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Maxim Magazine Rates Tampa A Top 10 Party Town

Tribune file photo

Ybor City and Guavaween. Can you say party?

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 23, 2007

TAMPA - Well, the secret is out. Tampa denizens have known it for years and have tried to keep it from their out-of-town, goody-goody relatives, but the word has slipped past loose lips, and now this city has a reputation to live down.

Tampa, a haven for strip clubs, peep shows and lingerie shops, has made a bacchanalian Top 10 list, and the reason has nothing to do with college football's BCS rankings.

Ever-on-the-edge Maxim magazine, which features scantily clad celebrities and ingenues on its monthly covers, has let the kitty out of the bag. Tampa, the magazine has concluded, is among the Top 10 party cities in the nation.

Of course, there was much more to the quasi-scientific survey than just the number of nudie joints. Maxim's editors say these other factors figured in:

Modeling agencies, divorces, residents' median ages, colleges in the area, 24-hour restaurants, gaming laws and, get this, condom sales.

The magazine picked another Florida city as the top party place in the nation. A place called Miami, somewhere south of here, pulled in the top spot, mainly because of its 49 modeling agencies and double-digit divorce rate.

Tampa has a ways to climb to reach Miami, but at least in the eyes of Maxim's editors, this town did rank higher than New Orleans, Dallas and Chicago.

"It's four o'clock: Do you know where your dad is?" the magazine's Tampa blurb begins "He's probably at one of the city's 49 strip clubs." And, the note says, that's more clubs than are in Las Vegas. A photo of the 2001 Odyssey strip club sign represents Tampa in the magazine.

The magazine also cited the city's median age, which is highest on the list, but that is evened out by the consumption of beer per person at home -- more than five cases a year.

Bill Gieseking, director of marketing for Pepin Distributing, didn't dispute the assertion that there is a lot of drinking going on in the Tampa Bay region.

He said about 14 million cases of beer are sold each year in Hillsborough County and part of Pasco County, where his distributorship and another share the market. It's among the top 30 beer drinking markets in the nation, he said.

"It's a good market for beer consumption," he said, "because it is an active lifestyle market, good weather and a growing population."

The market is relatively young, with a good median income that provides some extra after the bills are paid, he said.

Last year Tampa didn't make the Maxim list, and the reason it did this year is that the formula for calculating a score was tweaked, said Sam Barclay, the Maxim contributor who was on the team of editors and researchers that took a month to gather and sort the data used to arrive at the rankings.

"Tampa is a hell of a party city," Barclay said Tuesday morning. "Ybor City is there, and anyone who has ever gone to Ybor City has had a good time."

Barclay said last year's top city, Las Vegas, slipped in the rankings. Sin City?

"We tweak the formula a little each year," Barclay said. Beer consumption, the number of strip clubs and how many bars allow dancing are part of the data weighed by economists and mathematicians to come up with scores.

One of the seemingly minor factors, for example, is that beer guzzlers here can buy their six-packs in grocery stores. Some cities don't allow that, he said.

"We want to reward cities who don't punish people for partying," Barclay said.

The winners were selected from 50 of the largest cities in the nation.

"Hats off to Tampa," Barclay said, "for making the list."

As for the publicity Tampa will get from the Maxim list, Barclay said, "I think they should absolutely welcome it. Maxim is a big part of its readers' lives, and when guys see this, and if they had not been to Tampa, they will go. They'll go to Ybor City and have a good time."

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, after learning of the designation Tuesday morning, agreed that Tampa is a fun place, but she wasn't so sure about all the factors that went into arriving at the Maxim conclusion.

"If it's equated to having a good time, that's good," Iorio said on Tuesday morning. "People do come here to have a good time."

But, the mayor said, having fun doesn't necessarily mean hanging out at strip bars or drinking until the wee hours.

So what does it mean?

"Tailgating for our sports teams," she said. "That's good entertainment before, during and after the games. We are a community that has a lot of events, and at all of those events, people have a good time."

Iorio said the Bay area is host to some 800 events each year, ranging from the Gasparilla Day string of parades and pirate invasion to smaller events that give residents and visitors something to do just about every weekend.

If Maxim editors took all that into account, Iorio said, "I'm not surprised we ranked high."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or at kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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