Why Tampa Bay's LGBTQ+ community is reeling from the Ybor crash
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Bradley's on 7th in Ybor City, decorated for Christmas on a recent evening. Photo: Kathryn Varn/Axios
Groggy and away from Tampa for the weekend, Trevor Rosine didn't understand why his friends were blowing up his phone that Saturday morning.
- Then, he saw the news: A car had rammed into Bradley's on 7th, a gay bar in Ybor City where Rosine often rang in the weekend with Friday happy hours on the patio.
- "My immediate thought was, 'Somebody tried to kill these people,'" Rosine said. He rushed home with a sinking feeling reminiscent of the Pulse nightclub massacre nine years earlier.
Why it matters: After episodes of violence at queer spaces like Pulse and Colorado's Club Q, amid a hostile political climate for LGBTQ+ people, even a terrible fluke can feel like an attack.
- "They crashed into an open wound," said Tatiana Morales, a Tampa resident and Bradley's patron.
State of play: Not long after the Nov. 8 crash that killed four people and injured more than a dozen, Tampa police said it was the result of a police chase gone wrong, and there was no evidence the driver targeted Bradley's.
- After calls from Rosine and other residents, city officials planned a town hall for Dec. 16 to discuss safety in Ybor. The date is to be determined after the city postponed initial plans.
Flashback: Bradley's on 7th opened in 2011, a few years after a group of LGBTQ+ business owners dubbed a section of the historic neighborhood "GaYbor." It caught on.
- "All of the bars in that area became a third space for queer people to be able to hang out with their friends, their chosen family," Bradley's patron Taylor Aguilera said.
Zoom in: Ask folks who've spent time at Bradley's, and they'll tell you it's a place where you can be yourself and leave with a whole new group of friends.
- That's on purpose, owner Bradley Nelson said. Everyone is welcome — with one key distinction: "We are a gay bar first," Nelson told Axios.
- Signs above the door read, "Keeping the 'gay' in 'gay bar.'" The establishment is also registered with the Tampa Police Department as a safe place for marginalized communities.
- "I'm one to look for exit signs at clubs," Rosine said. "I don't at Bradley's."
What they're saying: That's why the crash has had such an impact on members of the LGBTQ+ community, even if they weren't there that night, Mayor Jane Castor said.
- "There's going to be a certain amount of community grief when a violent crime like this happens at a place that has so much personal and symbolic value," Castor, the city's first openly gay mayor, told Axios.
- "It kind of shatters that feeling of safety," said Tampa City Council chair Alan Clendenin, who was elected in 2023 as the city's first openly gay Council member.
Friction point: How to restore that feeling depends on who you ask. Some Ybor frequenters want to see Seventh Avenue transformed into a pedestrian-only plaza permanently or during peak hours.
- Castor and bar owner Nelson are against that move because, they say, it encourages people with no intention of patronizing businesses to congregate and potentially cause trouble.
- As for other solutions, Morales pointed out that Ybor once had raised medians, which can help slow cars.
Jasper Nowell, a St. Pete resident who was at Bradley's the night of the crash, told Axios he wants to see vehicle barriers called bollards added in front of establishments with street patios.
Despite the terror of that night — the collision that sounded like a plane crash, the realization that he would've been on the patio if he hadn't gone to the bathroom seconds earlier — Nowell returned when the bar reopened.
- Only two days had passed since the crash. The mood was somber, the music was muted, but it was still Bradley's: a safe space to be together.
- "It's not just four walls," Nowell said. "This is home."