Photos: DIY street festival shuts down Commercial Drive

Yeah, permits are stupid. What could possibly go wrong with hundreds or thousands of people in one place, consuming booze and drugs and with no services, security and emergency plans in place?!

I mean, we did our thing and nothing bad happened, so that must mean nothing bad will EVER happen at something like this, right?

signed,

Well-Meaning Dumdums (WMDs)

With the amount of illegal public drinking and open drug consumption going on are you sure it wasn't a Vision fundraiser?

They had extra sanitary facilities set up. They had people working 'security' as well as legal observers. They had extra trash receptacles out.

This morning, as I walked to the corner store, I passed by volunteers collecting the last of the garbage, and other effluvia from the previous night. City crews should be so immediately efficient! I myself passed through the crowd shortly after ten o'clock last night. It was a happy merry group, with a remarkably social feeling utterly lacking during wallet trap festivities like Italian Day or the city's Car Free Days. When I got home (I live two and a half blocks from Grandview Park, ground zero, of the event. There was no disruptive noise other than that of the police who were there like they expected a minor war.

The city and their opportunistic civic level regulations do not trump federal level rights. They do not have the authority to regulate our rights into effective non-existence. And the costs now involved are truly unnecessarily high and there simply to pad city coffers. And, of course, the police union's membership.
The Drive, before the devolution of civic government to self perpetuating bureaucracy , once was home to The Fringe Festival: gone. The Illuminari or Lantern Festival: truncated to a shadow. The Parade of Lost Souls:. reduced to a ring of isolated displays behind Britannia. All these wonderful events which helped bring our extraordinary community together are effectively dead. Exsanguination through fees and permits and endless timelines more fitting for Superior Court appeals than a community party.

So I ask the city, and its apologists, why are there so many bureaucratic and financial obstacles for events which we used to hold without problems, and which were easier to 'officially' hold, and less costly by far? Are the only official festivals to be allowed, the only affordable for organizers, to be the BIA sponsored wallet traps?

And our communities wither, regulatory drop by drop.

I wonder how many yards got pooped in. Thanks city workers for cleaning it all up, probably around 4 or 5 a.m.

@Padraic Kellington

Damn that was good! You've got a point and I'm rethinking this thing. I wasn't there, you were, plus you're quite right about the culture strangling thing CoV does so well. Some city bigwigs talk about relaxing some of this stuff but actually the no fun city thing has gotten worse and expense is a big part of the reason.

All that and a drought eh? Fuck.

On the other hand it's a helluva town still in so many ways. Whuddyagonnado?

Except for the Balkan band, this was a yawner...

The author left out the fact that this so called "street party" was really a protest of some kind. (I believe against Harper) They billed it as a street party to beef up their numbers.

Most people were there to dance--there were a few people with some political signs; but really we all know it was organized by the Marxists who were distributing their People's Voice rag...

" They billed it as a street party to beef up their numbers."

When nobody knows it's a protest, when is it a protest? Maybe when they get their billing right, whether a festival, carnival, protest, or world's largest/only open illegal drug market, people will give a damn about their so called injustices, once it begins to actually look like one.

Right now they're just deceptive, manipulative, agents of chaos. I don't see them bringing anything constructive to the forefront at all. They look like a total nuisance, and there won't be too many more of these before they take the kid gloves off. Call it the outfall of a failed social experiment.

"Padraic Kellington

Aug 22, 2015 at 2:38pm

They had extra sanitary facilities set up. They had people working 'security' as well as legal observers. They had extra trash receptacles out."

I've heard all that nonsense before and you are blinded by your rose tinted lensing that city planners won't have the luxury of so spare us your insane gas lighting.

We've all seen the usual carnie spiel, they hire a half dozen of their own bikers, call it "Security". A porta potty or two doesn't for services make. Picking up litter the one time you're concerned with image isn't the same as sanitizing either. You let us know when they're out there with power washers and when they've paid the bill for the 64 victims sent to ER on 420.