Gasparilla: A Pirate’s Tale

Gasparilla is an annual pirate festival held in Tampa. Chelsea covered this event two years ago. Now ye be hearing it from the Captain!

For me, the Gasparilla experience can be defined by two things – who you go with, and what you make of it. The Gasparilla crew you go with makes or breaks the event, and I highly recommend getting into the spirit of the thing with food, drink, and dress. Costuming is an awful lot of fun, and gets quite a lot of compliments, notice, and picture requests along the parade route. Having a crew of your own to attend with, from a gathering of friends to a costuming troupe of piratical enthusiasts, makes the time investment much more with it. And of course, having alcohol on hand to share with said friends is an excellent way to help dull the passage of that time, as you wait for drunken ‘pirates’ to sail into shore, disembark from their vessel, threaten the local heads of government, and finally get their parade rolling.

Hitting the ‘Invasion’ portion of Gasparilla doesn’t mean you miss out on the parade itself – which is often the highlight for many. When the crew of that massive pirate ship sails into Tampa’s harbor every Gasparilla, the crew have made it a bit of a tradition in handing out what is lovingly known as “swag.” If you want to try to score some of the more rare treasures handed out during the event, the disembarkation of the pirate crew is not to be missed. From simple things like sponsored strings of beads, flashing skull pendants, eye-patches marked with the official logo and year, to the much more interesting doubloons – golden and silver coins emblazoned with the face of the king and queen of that year’s event, to coins marked with the date or stamped with a pirate ship and the likeness of one Jose Gaspar, the folklore-inspired Pirate of Gasparilla fame. That’s not to say these bits of shine aren’t available to be thrown out from the floats during the Parade itself, but disembarkation is when it’s far easier to get your grubby, piratical hands on them.

Having lived in New Orleans for a few years at one point, I’ve seen Mardi Gras recreated in many forms. Here in Florida, Universal Studios has its own version of it, which often has floats direct from the New Orleans float artists’ hands! Comparing Gasparilla to Mardi Gras is fairly easy, but does it a bit of a disservice by ignoring the over-the-top piracy aspect that the festival in Tampa has going for it!  While you wait for the parade, it’s best to have something to pass the time – for many, it’s the act of day-drinking, as most of the laws are relaxed concerning coolers and open containers of alcohol.

However, Robert and I had brought an entirely different sort of distraction (although, like right and proper pirates, we had brought quite a haul of rum, beer, and grog.) We played an ancient nautical game called “Shut the Box”, which is sold many places but is also a game that’s relatively easy to build yourself with basic supplies. While I won’t go into detail concerning how to build your own setup or how to play the game (look for that DIY coming in a future post), suffice it to say it’s a simple game that involves two six-sided dice and a row of numbers. Rolling the dice and turning the numbers face-down is all there is to it, but once you add some shiny golden coins, or in our case grimy, sea-salt encrusted doubloons, it takes on a much more competitive edge. We must have played dozens of hands, but the constant back-and-forth of the coins kept it fun. Also, having the crowd at the parade watching two pirates throw clinking coin into a box while swigging from tankards and smoking pipes resulted in a lot of comments and photographs, and we were interrupted fairly regularly to talk about our appearance, our pistols and swords, and the game itself.