ost years, as January draws to a close, pirates invade Tampa. Hundreds of boats swarm the city harbor, led by a 165-foot-long, fully rigged pirate ship. A crew of swaggering, swashbuckling bandits in eye-patches and tricorns accost the mayor and demand the keys to the city.
It’s an act, of course: Many of the people initiating the action, dressed like characters straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean, are members of the Florida city’s elite. They belong to Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, a once-segregated quasi-fraternity that dates to 1904 and puts on the Gasparilla festival each year, with help from sponsors like Bud Light and Captain Morgan rum. The Krewe estimates that nearly 300,000 people, locals and tourists alike, parade and party along Tampa’s streets each year to celebrate José Gaspar—a.k.a. José Gasparilla, the legendary pirate who supposedly terrorized his way up and down the west Floridian coast in the late 18th century.
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