To call this weekend the end of an era at Crowbar doesn’t do the occasion justice. In fact, it’s hard to think of any party that’s enjoyed a run like Ol’ Dirty Sundays. For nearly 14 years, ODS has been a staple of Tampa nightlife, bringing people from all walks of life together at one special patio in Ybor City under a really simple banner: music.
“It was a perfect storm,” Justin Layman told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay about the party’s inception in 2011. Brunch wasn’t even really a thing yet in Tampa, and there certainly wasn’t a night built around the art of DJing with a soundtrack rooted not just in old-school hip-hop, but the genre’s origins in soul, funk, disco, and reggae.
“There was definitely a void,” Layman, better known as DJ Casper, added.
The pitch was relatively simple, too. Tampa scene staple Mike Mendolusky (aka DJ Blenda) walked Casper into a chaotic and sweaty sold-out metal show—really the last time to talk to Crowbar co-founder and owner Tom DeGeorge about anything.
“Me and Blenda meet him at the soundboard. Tom’s like, ‘What’s up brother?’,” Casper recalled. “We shake his hand, then walk into his office. He sits down in his chair, and boom, spins around, and he’s like, ‘So what the fuck do you want?’”
Casper told DeGeorge about his observations in the scene and replied, “I want to basically throw a party in the back alley, and play rap records, and smoke weed, and get drunk, and pass this and that out for free.”
He remembers being asked how the night was going to make any money and not having an answer, but recalls DeGeorge replying, “Alright. I’ll give you 400 bucks,” before telling him when the start date would be.
“I forget more than I remember here,” DeGeorge told CL about the pitch, and most nights at Crowbar. But he can still hear four dudes—Casper and Blenda along with Aaron LeSage and Neal “DJ Mega” Stoll—pitching some kind of miniscule bar sales split.
“I told them, it’ll never last, because you guys aren’t gonna make any fucking money—there’s four of you, it just won’t work if we only do 15% of the bar sales,” DeGeorge said. “So I told them I was going to pay them more, and let’s make a run at this thing.”
Mega, Blenda and LeSage have since moved on from their residencies at ODS, with Anthony “DJ Fader” Othouse coming in to fill the void early in the game, but what a run it’s been.
The first iterations of ODS kicked off at 4 p.m., with DeGeorge on a grill cooking Sam’s Club burgers and giving them to people for free.
“Then he would get watermelon and pineapple and soak them in vodka and walk around—people would just dip their hands in there and just fucking grab chunks,” Casper said.
B-boys and girls would, and still do, breakdance in the courtyard where partygoers come together to decompress while artists make graffiti and paintings. These days, it's award-winning Clam Master Jay in the courtyard cooking, and Indy as emcee.
“On top of that, what I like about ODS is that they give back to the community by not charging, which is awesome” DJ Charlie Chase of seminal hip-hop group Cold Crush Brothers said in a documentary about ODS. “So you have a lot of broke people coming to party, but it’s all great.”
Those people never wanted to leave, and the barbecue that used to wrap about 10 p.m. started bleeding into the morning hours. And while ODS pushed doors back to 10 p.m. to shorten the day, DeGeorge told CL that he still “Just saw it just as what a great community party that we can do.”
Until Oct. 2, 2021.
By then, Casper & co. had already booked big names like 9th Wonder who came up with North Carolina's Little Brother before breaking out by producing tracks on Jay-Z’s Black Album. That night, Talib Kweli and Mos Def were in town on a Black Star anniversary tour, with Kweli set to DJ at ODS afterwards.
Legend has it that Mos Def, with some help from Tampa’s hip-hop godfather DJ Sandman and then-ODS host DJ Deacon, decided on a whim to come along. Casper remembers sneaking them in through the back alley where Tampa rapper Dynasty had pulled her yellow Ford Mustang. The patio was at capacity, and lost it as Mos Def—now known as Yasin Bey—played host, hyping up the crowd and doing some of the most iconic songs in hip-hop with virtually no separation between them and the party.
“That was definitely a monumental night, but there’s been so many,” Casper said.
That’s when DeGeorge knew ODS was on another plane.
Since then, it’s been a fantasy list of DJs and rappers, from Z-Trip, to Rich Medina, Kool DJ Red Alert, Ghostface Killah, Adrian Younge, and even the infamous seven-minute set from DJ Scratch who got stuck on a tarmac but raced over to have a chance to spin next to luminaries like Chase even for a moment. It’s been expensive to bring that kind of talent to Ybor City, but it’s been money well spent.
The sets have been a vibe, but they’ve also been an education in the different eras and sounds—from Fania to Fela Kuti—that gave birth to hip-hop. ODS has been a placemaking party for Tampeños, and changed the way music fans see the world around them.
In between all-vinyl sets at a one of the last ODS parties, DJ Shafiq told CL that playing actual records—most of them un-Shazam-able—is like riding in a time machine. Rahim Samad, a New York export and producer-rapper that’s long called Tampa home, said DJs come to ODS to get an education. Longtime Bay area rapper B.C. is still in awe of the humanity that a hip-hop party has drawn to the Crowbar patio.
“Anybody that shows up on a Sunday night has somewhere they have to be on Monday morning,” B.C., said. “Hopefully the energy will evolve into something new. I’m sad to see it go, but it was comforting to know that it was in the world.”
Fader—who credits ODS with his evolution as a DJ—told CL that in some ways, music fans have lost touch with the nightclub experience as festivals force artists into prefabricated sets. At ODS, DJs read the room to tap into the psyche and souls of the people on the dance floor.
“Now it’s the big money spenders, the sparklers and big bottles, but nobody is dancing—no art and things like that,” he explained. “I think that’s what attracted so many people to Ol’ Dirty Sundays, having all those elements in one place, was refreshing.”
While the pandemic certainly affected turnout, with a move to charging a $5 cover not turning the tables soon enough, DeGeorge and Casper wanted to make sure ODS went out on a high note.
Casper told CL that ODS could not, and will not, ever happen anywhere but Crowbar; he and the others have not ruled out the possibility of one-offs. But the spotlight that flipped on when doors opened at Ol’ Dirty Sundays goes dark this weekend. And as founders said when they launched the party more than 13 years ago, Sundays will never be the same.
