Castro Community Braces for Halloween

The City has only itself to blame for spending money on stages, police, Muni people to sell tickets to this nonsense, and portable toilets for a street party of 100,000 people, most of whom are not gay, do not wear costumes and do not live here, in a small neighborhood, where too many are there to cause trouble. We need that money for housing, medical care and social services for the homeless and ther poor people. These 125 sheriff's deputies mentioned in the above article will be receiving at least $80,000 a year plus benefits, probably much more. As to toilets, all of the businesses who by their own admission are staying open to maxmize their profits can provide toilets. Bars and restaurants are required to provide toilets to patrons. Those people over age 10 who think wearing costumes on October 31 is important can have their parties inside their homes, or if the crowd is too big, they can pool their resources and rent a dance hall or hotel conference room or whatever it takes for adults to stare at each other's costumes. This year, Halloween is a Wednesday, a week night, a school night and for more of us a night of rest during the workweek. For those who have nothing else to do with their lives but prance around at street parties, they can pay for it themselves at their indoor parties. If you want to stand on the street, how about collecting money from all these party goers who spent money on costumes and will most likely spend money on alcohol to give to a homeless advocate's organization? We have serious problems in this society and our tax dollars are not to be spent on this deadly, unwanted street party.

The city already spends over $200,000,000 a year on "social services" for the homeless.

Now you want to take more by targeting a party?

Write the city a check if you think it's so important. The rest of us are already paying through the nose.

I'm on the side where I have hated the Castro halloween, and have seen gay bashing there, but I don't know why cities are 'bracing' for halloween. The city's approach of merely not facilitating a festival there might be the correct approach. They should just focus on law enforcement, and perhaps helping neighborhood groups keep things safe.
In Santa Cruz, for several years the city has had a very heavy-handed approach at crowd control, which almost exacerbated the animosity as people were being confined into tight spaces behind special fencing they brought in. There was a stupid flare up as a councilman questioned the city's plans for an even tighter approach, by saying he had observed police searching innocent latino kids. This made the police and rival councilmembers bleat at him, saying they were insulted, even though it was true.

Hasn't halloween been happening for years, so why the sudden crisis?