Dishing with Mark n Carrie… Joshua & Tea Cup

Joshua & Tea Cup

Named the two naughtiest bartenders in Ybor City will be together again this SUNday FUNday at The ShowBar, Door at 12 noon show at 2PM

Illinois Just Launched a Free, First-of-its-Kind Hotline for LGBTQ+ Residents

https://www.them.us/story/illinois-lgbtq-legal-hotline-announcement

Trump says he’d consider banning LGBTQ+ Pride flags in alarming Oval Office exchange

President Donald Trump said Monday in the Oval Office that he would have “no problem” with removing LGBTQ+ Progress Pride flags from Washington, D.C. streets, telling reporters that the banners could even be treated as symbols of domestic terrorism.

https://www.advocate.com/news/trump-considers-pride-flag-bans

Coming to Tampa ???

From https://www.facebook.com/groups/tampabaylgbthistory/

From David Johnson

Bobby Smith was a trail blazer in the early Tampa LGBT community. After graduating from Tampa’s Jefferson High School in 1942, Bobby delivered war-time telegrams for the US Post Office because he liked the uniform. The Tampa Tribune called Bobby “Tampa’s First Girl Messenger.”

Assigned female at birth, Bobby dressed as a man throughout his adult life—today he might embrace a trans identity. He seemed to have been well accepted in his community–we have photos of Bobby with his mother, coworkers, and even the fire chief.

During the day he worked at Southern Photo & News, but at night he frequented local gay and drag bars, becoming the community’s unofficial photographer. He met his life partner Kay Thompson at Jimmie White’s Tavern in 1959, and they were together nearly fifty years.

Bobby and “Miss Kay” were founding members of MCC-Tampa in 1971–they even put a mortgage on their house to help pay for the church’s first sanctuary. The couple renewed their unofficial wedding vows there and at the 1993 March on Washington. As long-time lovers often do, they passed away within months of each other in 2008/2009.

Bobby’s photos inside bars and private parties in the 1950s and 1960s are the crown jewel of USF’s LGBT archives.

For more on Bobby Smith, see Connor Lasseter’s USF M.A. thesis: “The Sun Shines on Us, Too: Bobby Smith and Tampa’s Early LGBT Community” https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10726/

COMING SOON? A developer announced plans to bring a giant observation wheel to Tampa’s Channel District neighborhood. https://bit.ly/3VXwahW

On a foot note. Bobbie & Kay were both very good friends of Mark n Carrie.

Gallery of Dwellings of Ybor City from the Anthony P. “Tony” Pizzo collection and their contemporary counterparts captured by Tampan Photographer Chip Weiner.