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Some merchants aim to tame GuavaweenBy JEFFREY GETTLEMAN © St. Petersburg Times, published November 17, 1998 But to some Ybor City business owners, the Halloween street party has degenerated into a throbbing nightmare. Fearful of vandalism and theft, a few businesses closed for the night. Those who stayed open said business was worse than on a typical Saturday, despite the thousands of people merrymaking outside their front doors. Fed up, a group of business owners has banded together to change things. They want to remold Guavaween to make it truer to Ybor's Latin roots and scale back the event so it's no longer a massive drinking fest. And they want to redirect profits from the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce, which has run Guavaween for the past five years, to the individual clubs and restaurants that help give Ybor its flavor. "The whole tenor of the event has to change," said Taylor Ward, general manager of the Sugar Palm Club and a leader of the effort to reform Guavaween. "We want a different quality of entertainment . . . and we want to make it smaller by having a higher-quality message that won't appeal to the throngs." Ward, a former Times reporter, stressed that her group doesn't want to end Guavaween but to improve it. Ward's group, called the Ybor-Guavaween Advancement Division, or YGAD!, is holding its first meeting at the Sugar Palm today. Chamber chairwoman Sara Romeo isn't worried. Guavaween is a dynamic event -- part parade, part live music, all street party -- that could be improved on many fronts, she said. Every year the chamber takes suggestions from its 420 members. This year, though, the event's financial success is tough to dispute. For the first time, Guavaween, always the last Saturday in October, fell on Halloween. The alignment drew a crowd of about 85,000, said to be the biggest ever. A more exact head count is difficult to obtain because, on top of the 64,700 who paid $8 admission, another 20,000 people got in free by being on the streets before 3 p.m., when the admission went into effect. The chamber, a non-profit organization, made $129,000 from the event through a partnership with Cox Entertainment, a local production company. Cox hired the 16 stage acts, advertised the event and parceled out curb space to street vendors. Cox took the biggest chunk of the $520,000 admissions proceeds. It also hired about 250 off-duty police officers, fenced off a large swath of the historic district and paid city crews to clean up the next morning. Guavaween provides more than half the Ybor chamber's annual budget, Romeo said. The chamber will use the proceeds to promote Ybor businesses and historic tours. The chamber deserves credit for making Guavaween safer, Romeo said. "When we took over this event five years ago, it was real ugly," Romeo said. "Yes, there's still a lot of rowdy people and drinking and acting wild, but we only had 14 arrests this year." Business owners are divided about the merits of Guavaween. Some have resigned themselves to the chaos and discovered ways to profit from it. Others find the event despicable. Jody Anderson, who owns the Clayground, a pottery workshop on Seventh Avenue, shut her doors, removed the store's plate glass windows and sold cans of beer on Halloween night. "I can't see Guavaween being anything else but a street party," Anderson said. "It's getting better year to year, but I don't see how it's ever going to do much for the local merchants." Harriet Raitano, owner of Boca, an elegant restaurant on Seventh Avenue, closed on Guavaween and hired a security guard to stand out front. "How could I do business with all these kids throwing up in the street and rough-housing?" asked Raitano, one of the two dozen business owners who signed a petition to reform Guavaween. "The night has turned into such a free-for-all." On the other hand, John Santoro, owner of Club Hedo, didn't think Guavaween was enough of a free-for-all. "I think it should go back to being a huge, free street party," Santoro said, referring to the Guavaweens before 1993 when there was no admission charge. "If people want a classy event, they should do it sometime else. I can remember coming down here when I was younger and partying my face off." Mayor Dick Greco said Guavaween is big and crazy enough that it is bound to be controversial. He was not surprised at the emerging rift. "Ybor is one of those neighborhoods where people are really into what they do and will speak up when they think something isn't right," Greco said. "Ybor's a passionate place. That's what we all like about it."
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AMPA -- To the organizers of the 14th annual Guavaween, this year's event was an unblemished success: record-setting crowds, few arrests and a pile of money raised for the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce.
