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Unsupervised individuals put damper on Marketplace concerts
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Anonymous user Mon Jul 23, 2007 09:58:29 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments We have really enjoyed the summer concert series at The Marketplace the last year or so. We like to walk down with our dogs and enjoy the event in the warm summer evenings. However, I’ve decided I’m probably not going to go anymore, and I want to explain why.
Last year when we went, there were some people there who appeared to be mentally challenged (I’m not sure what the politically correct way of saying it is these days, maybe someone can help me). They were dancing and having a good time, and I found myself looking around for their chaperones. Not because they were bothering me, but because I wondered who was there with them if anything were to happen.
Well, this year we went, and the same group of people were there (at least it appeared to be the same group of people). However, this year they seemed to have taken things up a notch. There are many more of them and they were much more aggressive with the crowds and the band. The band that was playing was a jazz band. They were really good. Southside Chicago Seven I believe was their name. However, one of the people from the group mentioned above had a harmonica and he was playing it loud enough that I could hear it from the rear of the audience section. The band members were frustrated but what can you do? When you’re a performing artist, you can’t be politically incorrect by asking someone to control the mentally handicapped people in the crowd can you? I was very frustrated for them.
And then there were two guys dancing and walking around in front of everybody else while dancing insanely and being very distracting. It made it so I couldn’t enjoy the music and I can only imagine how it made the people they were dancing in front of feel.
I’d like to make a public call for whoever this group is, the group in charge of watching these people, to control them. Please! If I have a kid and I take him to the park and he is being distracting, I control that kid. I don’t let them run unchecked throughout the park without any supervision. I don’t know for sure, but it seemed to me that there was a group of people in one of the air-conditioned restaurants who looked like they might have been the supervisors for these people. I’m sure they saw it as a night of free entertainment for their stewards, and they took advantage of it by escaping from them into the air conditioned restaurants. 
I really am not heartless and I don’t want to come across crass or crude. I just feel that a public concert series like this is becoming tainted because a group of people are allowed to have full reign over the event, unchecked and unbridled — people who really don’t know how to act correctly in public, especially when there is music involved. I think it’s OK to dance, but not to run around in front of the audience dancing crazy in people’s faces. I hope that this doesn’t continue and I hope that I don’t get completely slammed for my opinion concerning this. It’s frustrating as I’m sure the sponsors of the event also are unwilling to say anything about it.
For what it’s worth, those are my thoughts on the matter.       

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