From city park to no-man's land

They bill it as a neighborhood fair, but if Washington Square on early Sunday morning was any indication, the North Beach Festival is more like a World War I battlefield.

The park is in absolute shambles after only one day of this two-day drunken brawl. Gavin Newsom, who a year ago overruled the Rec and Park commission to green-light the sale of alcohol in the park, which is where the real trouble comes from, has some 'splainin' to do: to the residents of North Beach and to Carol the gardener, Washington Square's caretaker who will be left to repair the damage, unless she keels over from a stroke when she shows up for work on Monday.

The lawn in the center of the park has been destroyed, trampled to goo by revelers, and will have to be replaced. That will take months, and plenty of dough. A tree was knocked down in the northeast corner of Washington Square (and quickly removed, no doubt to hide the evidence), probably by one of the nitwit (and undoubtedly non-union) truck drivers hauling sound equipment to the main festival stage.

This festival has gotten completely out of hand. Where once it ran the three-and-a-half blocks of Grant Avenue between Columbus and Filbert, it has spread like a malignant tumor to take over virtually every street in central North Beach -- plus Washington Square. And for what? So a bunch of carpetbagging kitsch artists from Ukiah can flog their generic wares and help Marsha Garland and the North Beach Chamber of Commerce store up a nut for the coming winter.

The city has got to step in and put a stop to this.

The use of Washington Square is especially egregious. Alcohol is not allowed in any city park unless a variance is obtained, which of course is what Newsom contrived to let happen over the wishes of his commissioners and the neighborhood sentiment. Alcohol runs freely in the bars of North Beach and I'm glad of it, but there's a reason you don't allow drinking in parks like Washington Square. A park is part of the public commons, meaning it is there for the use and enjoyment of everyone. Activities that allow one group of people to take over that commons are rightly prohibited. 

Getting hammered and peeing in the bushes or puking on the sidewalk is one of those activities.

Memo to the oafs at City Hall: Stop treating the neighborhoods like twenty-dollar hookers. Everything in this town can't be for sale.


As long as I'm in a cranky mood, I'd be remiss (probably smart, but remiss nevertheless) not to bite the hand that feeds me, and criticize the Examiner for its choice of Friday front page art.

To illustrate its main story, about Central Station's Capt. James Dudley recommending that North Beach bars and clubs stamp the hands of patrons to help track the source of violence in the neighborhood, the paper used a very nice night shot of The Saloon, the venerable blues bar on Grant.

The Saloon?

If there's a bar in North Beach that causes almost no trouble at all, it's The Saloon. Hell, look at the picture. With one or two exceptions, everyone shown is over 50. Most of the guys have their hands in their pockets and are just standing around chatting ... hardly a menacing tableaux.

The Saloon, a fine watering hole, attracts an older crowd that comes mainly to hear the great music and get a little toasty. In my years of dropping in, I've seen guys shot down trying to pick up women (I've seen 'em score, too) and I've seen all the idiot behavior associated with any bar. But I've never seen a fight -- I've heard about a few -- or any real trouble at all. It's a place I feel comfortable taking women friends to dance a little and drink a lot.

So to slap a picture of this particular bar on Page One, behind the headline "Stamp of disapproval," is just bad news judgment.

The dumps you're looking for are on Broadway, fellas.

Great Caesar's ghost.


Topics: Washington Square , The Saloon , North Beach Chamber of Commerce