Yes_You-Can,
No-You-Can’t
Department
thwarts music festival
LLeroy St. Germaine? His dog doesn’t like me.
That’s not the story. In his ramshackle Beaches house, there is a desk strewn
with crumpled letters, faded faxes, old tapes, new CDs, and an unused hairbrush
- unused, because Leroy doesn’t have a lot of hair. What he has a lot of is
useless T-shirts. That’s the story.
And if you make it to the end of today’s effort, you could be forgiven for
thinking Leroy pulled his hair out in frustration.
The dog? I’ll tell you later.
The T-shirts are souvenirs of last weekend’s 7th annual Beaches Blues
Festival. Although, if you were wandering around anywhere near the Beaches last
weekend, then you will know there was no 7th annual Beaches, etc.
The festival never happened.
Our story begins a couple of months ago, when Leroy applied to the City for a
permit. He had big plans. He’s done this before. This year, instead of the
usual two days in Ashbridges Park, he wanted to get permission to stage a couple
of days of events on Queen Street, in addition to three days in the park.
On the street?
Hey, it works for the Jazz Fest.
The application was delivered to the wrong place - Leroy is long on concept,
but sometimes a detail or two escapes him. Never mind. After getting the
application more or less straightened out, he got tangled
in a series of phone calls with City staff over how many days he was really
asking for, and did he or did he not have the support of the merchants up and
down the street, and whether or not the City’s policy actually allows anyone
to book a three-day event in a park.
He has the calls on tape. I listened to them. They gave me the blues. Leroy
was sent reeling from pillar to post back to pillar again; the process dragged
on for weeks. Finally, the street portion of the festival was cancelled.
Oh, well; Leroy was still counting on his three days in the park. Then he was
told by City staff that he could only have two days, because nobody gets three
days - it says so in the policy, a copy of which is appended, etc.
Never mind that a two-day festival is easily ruined by the weather. Never
mind that he’s got a charity lined up to take all of the profits. And, I
guess, never mind that even a careless reader can’t help noticing that the
policy says quite clearly that you can indeed book one night and two full days
in a park.
Hmm.
Looks like three days to me.
Time has flown by. Leroy bites the bullet and says, OK, to heck with early
August, let me change the dates; how about the Labour Day weekend? He duly gets
a letter from the City canceling August; he is also advised he can’t have
Labour Day.
Arrgh.
The thing about Leroy?
He didn’t just go to the school of hard knocks, he was a hall monitor. He’s
got an infectious grin and a line of patter. He may be unlettered, but he’s
unstoppable . Of course, by now he’s also got all these T-shirts with the
wrong dates on them.
But wait!
Hard on the heels of being finessed out of August, Leroy gets yet another
letter from the City. Suddenly, magically, and for some reason known only to the
City Department of Yes-You-Can, No-You-Can’t, the Labour Day date is available
again.
Stay tuned.
The T-shirts?
Leroy’s got a thousand of
of them in boxes in his living room; he says he’s got a plan for them,
wrong dates and all, and while that may be so - Leroy’s got a lot of plans -
if it was up to me, I’d make the City buy them.
The dog? Nice looking mutt, white with black spots. Nipped at me on my way
out. I guess he doesn’t like columnists.
The blues?
You’d have them, too.
National Post
jfiorito@nationalpost.com
