What is Digg?143 Comments
- Pittance, on 07/10/2008, -4/+61Ok, ***** Greenwich. Bunch of uptight pussies.
- StupotAce, on 07/10/2008, -2/+40Those kids should be ashamed! What's next? Community Service? Just the thought of it is disgusting.
- budgetguitar, on 07/10/2008, -3/+41Someone needs to watch the film, "the sandlot".
Then they need to sit down and try to remember the exact point at which their inner child died. - gemlarin, on 07/10/2008, -2/+30FTA
“If I come home at 6 at night after working all day, I want peace and quiet. I can’t have that.
Waaaaaaaa. - 48snickers, on 07/10/2008, -1/+27Isn't this the kind of thing that kids used to solve by egging houses of their stinking neighbors?
- LLamaStar, on 07/10/2008, -2/+28They are terrorists
- jamez, on 07/10/2008, -3/+22Are you happy you live in this day and age?
Are you happy with where we are as a global society?
Are you happy that you can't play baseball without hitting the ball over the Sandlot's fence into the gripping teeth of the vicious guard dog. - Jpardue, on 07/10/2008, -0/+18This ***** happened to me when I was 13, the neighbors were bitching because we were playing baseball too close to their houses. so we went to an empty field down the street, the neighbors who were complaining help us cut down all the weeds, put down some bases, build a makeshift backstop and a couple of foul poles. It was great! everyone was happy! Until someone bitched about it. The guy who owned the 30 acres of land (that remained undeveloped for the next 12 years) started harassing us, telling all of us kids that we were destroying his property? This ***** even went as far as to call the police on us (kids) and try to get us charged with trespassing. until finally this ***** sent someone out with a tractor to plow all of the land and knock down the back stop.. Then he just let the area grow back up with weeds.....
- inactive, on 07/10/2008, -1/+19This is why living in rural Texas can be good. My neighbor has like 300 acres of land, and most of it is reserved for cattle. But in one corner, about 25 acres of land or so, there are trees everywhere and the cows don't go there except maybe on the outskirts for shade. Even though he knows he'd be potentially liable if we got harmed on his land, he allows people to play paintball in that area as long as they don't tear down the trees or disturb the cattle.
- inactive, on 07/10/2008, -7/+23You can thank Baby Boomers for the sue happy culture we have now. You literally cannot do anything without risking getting sued by someone. And what about freedom of speed? You cannot say anything without getting grief from someone and threaten to get sued. Shoot, even this post about Boomers will get censored and dugg down so no one else will see it.
- JFallon126, on 07/10/2008, -0/+15I grew up in Ridgefield which is a few towns over from Greenwich and let me tell you that I'm surprised those kids (or rather their parents) haven't been sued yet. It's sad kids can't do things like this any more without someone finding a reason to get upset. The guy complaining that there's kids playing nearby? Buddy, you live in suburban CT all there is is kids playing. Don't pretend to be shocked.
- jamez, on 07/10/2008, -2/+16From Article:
The liability panic is adult nuttiness except when it’s not. It’s a fairly raw issue in Greenwich, where, for instance, a doctor was awarded $6.3 million a few years back when he broke his leg in two places while sledding with his 4-year-old son.
Are you kidding me?! - The_Wallbanger, on 07/10/2008, -2/+15Reminds me of Portland's Burnside skatepark. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission?
- djepik, on 07/10/2008, -4/+17Uhhhh, how did this article from The Onion end up on NYTimes?
- BlackJackJester, on 07/10/2008, -0/+12So parents and lawyers get pissed when kids stay inside and play "murder simulators", and parents and lawyers get mad when kids go outside and exercise freedom and creativity. Parents and lawyers can suck it. I was kind of mad when I got kicked out of a public park at midnight because it was closed. I wasn't aware open spaces and public areas had hours of operation.
- ghostfackilr, on 07/10/2008, -5/+16Jesus ***** Christ, Let them play ball.
- BadseedJR, on 07/10/2008, -1/+11It's not the city complaining, it's some neighbors who have no rights to the land. One ***** said “I’m all for Wiffle ball and apple pie and baseball and the American flag, but there are plenty of fields in town they can use instead of building something in people’s backyard,”
It's not his back yard!
He also says "“If I come home at 6 at night after working all day, I want peace and quiet. I can’t have that."
Well, when I come home, maybe I don't want to hear cars in front of my house on the street, but it's not my street, is it? - thebaron2, on 07/10/2008, -1/+10Besides the apparent litigiousness of some townsfolk, I think the neighbors have a fairly legitimate gripe also:
"The neighbors ... turn out to be not that much different from most suburbanites seeing their backyard go from their own to a quasi park full of teenagers from near and far. They say that the land floods and that the area was designated by the town as a drainage area, a function largely undone when the youths stripped away all the greenery and undergrowth."
Not that the kids meant to do it, but it's one thing when you throw some rocks in a quasi-diamond pattern on an empty field. It's something else when you actually transform the land - removing vegetation, pouring cement, etc... Even if it's unintentional, you may create some adverse effects from seemingly-harmless renovation. - mnemy, on 07/10/2008, -1/+10Gotta love the neighborhood grinches. Kids need to go outside and play. They need to create their own games and their own rules. Slapping them into some organized league isn't the way for a lot of kids. So these kids set up shop near your house. They're kids. At the end of summer, their attention span will be spent and they'll go off somewhere else. Just be glad these are wholesome kids and aren't tearing the place up.
- alexanEmpire, on 07/10/2008, -0/+8"You want to know how you can help your children? LEAVE THEM THE ***** ALONE!" - George Carlin
- Jpardue, on 07/10/2008, -0/+8Thou Shalt not Have Fun!
- ThinkIcouldburn, on 07/10/2008, -0/+8I wish I had an awesome wiffle ball field.
- TsuruchiBrian, on 07/10/2008, -9/+16I never actually saw field of dreams, but didn't Kevin Costner build the baseball field on his own land?
I have a lot of sympathy for these kids. They have done exactly the kind of stuff I used to do when I was a kid, and just like them, I also got caught up in legal BS about land ownership. Usually the easiest solution is to just ask the land owners if you can use their land nicely. Sometimes they don't mind and sometimes they do. I don't think it was ever American to use someone's property for a purpose against their will. What is American is letting kids play wiffle ball on your property if it doesn't bother you, but also to not play wiffle ball on people's property if it does bother them.
I realize this is government property, but that just means that people collectively vote on what is to be done with the land and apparently they did not vote to have it be for wiffle ball. If it was completely harmless and did not bother anybody, no one would have complained and the government would have never even known about it (i.e. like what I imagine happens in Iowa).
I can't blame the kids for trying. The main benefit of being a kid is you get to do stuff like this without getting in real trouble as long as you stop once you've annoyed a bunch of people. - beesaretasty, on 07/10/2008, -1/+8If they close it down those kids should do a regular bike route outside that bitches house at 6:30 yelling, screaming, hooting and hollering.
- rinote, on 07/10/2008, -1/+8DAMN KIDS GET OFF THE PROPERTY ADJACENT TO MY LAWN!
- twiztidsinz, on 07/10/2008, -1/+8Some cities don't have 'many' parks.
Some cities that do, don't always have a field (sometimes a park is a park, tables, seats and stone paths).
Some cities that have parks with fields can be inconveniently far away for kids.
Some cities that HAD a field no longer have them because they were demolished for whatever reason.
Not sure what city you live in that has parks and baseball fields on every corner, but round here we got Starbucks. - russ3, on 07/10/2008, -1/+7Your last sentence was so dumb and off point that I do have to digg you down.
- alexanEmpire, on 07/10/2008, -0/+6What the ***** are you babbling about?
- nydwarf, on 07/10/2008, -0/+6“People can remember how much fun it was to go out in the woods in the summer, build a fort, do something fun and creative, so there’s something pretty cool in what these kids did, especially at a time kids grow up in such an incredibly structured and stressful environment,”
Obviously people can't remember... - walshgopher, on 07/10/2008, -0/+5maybe he's a weed fetishist....Or a field fetishist and he likes em unshaven and child free
- Pake, on 07/10/2008, -1/+6Egging the house, ringing door bells and running, using soap to write on their driveway, scrapping soap across their window screens, burning crap in front of their door, etc.
- FredFredrickson, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4Erm... no it doesn't.
- DuffyDirect, on 07/10/2008, -1/+5freedom of speed?
- DreKor, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4I'm pretty sure those were PF Flyers.
- div2n, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4Actually some states have squaters rights where let's suppose you wander onto somebody's land and build something (a house, not sure a baseball field would apply). If after a certain number of years the owner does not tell you to get off the land, the land becomes yours.
If baseball fields apply, then if the state happens to support squater rights, then anytime would be OK so long as the owner doesn't notice and protest. - soupdawg30, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4FYI the cows will get pissed if you shoot them. We tried once. Funny at first then they charged.
- johnomaz, on 07/10/2008, -1/+5I am sure there are some good reasons for the complains, but come on. Its wiffle ball. Whats the difference of going to the park and playing it. Some people need to get that bunched up pair of panties out from their ass and learn to have some fun. I hope the city will see this as a good thing to have in town and help the kids to work out the kinks, and get the proper permits to have it there.
And as for doing this in the day and age of video games and very little physical activities, its a small glimmer that kids can still be kids. - BlackJackJester, on 07/10/2008, -1/+5Lawyers don't do anything but F stuff up. You don't want to listen to kids, move to Florida.
- shutaro, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4I bet you were the most popular kid in school...
- FredFredrickson, on 07/10/2008, -0/+4Pretty sad sign of the times in the US.
- rpong1981, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiffleball
Sad you don't know what wiffle ball is. You're missing out on a lot of fun. - linuxpenguin, on 07/11/2008, -0/+3That's called a curfew - you're not allowed to be out on public property past a certain time. Mostly to prevent you from defacing it I believe.
- Tenlow, on 07/10/2008, -1/+4Actually situations like this are what made lawyers the scourge of the earth. No, that's unfair. They did that to themselves. But lawyers have turned modern times into an era where nothing can be done without insurance, supervision, an ambulance on site, waivers signed by everyone involved, and a full legal team debating the constitutionality of the colors chosen for the color of the ink used on the forms to get everything set up.
I think it's time we set limits on what lawyers can earn. If there was no money in frivolous lawsuits, they would go away really fast. Take personal responsibility seriously and chill out for a while. It'll be ok. - thephosphorbox, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3Precisely the reason I'm on the fence about having a child. As much as I would love to be a father, I know my child would not be able to experience a childhood remotely close to the one I had in the 70's and 80's. It's a real shame.
Its as if you don't even raise you own child anymore.. everyone else tries to do it for you. - and303, on 07/10/2008, -9/+12Dear Kid,
If you expect to just pour concrete and build something on public property without any consequences, well, then you're stupid. Play wiffle ball at the already constructed baseball field in one of your city's many parks. - bradleyland, on 07/10/2008, -0/+3Drive fast. It's as American as apple pie.
- every1else, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2I don't live far from Greenwich, About an hour, but I never like any one from that town. They are all pricks who think they are better than anyone else. It is the most uptight part of CT, which is saying a lot.
- DuffyDirect, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Who cares who some Joe Schmo can name? Most of the people that live in this country are a generation or a few removed from illiterate serfs from ireland, poland, italy, germany, etc. etc.
People's understanding of "high art" and culture is completely off the rocker nowadays anyway -- it's no wonder no one knows any of their names. You think an "artist" that makes a blank white canvas or some disturbing post-modern trash deserves world renown? Or what about the American authors who write nothing but depressing anti-everything diatribes, commercialized pulp fiction, or who are only published because they're minorities who have some great "story" to tell about how they got off drugs or survived without a dad or x, y, or z... The hilarious think about this all is that -- according to the theorists -- the era of "magna opuses" and great well-known artists like Hemingway, Eugene O'Neill, etc. is supposed to be over because of their wonderful scholarly understanding of the world. These people spend half the day crying about the sorry state of art and culture in America and spend the other half being total elitist pricks about how worldly they are. Screw 'em. - sooska, on 07/10/2008, -0/+2Yeah!!! Give them community service....maybe they could...I dunno...build a playground or something.
- linuxpenguin, on 07/11/2008, -0/+2I go to school in Flint. . . the flood project areas there are marked with a sign. It kinda sounds to me like this flood area wasn't marked at all - so how is it that a bunch of little kids should know that it's a flood area?
The rules apply to all, but lands intended for a special purpose should have something there to mark them as such. A playground or baseball diamond is obvious, but a floodland full of overgrown weeds might need a sign or something to indicate that it actually has a purpose. -
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