Guavaween 1994 Featuring Joan Jett

Guavaween in Ybor City Florida October 1994. Guavaween in its heyday reached an estimated attendance of 120,000 people but with that brought problems of property damage, arrests and medical emergencies. The following year the area was enclosed by fencing to aid in crowd control. Then in 1992 the Artists and Writers Ball who had co-sponsored the event parted ways with the Ybor Chamber of Commerce who was the other major sponsor. As the cost of the event increased and the funds decreased it was decided in 1995 to begin to charge admission. The event continued to be strong with artists such as Rihanna performing in 2005 just of few months after the release in the USA of her first album in August. During these years the activity continued to struggle with its image with the attendees pushing the envelop on dress and behavior and the local chamber of commerce and the city council concerned about the image projected. At the same time the costs to host the activity continued to rise seeing the entry fee of $4 in 1994 increase to $17 in 2015. As prices increased efforts were made to decrease expenses. The first step was to remove motorized vehicles from the parade in 2009 which allowed them to eliminate the barriers between the attendees and the parade for an estimated savings of $4,000. 2009 brought with it other changes as well, it had an attendance of only 15,000 people. Using horses to draw the floats in 2009 simply did not prove effective and by 2012 the parade had been eliminated. In 2015 the final death throes of Guavaween had started. The fencing came down and the entrance fee eliminated resulting it the elimination of the ability of attendee to consume alcohol since the city ban on drinking in the streets returned. The activity lost more patrons with this move and a loss of income from ticket sales. The last attempt to revitalize the event was the hiring of an outside event firm to organize the event. They changed the activity from basically a street party attracting 10's of thousands to a music festival. Part of the reasoning was the roots of the event stemmed for the ideas of the Artists and Writers Ball. The event now changed from an outdoor activity to indoor music at selected locations throughout Ybor. Ticket prices now were $20 the day of the event and $85 for VIP tickets. It also morphed to a strictly adult event since all venues served alcohol preventing anyone under 21 from attending which hurt attendance even more since in the past many of the attendees were local college students and other young adults. at this point attendance had dropped below 5,000. The contract signed with the event company was for 3 years, finishing in 2017. In 2018 the official Guavaween website is available for purchase. The last Facebook update was in 2016.