Hey you kids, no singing in the park without a permit. GET OUT!
Union Square kicks out young carolers / Grade-school kids get boot for lack of permit from city — Again, jerk-off bureaucrats make a mockery of Christmas.
Two dozen San Francisco schoolkids sporting white turtlenecks and Santa hats got a very un-Christmaslike civics lesson the other day when they showed up at Union Square hoping to delight Christmas shoppers with holiday carols.
“They just wanted to set up next to the Christmas tree and sing,” said Donna Vargas, one of the parents who escorted the fifth- and sixth-graders from San Francisco Day School on Friday’s outing.
Instead, they got the boot.
Seems they didn’t have a city permit — so after a brief run-in with the park’s security, the kids were shooed away.
“How can children not be allowed to sing in a public park?” Vargas fumed. “I can see if they were street performers or passing a hat. But they are not raising money or soliciting anybody.”
This reminders me of those perennial stories about some poor kid’s lemonade stand being shut down because it doesn’t comply with business and tax regulations.
At what point, in their service, to our government officials lose touch with their common sense and humanity?
O nice! A story on which I can comment and get roundly booed. 🙂 For once– finally– parents are told *no*. They are not allowed to bring their noisy brats and just assume that everyone will be touched by the little darlings.
In the old days, parents would have *asked*, “Would it be all right if we bring a large group of school children to sing….” And they would have been told how to acquire permission– like everybody else– to do just what they wanted.
Instead, disruption is supposed to be an entitlement.
At the park I alluded to in an earlier post, people are quite free to bring large groups. They can even cook hamburgers if they want to. But they must get permission first.
Life’s tough.
Take this comment as half tongue-in-cheek– but only half. :-p
Government official and Common sense & humanity—now that’s a oxymoron!
Nothing new about NYC bureaucrats acting like culture Nazis. One of the very 1st acts of civil disobedience I ever participated in was a “sing-in” in Washington Square Park in the 1950’s. Because public singing in that park was banned.