This is the 43rd Annual Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the Arts is an acclaimed national art show icon featuring over 300 worldwide talent of specialty artists. 350,000 people come to downtown Tampa  and ascend to the juried judges art on the river exhibits.The weather looks clear & cool with little rain chances. The festival is March 2 and 3rd in Curtis Hixon Park in downtown Tampa. The wide variety of art includes paintings, sculptures, jewelry, crafts, and unimaginable creative works. A definite cultural charm to the downtown Tampa’s revitalization with new high rises for residents and new innovative businesses. This year over 1000 applications were received and of that just over 300 were accepted to show and $75,000 in juried art awards.

The artsy attending crowds are immensely interesting both in show and clothes. Kudos for the Tampa arts organizations dominating their presence this weekend in Tampa.

Oh by the way, the Plant City Strawberry Festival with all those yummy strawberry shortcake booths and top entertainment is also going on for the next week. Great outside activities to take in and enjoy.

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We are pleased with the Oscars giving reverend thanks to the classic gay award nominee “Brokeback Mountain” up for the Oscars in 2005 by director Ang Lee. NBC anchors had a “Best Romantic Movie” episode and Brokeback Mountain was brought up a couple of times.This year Ang Lee’s spectacular film ” Life of Pi” won a number of Academy Awards.

 Since 1989 we have had a large collection to share with the Tampa Bay community. MC FILM has most of the Academy Award Films on DVD along with 8600 great classic, foreign and GLBT movie titles For Sale & For Rent!.A lot of the GLBT DVD’s come from the directors themselves from film festivals and have little known community awareness or circulation but are great films to see and enjoy.