Do you like beads, drinking, pirates, and hundreds of thousands of people ready to party? Then Gasparilla is for you! Gasparilla is Tampa, FL’s (my hometown) premier pirate invasion parade. It celebrates Jose Gaspar’s invasion of the Tampa Bay in style. Each year at the end of January the city puts on a wild party. It starts early in the morning with a replica pirate ship filled with respectable middle-aged Tampa socialites dressed in full on pirate costumes completely drunk. After the invasion the real party gets started… the parade begins! Hundreds of floats line Bayshore Boulevard and begin throwing beads to any and every person in the stands or walking along the route. Kids, teens, young adults, old people, fuckin’ everyone in the Tampa Bay area is there drinking and having a good time. Once the parade begins, all of the floats, bands, pirates, and who ever else is on the road progress down the couple of mile long parade route throwing just about everything they can to the people. (My parents used to trade the pirates beer for better beads for us.) The usually warm weather, plethora of alcohol, and tons of food usually keeps this partying going long into the day; and private evening parties transform Gasparilla from your normal drinking sprint into an impressive marathon of day and night drinking that leaves you feeling drunk and exhausted for days to come. But frankly, this thing is legit. The girls are hot and scantily clad and ready to flash for beads at a moments notice. But attendees beware cops love this place and it is rumored that they just transport the publicly intoxicated to station head quarters in school buses. I can’t tell you how many people I know who have had their stomachs pumped and then spend the night in the hospital for alcohol poisoning. So go out, get drunk, have fun, and be safe. Check out a video of Gasparilla after the jump.
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