Team Batshitinsane strikes again!
I’ve covered booze at the Worcester Latin Festival here before. The festival, one of the cities largest, most successful, supremely attractive and most edible is moving back to the Worcester Common this year after a brief set change to the other side of City Hall on Main St during the time the Common was being rehabbed. While the festival was partying like Argentina just won the FIFA World Cup on their temporary new home, they made the smart move of introducing a beer and wine tent to the festivities. More of a beer and wine jail actually as you could only drink inside a caged area under police guard because as any good prohibitionist knows, the mere sight of Poppie drinking a $5 Bud Light could send any youngin’ spiraling downward into a life of crime. Or something like that.
Well this year the festival is going to move a whole 20 yards back to its original location on the City Common and they intend to bring their overpriced beer garden/prison with them. But not if the most boring man in Worcester, Parks Commissioner Gary ‘Cromwell’ Vecchio has anything to say about it. Keeping true to form, he does in fact have something to say about it and as usual what he has to say makes very little sense.
From todays Telegram and Gazette:
“It looks like we’re going to have another debate about allowing alcohol in our parks,” Mr. Vecchio said. “It’s sad, but over the last six months, the Parks Commission has spent more time talking about alcohol in the parks than any other item.
“I think it’s wrong in every way and cannot be justified,” he added. “If we approve this, how do we ever say no to the Summer Nationals at Green Hill Park wanting alcohol? Or what about symphony concerts at Institute Park and Cristoforo Colombo Park, or the summer concert series at Elm Park, or to sporting events that request alcohol at their events? I don’t think we will be able to say no, and that will be a shame.”
The reason why you’ve had to put so much time into alcohol discussions, Gary, is twofold 1. you’re wrong and everyone else is right and 2. no wait, number one covered everything. The argument can and has been justified by normal, right thinking people such as myself over and over again. The Commissions fear of having alcohol requests made for other events is the whole point. I might actually start going to some of these borefests if they have booze on hand. I’ll guarantee my attendance to any event if I don’t have to drink inside some makeshift fortress of shame. Otherwise I’d rather just stay home and do something more exciting like watch the Home Shopping Network.
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8 Responses to “Team Batshitinsane strikes again!”
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I disagree. I regularly cage myself in some fashion before partaking in the demon alcohol, lest I wreak unmitigated horrors upon the populace. Typically, a small steel structure designed for a large dog does the trick, but handcuffs and some sort of manacles for the ankles will suffice. Basically, we’re looking at a sort of werewolf or Incredible Hulk effect. To let people wander freely out of the beer tent is to invite disaster. Chaos will reign. There is a high likelihood that some sort of Thunderdome would be constructed.
I know that the Parks Commission would prefer that I not drink at all, but that is simply not an option due to my considerable moral failings as a human being.
“Or what about symphony concerts at Institute Park…”
I was on the fence with the Summer Nationals, but he really wins me over with that. I do not want my city overrun with those drunken classical music enthusiast fuckers.
This is a class issue, of course, because the West Siders know that anyone who makes less than $75,000 a year (aka “those people” or just “them”) lacks the ability to drink in public without causing crime, abusing or neglecting their children, or, let’s face it, just being downright embarrassing.
Now I’ve gone to a few of those symphony concerts at Institute Park and gotten a little high on the sly, so to speak, and noticed many others doing the same while their children were distracted by the costumed Disney characters (Disney has long been associated with great classical music, of course, ever since “Fantasia” came out) cavorting in front of the orchestra. But if some of “them” had shown up, THEIR children would have toppled headfirst into the lake, probably as drunk as their parents, and no doubt they would have drowned. This was prevented by the WISE APPLICATION of the drinking laws by local police, who I can only conclude must have been looking the other way as a stumbled home, drunk on cheap Australian plonk and the thrill of a real symphony orchestra accompanied by sirens, something I usually have the opportunity to hear at a Varese’ concert.
It is the same CAREFUL ATTENTION TO DETAIL (aka “discrimination” or “profiling”) that assures that a good time will be had by all along the route of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, even though it assures that many public school children will be neglected (not in this case, by their parents, but by the hung over Irish schoolteachers that will call in sick the next day because too far gone from the day before to deal with the Puerto Rican kids) while parochial school children escape this tragic fate.
It is not that public drinking is a good thing per se, it is that there are those who can enjoy it responsibly (”US”) and then those other people, with names like Cruz and Rodriguez.
This is just another turn of the wheel, of course, for it was not that long ago that people with surnames like, well, anything starting with “O’” who used to be rounded up and put in the Paddy Wagon (named for those in the back, not the front) for the same crime of drinking in public while not making enough money at a job that required a starched collar at work.
So let us drink in public, quietly, and toast the sober judgment of our city fathers: Viva Paternalismo!
Wait a second…so if I make less than 75k a year, I’m one of THEM too?!
I suddenly feel very unclean.
I live in the west side and I do not make that kind of dough. And I could give a shit who drinks at a festival. Stop stereotyping that is just another form of racism. The beer garden at the back of the park is a good one. Other cities allow that type of thing. The issue really illuminates the hypocrisy that stems from the power click that runs this town. Not enough citizens vote so the same good ol’ boy club (gobc herein) keeps arrogantly shitting on all the rest of us, busting our balls whenever they can, apparently because it makes these little shits feel important. The real creeps and losers are those who follow this club around trying real hard to fit in. It seems they feel that they know better than all the rest of the citzens in Worcester. These asswipes live in fear. They are so hungry they will do anything to stick their nose as far up the gobc as they can. These are the dangerous ones. They are needy, invalidators and will abuse others until they bully their way to get what they want, a piece of the power to feed their inferior ego. Vampire Nazis: “NO ALCOHOL FOR YOU!!!!”
Come to baltimore where the beer flows in the streets! just bring a cup. Weren’t “those peole’ irish at one time?
Oh come on. Drinking has been banned from these events for a very good reason. It DOES lead to trouble. Fights, vandalism, vomit all over the place, families having to leave early because of all the madness.
Have you ever seen an unruly crowd that WASN’T negatively influenced by alcohol???
Especially when you’re dealing with a ‘poor’ crowd. Let’s face it - a good majority of the latin population in this city IS poor, and with that you just get a lot of people who don’t respect much of anything, and in fact many who actually DESPISE authority. It’s not a latin thing, it’s a poor people thing.
Add free style drinking to that mix and you’re absolutely going to have trouble.
Not many people have the courage to say that in this pc age, yet everyone knows deep down that it’s true.
They’re nice enough to find a middle ground for you with a controlled alcohol area - but that’s not enough. You want to do it with no police around, and no control.
You’re crazy - or more likely naive.
pancreas, spend some time in any of the many cities around the country that do have just the kind of events we’re talking about and then get back to me.
As for the Latin festival, I’ve been there every year since it began and never seen an unruly crowd. We must be talking about two different events.
I love how the ‘family’ is the excuse to ban anything fun in Worcester. I have a family, so how is it I’m able to have a beer without turning into an animal and lighting half the city on fire? It’s called being an adult; and it scares the shit out of me how many adults don’t seem to think its possible to be one, says allot about our society.