MC Film is Now CLOSED After 26 Years
First and foremost, we want to THANK YOU for your 26 years of support, patronage and your friendship. Mark, Carrie, Mr. Bill and Miss Amber want to let you know that if and when we open up again, we will let you know.
We started in 1989 selling gay and lesbian movies at gay festivals and events. We opened our first store, MC FILM, across from University of Tampa. The second MC FILM store was 1400 square feet and was located on Kennedy and Himes for nine years. The store’s facilities included a large gay pride retail store, a theater and community room for 60 people, video rentals and sales, and was known as the gay community information center in Tampa!
The shop hosted so many events in the community including the Harvey Milk Candlelight Vigil, Gay Spring Thing, Ellen DeGeneres’s HRC Coming Out Party, the manhunt by local police for Versace’s murderer Andrew Cunanan, the first national gay TV ad for Time Warner Communications, the screening of thousands of movies for the Tampa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, 14 plays showcased and performed by local gay actors and writers, dog and cat adoptions, gay youth and transgender meetings, meetings for Hillsborough County Human Task Force (now Equality Florida), and it was the campaign headquarters for Carrie running for Tampa City Council.
MC Film was also the gay pride shop up at Sawmill Resort for its first year. We were the planning office for Orlando’s Gay Days at Disney for seven years.
We moved to St. Petersburg to the Suncoast Resort back in 1998. Both DVDs and videos were for sale and rent, in addition to clothing, rainbow gifts, dance music CDs, and jewelry, along with thousands of other gay pride items. We traveled to a large variety of trade shows in Las Vegas, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando and New York for specialty gay and rainbow-themed merchandise. That in itself was a job, but we loved doing it.
In 2007 we wanted another MC FILM location in Ybor City. We found the Ybor location full of stuff but for rent. A sewer was being built on 15th Street and most of the businesses were closed and out of business. There were 44 empty stores on 7th Avenue.
We called a lot of friends and said, “If you want to open a store, bar, restaurant or have a non-profit, Ybor City is available.” With that, GaYBOR District Coalition was formed and a new chapter in Tampa history began!
You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up!
When we first moved into MC Film in Ybor eight years ago, we had the cooler moved by professional movers. The guys had the large heavy three-door cooler out on the back lift of the moving truck and they started lowering it down. Just then, the local parking ticket person showed up. Puffing out his little Napoleon chest, he said, “MOVE it NOW or get a ticket!”
Of course we couldn’t stop mid-air as we were balancing the cooler. The very kind ticket guy gave us a parking ticket.
This past week we were moving out of MC FILM. A new parking guy showed up and…you guessed it, gave us a parking ticket! Some things will never change in Ybor City.
GBar Has New Ownership, Southern 
Nights Coming
The un-surprise announcement came Saturday afternoon from co-owners, Stephen Moss and Steve Donahue about the sale of GBar. The bar takeover is June 1st. The sale was revealed in the local gay papers in February. The two still own the Social Club and Honey Pot on 7th.
