Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's annual Best of the Bay party packed roughly 2,000 people onto the red oak dance floor of St. Petersburg's historic Coliseum on Wednesday, a venue swap forced by construction across the bay at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa. The night mixed food, drink, music and what the publication called shenanigans, along with the debut of a new honor: the inaugural class of Best of the Bay All-Stars.
The party had outgrown its usual digs at the Hard Rock Event Center, which is currently unavailable after the casino announced in August it was temporarily converting the 17,000-square-foot space into a 24/7 smoke-free gaming floor, according to WTSP. The temporary setup includes 682 slot machines and 34 table games, installed while the resort builds out a new smoke-free area called The Breeze, the station reported. That construction displaced scheduled concerts and events as the main casino floor undergoes renovation, pushing Creative Loafing to find a new home for its biggest night of the year, as detailed in the outlet's own account of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's 2026 celebration.
A Historic Dance Floor Steps In
The Coliseum ended up being a fitting stand-in. The city-owned building dates to 1924 and features a 15,500-square-foot red oak dance floor with a general admission capacity of 1,800 guests, per the City of St. Petersburg. It comfortably held the party's roughly 2,000 attendees alongside hundreds of award winners being recognized across 555 reader categories and 128 critics' selections, the same report notes.
The venue has its own rescue story. St. Petersburg voters approved a property tax referendum in March 1989 that let the city buy The Coliseum for $824,500 and prevent its demolition after liability costs had threatened its operations in the 1980s, according to St. Pete Catalyst. The building earned a spot on the St. Petersburg Register of Historic Places in 1994. It has since become a go-to civic gathering space — the same hall hosted Trop site showdown presentations in April 2026, when four developer teams pitched redevelopment plans for the 86-acre Historic Gas Plant District, and more recently welcomed the Tampa Bay Senior Expo in September, which drew more than 75 regional vendors and health screening providers.
A Cake Shaped Like The Paper Itself
One of the night's visual centerpieces was a full-size Creative Loafing newspaper box cake, crafted by The Cake Girl. The bakery was founded in 2008 by pastry chef Kristina Lavallee and opened its first Tampa storefront in June 2019 after starting as a pop-up tent and food truck operation, building a reputation for realistic custom cakes.
Beyond the cake and the dance floor, the party's numbers underscore how deep Best of the Bay's reach runs. Creative Loafing readers cast roughly 1.6 million votes this year, selecting winners and finalists across 555 categories, while the publication's writers handed out 128 critics' awards of their own. The inaugural Best of the Bay All-Stars class, honoring 37 individuals and institutions for repeated recognition and contributions to the bay area, made its debut alongside those results.
Nearly Four Decades Of Local Coverage
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay traces its roots to 1988, when it launched as a branch of an Atlanta-based publication, according to the City of Tampa. It was renamed The Weekly Planet in 1994 before reverting to its original name in 2006, giving the 2026 awards nearly four decades of institutional history behind them. The free weekly is now published by Events & Media, LLC, with Ray Roa serving as editor-in-chief and James Howard as publisher, per the publication's own masthead listed on Issuu. Roa, who authored the party recap, was recognized by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia in its 2025 national awards, taking second place in the short-form arts feature category for his music reporting.
That recognition comes against a tougher backdrop for alt-weeklies nationally. Papers across the country faced severe economic and distribution shocks beginning in 2020, prompting widespread downsizing and ownership shifts that touched independent weeklies including Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Nieman Lab reported at the time. Photographer Nick Cardello documented Wednesday's party, and Creative Loafing says it plans to announce a pair of no-cover Best of the Bay hangover parties where winners can pick up awards, take photos and meet new friends.
