Well, Uh, So Now What?
A day after the Halloween shootings, one monster-sized question looms-- what do we do next year. End the party at the Castro? More cops? More entertainment? Less cops? Charge fees? Make it more Burning Man-esque?
The big question to be answered is whether it's even worth doing at all. Whether or not we do it should probably be figured out, like, now because if we are, people can start planning ahead.
The good thing about not having it, obviously, is we that we lose the hassle in dealing with it. The not-so-good thing about not having it is that despite the shootings, thousands upon thousands of people have a good time at the Castro and we'll lose the party. Nothing says San Francisco like a Halloween shindig at the Castro.
But if we don't do it next year, how do we stop people from doing it? This isn't as easy as it sounds because one year they tried to move it elsewhere and people showed up anyways. It is doable, however. When we were in college, we went to U.C.S.B and at the time we were there, the Halloween Party was the biggest on the West Coast. Halloween weekend, friends of students, friends of friends of students, and friends of friends of friends of students came from everywhere to attend. After too many weekends of bad mayhem, the authorities put the kibosh on it by making it such a hassle to go there that people eventually stopped coming. Should SF do that next year to fight off the crowds?
Okay, so maybe we do decide to do it again. How, then? One theory is to make it an even bigger party or at least not half-ass it like this time around. That seems to be the Alix Rosenthal/SF Party Party solution. And it makes some sense. The problem we thought was that we did this Halloween like we couldn't decide whether to have it or not so a compromise was made that worked for nobody. As we said, it was kind of half-assed. The thinking here is that if you're going to throw a huge party, then treat it as such, don't try and pretend it's not. Sydney or the Bush.
We liked what Steven T. Jones said and thought he was onto something about how what happened showed a lack of respect on the city's part to partygoers. After all, if you want respect from people, you have to show them respect. Chasing everyone away at 10:30 with trucks and what-not isn't very respectful. And, as anyone who goes to parties knows, the peak party hours are between 10 and midnight so if you chase people out around 10:30, you have a really pumped up crowd being told to go home. That's not too smart.
Okay, so if we have a bigger party, what about security. This seems to be the big question as certain segments of the SF population get all nervous and fidgety if there's even some slight police presence around. SF Party Party, for instance, said that the police who were there gave the event a "paramilitary vibe." On the other hand, it has also been pointed out by many folks that other big cities have big events with no trouble and the main difference is a bigger police presence. And by big, we mean cops on horses big. It should be said too that most of the criticism we're hearing is that there weren’t enough cops.
Okay, how's about stricter security getting in and out the place? Many people said it was too easy to get in and things weren't checked. So, should we let in people who pay to get in? People who are of a certain age? Or costume only? Not bad ideas, entirely, but if you have at least 100,000 people trying to get into a certain area, that creates a choke-hold and choke-holds to get into a place only makes things worse. Just imagine getting through airport security-- now think about airport security with a bunch of drunk people. Bad things could happen.
When the idea of somehow curtailing the party first was introduced, we hated the idea. We've been that way with plans to stop the parties in North Beach and for Fleet Week. What can we say, we like big parties. But when we wrote that, we did it with the hopes that everyone who goes behaves. We DO understand why people who try and stop the parties do what they do because it's generally true that if you take a big huge group of people, and add alcohol to the mix, there will be some amount of asshole behavior involved. In fact, it could be said that no matter what, this will inevitably always happen on Halloween. Gavin has said they did what they could and that the street bit was fine. but that the shooting occurred after the party had broken up and away from the main part of the party. As Donald Rumsfield would say, "stuff happens."
But what's the old saying, plan for the worst, hope for the best? That's us. We would dearly love to see the Halloween tradition continue. But if we can't figure it out, better not do it all.