Festival Mayhem
whisperer, who posts at the D&C forums, brings this to our attention:
Bob Lonsberry yesterday jumped all over the 14 arrested at the Puerto Rican Festival this weekend. Somehow Lonsberry giving the wink wink nudge nudge that Puerto Ricans can’t help but get into trouble. Then he went on about how he brought his family to the the Park Ave Fest so they could experience the atmosphere…
I find this article at whec/channel 10:
ROCHESTER - Neighbors described it as chaos. After-hour house parties at the Park Ave Festival overran a city street late Saturday night.
Our cameras captured people jumping on cars and breaking bottles on the sidewalk, pushing neighbors to their wits end. One even called out to the mayor for help. Things just simply got out of hand. Vassar Street, which connects to Park Avenue, ended up blocked by hundreds of people crashing several house parties.
“And where do they go to the bathroom?” asked homeowner Kellie Reynolds. “Not at the porta-potties up on Cambridge Street. They’re going in my backyard.”
It’s got to stop. The out-of-control parties on Vassar St. have been spilling out onto the street for years. Neighbors have to listen to keg stands and beer pong all night. In the morning, they awaken to awaken to streets strewn with garbage and splashed with vomit. This is not what city living is all about, kids.
A young man carries a tapped keg down the street after the Park Ave Fest.
What do you think the police department would do if hundreds of drunk minorities were spilling out into the streets and playing drinking games?
And what happened to the house party crackdown that the Mayor announced in June?
The D&C:
Richards stressed that the house-party enforcement won’t be limited to high-crime areas, because neighborhoods with concentrations of college students will also see the crackdown”Given the problems we’ve had, we just can’t wink at this,” Richards said. “It has to be across the board, and it has to be fairly done. If some people get caught up in this where there ordinarily wouldn’t be any trouble, we can’t allow that to be an excuse.”
I’m wondering if all those promises about equal enforcement weren’t just empty words.
Nice reframe.
Lonsberry needed to be walking on the streets between Park and East on Sunday morning around 9 AM…I’m sure he family would have enjoyed the PG rated sights of vomit on sidewalks, people asleep in cars, on porches and the volumes of beer cans in yards.
“Ned Flanders” (Lonsberry) is one of many reasons that I don’t listen to WHAM anymore. I don’t need someone who believes they know everything giving me their opinions. God gave me a brain to think for myself.
I weep for the future.
The parties after-hours at the Park Avenue Festival are part of the fun. How typical that frat boys have to take the fun too far and screw the pooch for the rest of us. There’s nothing quite like sitting on the roof of the Roosevelt and seeing porches as far as the eye can see lit up and populated by living people having a living good time. So terribly, terribly rare in Rochester, you almost get the impression we’re a real city with a culture all it’s own.
What is needed is a responsible response from law enforcement similar to that on Beale Street. If you think you can go to Marty Gras and do whatever you like with impunity, you’re in for a rude awakening. . . in jail. Yet people still manage to have a good time, still manage to party, still manage to get sh*t-faced like proper Americans.
But will we get that kind of response? Or will we get the typical sphincter-winking conservative “values” response we’re accustomed to? Leave it to guys like Lonsberry, and I can tell you what the answer will be. How ’bout us?
I used to live in that neighborhood. I got fed up with the trash in front of our place, looking out the window at people urinating in the bushes, and the noise. The last straw was when a drunken guy collapsed in front of our place and I went out to help, fearing he was hurt. He got up and attacked me.
We moved.
I haven’t been back to the festival since.
I’m not trying to sound like a fun-hater or something, here. I go to the festival. I go to parties. I drink, probably more than I should.
I do not yell, scream, chant, play beer pong in the street, or throw up or urinate in people’s yards. I don’t drive drunk, I don’t walk around the streets with an open container, I don’t serve booze to minors, and I’m not grossly publicly intoxicated. A couple of years ago some guy in a hat threw a beer in my face, and I walked away from him instead of getting in a fight.
I think it’s pretty lame that the city shouts from the rooftops about how they’re going to crack down on illegal parties, and then lets this kind of stuff go on unchallenged.
Agreed, and your point is taken about Lonsberry’s attack on the Puerto Rican Festival. My point is simply that the RPD needs to find an acceptable level of involvement in the parties on Park Ave lest the whole thing gets trod-upon because people’s complaints finally reach a certain level.
I think the largest reason for the lack of response is that the Park Ave Fest is beyond a shadow the most popular and culturally interesting city-endorsed festival, and that means a whole lot of money. You could make plenty of arguments that say this is a good reason to control it, and I would agree, but sometimes I think they’d rather just leave it alone.
It’s been my position for a long time, now, that the RPD needs to make more of an appearance in these types of events to soften their image and foster some good-will for the police. Park Ave would probably be a good start.
I’ll not argue with that, you’re exactly right on all counts.