April 27, 2006
North Beach Is Italian For No Booze
With the sun finally appearing, it's time to think about our favorite springtime city activities. Like street fairs. Our favorite street fair? The North Beach Festival. Nothing we love more than hanging out in Washington Square Park, downing some brews, then drunkenly stumbling into the maelstrom for more food, booze, and White Boy Blues. Man, what fun.
Oh wait, there's going to be no booze allowed this year? Nevermind.
Apparently, some people have been complaining about the drunken hordes of frat boys, Marina girls, and aging alcoholics who have descended upon the Festival year after year. The complaint says that drunken people take away from a "family atmosphere” and well; won't somebody think of the children? So a ban was pushed through, much to the chagrin of Festival organizers.
In today's Examiner, grumpy ole Ken Garcia claims that the ban was enacted in an act of revenge upon the Festival organizers by the Telegraph Hill Dwellers and their errand boy, Aaron Peskin, for a big fight over some property in North Beach (in short, developers were given permission to build housing, Dwellers complained, Peskin claimed eminent domain and the developers were kept from developing-- one of our favorite "School House Rock" episodes, BTW, was the sequel to "I'm Just a Bill" where Bill The Bill is stopped from going into effect when a politician declares eminent domain. We just loved that song "Eminence Domain Front").
Which maybe the case and considering how things work in this town, possibly true. On the other hand, the North Beach Festival does have a tendency to devolve into drunken rowdiness. And not just by us. People for the ban also say that this way the Festival will be less with the drunken keg party and more with the North beach flavor as apparently all the drinking makes it harder to tell the difference between the exact same vendor and artist at this fair as at other fairs. We'd also like to point out that it won't exactly be Disney Land out there-- you can still drink at the bars and there will be a section to drink at the festival, just not near anything.
Which means that if you want to look for us, we'll be the one's at the bar.
Image, bra, from TheTwins.org
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I live two blocks from Washington Square Park, I don't have kids, and I say "hurray for the ban." It's not a "North Beach Festival" anymore. It's devolved into a "drunken bridge and tunnel/Marina crowd festival." there's no North Beach flavor to it at all. It's become just like every other "neighborhood festival" in this city: another excuse for outsiders to come here and trash the place.
Although it WAS amusing to watch the drunken leather vest clad young woman get into a fist fight with her drunken leather clad mom, and then watch them both get thrown down on the pavement by SF's finest ina hilarious "COPS" style scene, I can live without these people pissing in my doorway.
Besides which, during the North Beach Drunkfest, all the residents are banned from the park. Now, according to Ken "Douchebag" Garcia, that's no problem, you can just get in your car and DRIVE to a different park. Unless of course, you a.) don't have a car, and/or b.)give a crap about the environment.
People want to drink in the bars? Fine. They want to turn our park into a giant beer tent for Budweiser (nasty)? No.
The city should have a bridge and tunnel festival. Fence off the Broadway tunnel and invite the fake alcoholic beat poets, frat boys, and Harley dorks to go at it cage-match style. When it's over they can go over to Ken Garcia's house and puke on his lawn.
I hate to admit that I agree with Ken Garcia on this one, but I kinda do. 365 nights of the year, public drunkeness and lewd behavior by tourists in the neighborhood is fine. And you know the same thing is going to happen to the Jazz festival.
I thought I moved to North Beach, not Palo Alto.
I've never been to an italian street fests but I've been to a couple in Spain, the US and England. And I think that spanish are the best though there are a lot of drunk people as well)Pero la musica y conciones soi perfectas.