Hating Fun

May 8, 2008 by Svetlana  Send to a Friend

From Marc Fisher’s Metro Column today:

The grainy video, shot at night from across Connecticut Avenue, reveals the menace — caught on tape, posted on YouTube for all to see. The danger, the violation of public space, the unchecked liability, all now undeniable.

Yes, it is true: For more than a year, James Alefantis, owner of the Comet Ping Pong pizza place at Connecticut and Nebraska avenues NW, kept a Ping-Pong table on the sidewalk in front of his eatery. And people played Ping-Pong on that table. In public. With their children. Laughing and smiling as if everything were just fine. And they did this without a permit.

But have no fear. We live in a nation of laws. When bad things happen, we correct the ills, and everything returns to its proper place.

And so today the Ping-Pong table is no more, and the sidewalks are once again empty, the street once more safe for speeding vehicles.

Seriously people!
Adding to the joys of Jim Graham’s party pooping attitude, DC now has a new crusader for destroying things people like: Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Frank Winstead!
And why?
Because he can!
The man is out to save you (YOU!) from unattended UPS trucks, double parked delivery vehicles, and, of course, ping pong.
Not crime, not poverty, not illiteracy or even littering BUT PING PONG!

All of this can be seen on Winstead’s (pretty priceless) YouTube Collection which features such gems as The Idler which Marc Fisher (my new favorite columnist for the day) describes as: ” a 94-second minimalist masterpiece that features a service truck idling on Yuma Street and climaxes with close-ups of the offending truck driver. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.

It may as well be called: Police state 101.

Read the rest of of the column here and check out DCist being all over it too.
I want my tax dollars AND MY OUTDOOR PING PONG TABLE back.
Hell, lets build a badmington court there.

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