This isn't some sort of pedophile story or anything strange and awful like that. This is merely a story of police focusing too much on a law's existence rather than the reasonable application of said law. I always thought that the difference between good law-enforcement and power-hungry jerks with badges is how they decide to apply the law.
There are a lot of things that are technically against the law but police turn a blind eye because it isn't actually harming anyone. For example: When I was a kid it was technically illegal for children to ride bicycles without helmets and riding our bikes on the wrong side of the road against traffic flow. However, the quaint and quiet suburb that I lived in had very little traffic, everyone knew everyone, and any crashes and what not that would occur resulted in things that kids probably should go through like skinned knees or a sore elbow. At any point in time a raid could have occurred that would have resulted in basically every single kid getting ticketed. Well, that is if they could catch us... we knew a ton of shortcuts through various properties that the police were probably not as aware of as we were.
The point is that the police never busted any of us even though we were technically breaking the law every single day. Other violations would be garage sales / yard sales being technically illegal without a permit, and lemonade stands also being illegal. Yet these gruesome violations were ignored regularly by the local authorities who were very aware that they were going on.
Now let's meet a homeless, disabled, veteran who would go to San Diego parks with bubble-blowing equipment in order to entertain children and their parents and how one day the police decided to shut him down despite the fact that everybody loves the guy.
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His name is "Sandy the bubble pirate" and he goes to the park with a bunch of equipment to entertain people that go there much to the joy of children that he gets involved in the action and everyone has fun. Well we can't have any of that now can we?
Now previously I had said nobody complained but that isn't entirely true according to authorities. There were some Karens, and there will always be Karens, who were annoyed by his spectacle and probably simply dislike anything that brings joy into anyone else's life. Perhaps the forest rangers (seriously, forest rangers in a city park?) had their hand forced and to be as fair to them as I possibly can be, they said the "issued the lowest citation possible."
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look at all of those people who are definitely annoyed by his presence
According to park authorities, bubble blowing is "littering" and well, that is news to me and I think every other human on the planet. They claim that the amount of liquid he uses builds up on the grass and can damage it. "Can" is the important operative word here because there is exactly zero evidence that this has actually happened. Sandy defended himself stating that he only uses food grade bubble solution so as to specifically NOT damage any grass or potentially harm any people or animals.
A lot of people were quite upset about him being cited and now that he is not going to return to this park again but there is a silver lining to this story: The news spread far and wide in such a manner that has kind of made Sandy the Bubble Pirate a bit famous and now he is getting private bookings all over California that he likely wouldn't have been able to get before. He is also doing collaborations with other artists and recently hooked up with "The Bubble Fairy" for a group show.
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If you want to help out Sandy and show a little support about how you perhaps feel as I do and hate it when authority figures such as these park rangers overstep their bounds simply because they can, then maybe stop by his facebook page and drop him a like or two or even follow him. The online community can turn these lemons that the San Diego park authorities threw at him into lemonade - which he doesn't have a permit to sell much like me in my childhood days.
