Dishing with Mark & Carrie
12-30-2009
GaYBOR District Makes Lemonade
While striving to put UNITY into our CommUNITY, we shared our Tampa Bay CommUNITY with the World GLBTA CommUNITY , The GaYBOR District Coalition has made lemonade out of the lemons dealt to us in the year 2009. As the Coalition tripled in size, the power of working together & compromising shined threw, taking the Tampa Bay CommUNITY to a higher level.
Looking Back at 2009
What a year 2009 was. This is a small highlight of this past years top stories. GaYBOR District Coalition’s 1 second year quadruples in membership now at 270 . Wow… What a difference a year makes. New GLBT club/store openings in the area include; Tampa Social Club, Tampa Eagle, Tribeca Colorsalon, Joffrey’s Coffee Shop, Agora Furnishings, Hamburger Mary’s, Flamingo Hotel, and Ybor Resort & Spa. Major events in the community a couple come to mind. What a day for St. Pete Pride’s Promenade. Over 100,000 in the Stonewall event attendance. The 2nd Annual GaYBOR Days in July had acclaimed stature being recognized for the achievements with 3 government proclamations. One from the Tampa City Council, Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners and Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio. It was a full week of activities. The 20th Anniversary of Tampa International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival broke record attendance. A National Gay March on Washington in October had over 300,000 attending. A large number of bus loads of ralliers represented Florida. A new state organization was formed to work with all GLBT groups, OUT (Organizations United Together). A local NBC affiliate, WFLA TV 8 station opted to air a homophobic hateful infomercial for the American Family Association on St. Pete Pride day. They received a lot of hate mail and was picketed with hundreds of GLBTA protest marchers.
Some of the firsts included Tampa first newly appointed lesbian Police Chief Jane Castor, Newly elected gay St. Petersburg City Councilman Steve Kornell, and of course taking the oath of Hillsborough County Commissioner at the beginning of the year , gay advocate Kevin Beckner. Tampa Bay Business Guild chose Mark & Carrie to receive the Citizens of the Year Award.
We lost a many great friends including. Rex Maniscalco - photographer and GLBT genealogists. Jim Riis - school teacher and Log Cabin political activist.
December 30th, 2009 |
