and uncertainties — worsened by the poor cellphone reception most people experience there. Plans are inevitably broken. Groups get separated. That’s why you just gotta go with the flow: Attend whatever parties you can, stick with your ride home, and keep plenty of cash for a cab stuffed in sock or bra just in case you find yourself passed out on a stranger’s lawn at 3 a.m.

I also have come to understand after years of Gasparilla-going that if you’re hanging with a large contingent of women — or guys like my pal Sal who refuse to piss in the bushes — a substantial part of the day will be spent seeking out restroom facilities. That’s just the way it is.
Creative Loafing co-workers and members of our Street Team arrive at my South Tampa apartment around 10 a.m. Saturday. The back alleyway is already a lively block party thanks to my downstairs neighbors arranging a tent and tables lined with liquor and mixers — plus speakers blasting classic ’80s and funk jams like “Superfreak.” In fact, I’m pretty sure all eight units in my building threw their own respective Gasparilla celebrations that spilled out into the alleyway full-force by 11 a.m.

Shortly before noon, our CL crew of about a dozen leaves my apartment and joins the exodus of revelers marching down Howard Avenue toward Bayshore. My fifth beer kicks in at this point, causing the inevitable breaking of the seal. I have to piss — already. Not a good sign.

When we get under the Crosstown expressway, I find a couple of bushes and discreetly relieve myself. Our first stop is a house party on Watrous Avenue, where the Street Team stashed (with the homeowner’s permission) a shopping cart loaded with Creative Loafing beads and promo material. I down my sixth beer, and by the time we reach Bayshore I’m forced to make a risky stop under a tree within about 10 yards of a cop car. Luckily, after spending years drinking beers at outdoor events with few available restrooms — and knowing full well I have a bladder the size of a lima bean — I’m like a ninja when it comes to pissing in public.

All the same, finding a place to momentarily hide every 15 minutes is annoying. No more beer for a while. I unveil my 375ml flask of Canadian Club whiskey and take a healthy pull. Sal knocks some back, too. Lola puts it to her lips and nearly chokes.

“What the hell is that?” she complains.

Lola washes the whiskey down with another gulp from her giant sports bottle that was once filled with spiced rum and diet cola but now is almost empty. By midafternoon, Lola has reached a level of intoxication that makes her a bit pouty and surly. She waves her plastic pirate’s hook in the faces of passersby, amusing some while angering others. Before the parade even reaches our spot on Bayshore and Willow, my co-worker Jessica suggests we hang out on her friend’s boat.

Fine with me. I’ve never joined the mob and begged for a string of beads — and sure have no intention of starting that sorry practice this year. Fuck the floats, the krewe members, their plastic trinkets and the assholes who fight for ’em.

We head northwest toward Platt Street but Jessica, Lola, Lyndsay and Sal all have to pee (I’d been using the alleyways) so before we reach our waterfront destination we decide to pony up the $10 cover charge and enter Four Green Fields. No problem. We hang there with the large, older-yet-fun-loving crowd and end up staying for a couple hours.

By 8 p.m., most everyone has reconvened at my apartment, where we continue partying until way past midnight, toasting our great day of decadence. Walking, sightseeing, drinking, pissing and staying above the fray — that’s a good Gasparilla.

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Wednesday finally saw the beginning of our ticket package, which will provide us tickets to 10 films and access to other festival venues. We may not be industry, but we can look the part.

Our first film of the day, “The Wackness,”  was a flashback to 1994 New York. Luke (played by Josh Peck) is a teenage drug dealer trying to work out various issues in his life before going off to college. Ben Kingsley plays his hilarious psychologist, who dishes out therapy in exchange for bags of weed. Earlier this week, we had been blissfully unaware of who Josh Peck is. At least, until we overheard some guys in line who were so star struck by him that they had to literally call everyone in their cell phone address books to tell the story of meeting him. Over the course of an hour, we had to endure long explanations of “Peck!  No, P-E-C-K. From Nickelodeon!  He’s famous!” 

Unfortunately, headache-inducing exchanges like this are all too common during Sundance. It makes it easy to separate the festival novices from the rest of the jaded masses. Here is a picture of the director during the Q & A:

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Matthew Culp, left, and his partner Wade Burghardt stand in front of a renovated home in St. Petersburg’s Palmetto Park neighborhood

In many ways, St. Petersburg resident Matthew Culp could be considered a model citizen.

Three years ago, he bought and rehabilitated a home in Palmetto Park, one of St. Pete’s rougher neighborhoods. He’s heavily involved in the Palmetto Park Neighborhood Association and the local crime watch. He’s bought other dilapidated properties to ease blight in the area. He has a spotless criminal record and participates in community events.

So when Culp applied to the city’s Citizens Police Academy — an 8-week course designed to give residents a better understanding of the police department — he never imagined he would be denied. But last week, St. Petersburg Police Department spokesman Bill Proffitt called Culp to say he would not be allowed to attend the course this spring.

SPPD spokesman Proffitt declined to discuss his decision to reject Culp, except to say, “The police report speaks for itself.”

Which police report is that?

You may remember Culp from CL’s story back in August 2006. On May 21, 2006, a local drug dealer threw concrete chunks through the windows of Culp’s home. Culp responded by emptying his personal handgun into the ground outside his home. Police arrived, alerted to the shots, and no charges were filed, but police claim Culp used a racial slur while explaining what happened. After police left, a man paid off by local drug dealers threw a Molotov cocktail at Culp’s home.

That firebombing proved to be the final salvo for Culp and several neighborhood activists across St. Pete, who loudly criticized Mayor Rick Baker and Police Chief Chuck Harmon for a blasé attitude on crime. In several media accounts, including in Creative Loafing, Culp railed against the understaffed police force and called for changes in department leadership.

Culp denies using the racial slur and maintains he was within his rights in his use of the handgun. He’s not alone.

“If they are judging a person for protecting his own self, then that is very poor for the police department,” says Lurlis Simmons, president of the Palmetto Park Neighborhood Association. Simmons also doesn’t believe Culp made the offending comment.

Every applicant to the Citizens Police Academy is required to undergo a criminal background check. According to Proffitt, a handful of applicants are denied each session based on their criminal records. Even applicants with simple misdemeanor charges are “generally” not allowed in the course, he says.

But a check of Pinellas County court records online shows at least three attendees in the last three years have entered the academy with criminal histories, mostly single misdemeanors involving theft, weapons violations or alcohol infractions. One participant was arrested for trafficking in hydrocodone, a felony charge, though the state attorney had dropped the case.

The Palmetto Park crime watch leader sees a double standard and suspects retaliation on the part of SPPD.

“Anybody who has been vocal about the inaction of the city has been marginalized. It’s not a matter of my background — they think I’m a threat. It shows they have vengeance toward me.

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The weather Tuesday morning was fabulous.  Clear skies and lots of fresh powder from the day before.  However, this is not a skiing blog, this is a film festival blog! We decided to take a rare opportunity to sleep in today.  After another meal at my new home away from home, Squatters brew pub, we headed to Starbucks to try to get this crappy laptop to connect to a wireless network.  No such luck.  I had no problems connecting to various wireless networks in Tampa but Park City must be some sort of kryptonite for this machine.  After a couple of frantic calls to the company IT guy and a friend who knows everything about computers, we are still lugging around an expensive and useless paperweight.  In a last ditch attempt to solve the problem, we headed to the store to get another wireless adapter to plug in to the paperweight.  Long story short, it is still a useless paperweight. 

Headed on down to Main Street again after giving up on the Internet with the lure of the free wine reception at the Film Maker’s Lodge, available only to individuals with credentials.  We have both been to much better gatherings, but it is hard to argue about a place to go out of the cold where they give you cheap wine and you can pretend to be someone important.  Once the last call was sounded at 6pm we headed to Bangkok Thai for dinner. 

Dinner was wonderful and bountiful.  We had a nice half bottle of pinot noir with our meal which complimented it nicely.  While we were wrapping up our left overs I looked up and saw LL Cool J dining at the table adjacent to us.  Much to Hazy’s protest of it being tacky, I busted out the camera and took an undercover spy shot. 

Momma said knock you out:

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A screenshot from Da Hood Gone Wild Vol. 2 

Remember that Clearwater street fighting DVD that made headlines in October?

Well, the crew behind the controversial Da Hood Gone Wild is releasing a sequel. In this week’s Urban Explorer, I go behind the scenes to watch some of the newest footage and also receive a tour of Clearwater’s North Greenwood neighborhood where most of the fights were filmed.

Check that story out here.

Meanwhile, the co-creator of Da Hood, Allan Burney, remains in the Pinellas County jail in connection to the murder of a Clearwater man. Police arrested Burney after the St. Pete Times published an article about the first DVD. While reporting this week’s story, I visited Burney in the slammer. He’s excited about the DVD (many of the scenes in the sequel were filmed by him before his arrest) and still proclaims his innocence, blaming the Clearwater Police Department for setting him up after city officials found out about Da Hood DVD.

On the other hand, Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard wasn’t too happy to hear about a sequel.

“Too late for Christmas, huh?” he quipped when I talked to him last week.

Hibbard took issue with the first DVD’s portrayal of the neighborhood and believes the presence of cameras actually encourages the fights to ensue. This is no documentary, he says.

“Let’s face it — they’re trying to make money,” he adds.

But the DVD has no doubt put a spotlight on the neighborhood. Besides meetings Hibbard had with various community leaders over the last few months, residents from all over Pinellas County organized a drug march through the neighborhood in November. Even the Scientologists had their own gathering.

Read the story, watch some clips from the first DVD and judge for yourself: Is this DVD too wild?

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It’s starting to look like St. Petersburg might succeed in sweeping the homeless out of downtown.

At tomorrow’s St. Pete City Council meeting, councilmembers are expected to pass two more ordinances targeting the city’s homeless that would ban all storage of property in the right-of-way, and prohibit sleeping or “reclining” in the downtown area during daylight hours.

A St. Pete Times article today says a compromise might be a storage area at St. Vincent de Pauls on Fifth Avenue North and the Salvation Army on Fourth Street South, however a city official mentioned funding a guard for the storage sites, which might not go over well with taxpayers.

This follows an expanded anti-panhandling ordinance passed earlier this month and a series of rules passed last year aimed at tent cities, camping in city limits and sleeping on sidewalks.

In fact, more ordinances governing homelessness have been passed in the last year than any other year in recent memory. By next week, those unfortunate individuals who have found themselves living on the street will no longer be able to sleep (day and possibly night), ask for money or store their belongings. Many of the ordinances have targeted the downtown region, which in all likelihood will push these individuals into surrounding neighborhoods or municipalities.

All issues have multiple sides, but most of the attention has gone to the opinions of city officials and business owners. Below are two letters CL has received in recent weeks regarding the situation in St. Pete.

The first is from G.W. Rolle, a formerly homeless man who spent four years on St. Pete’s streets. Last year, he was featured in the widely viewed Easy Street documentary chronicling the homeless situation here.

The second letter is from Richard Shireman, one-half of the city’s Homeless Outreach Team and a longtime staffer of Operation Par Inc., which serves the needs of people suffering from mental illness.

Follow the jump for both letters (mostly unedited, though I’ve added Web site links for context):

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Monday was officially the fifth day of the Sundance Film Festival if you count the Gala in Salt Lake City.  The fourth in Park City.  And it was our third full day here.  This is a day that is generally characterized with a lot of transition.  The opening weekend is in the books and many folks that only come for the first weekend (since that is when the majority of the bigger films open) head out of town.  This year sees yet again most of the first weekend opening films already lined up with distribution by major channels.  So with great film geekness, we are getting excited about these next 2 swing days and then the start of our package B selections. 

Driving in Park City is always a challenge and parking is damn near impossible.  With that in mind, we head on down to the box office on Main Street to pick up our tickets for the second half of the festival.  While looking for a parking spot, I spy a bunch of freshly stapled posters for the movie we wanted to see tonight, “Goliath.”  So I jumped out and grabbed one for Hazy.  Nothing like below freezing mercury to make sure that you cannot feel your fingers wince in pain while pulling staples out off poles.  Once at the box office, we were pleasantly surprised to see there was one ticket available for “Goliath.”  So tonight’s wait-list was already off to a great start.

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We arrived in Park City on Saturday afternoon a little too late to wait-list for our first selection - the premier of “What Just Happened” at 6:15pm. Since we wanted to jump right into the Sundance experience, we headed to Main Street for some evening people watching and to shoot some filler footage for our film.Here is a shot of Main Street at night:click for more sundancing… (more…)

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