New Year's nightmare for visiting Yale singers

[HeavensHell]

'How's this for an only-in-San Francisco story:

Members of the Baker's Dozen, the renowned, all-male a cappella singing group from Yale, are pummeled outside a New Year's Eve party after singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The attackers allegedly include graduates from Sacred Heart Cathedral, one of the city's oldest and best-known private schools.

*snip*

The 16 singers showed up late to the party wearing preppy sport jackets and ties, and launched into "The Star-Spangled Banner."

A couple of uninvited guests started mocking them, and allegedly the words "faggot" and "homo" were tossed -- and so were a couple of punches."

Source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/10/BAGPQNG2MM1.DTL

[LisaM]

1. Geesh.

I mean, I think wearing preppy clothes and singing The Star-Spangled Banner is obnoxious, but I wouldn't throw a punch because of it.

It seems strange that this happened in San Francisco, actually. You'd expect it in Tulsa or some such place.

[MADem]

5. And you'd think they'd only get violent if they sang La Marseillaise

or the Iranian national anthem...you gotta wonder what was going through their thick skulls, really.

[LeftCoast]

6. SF is something of a magnet for bashers

It happens all too regularly, unfortunately.

[blitzen]

2. Those gay-bashing Frisco thugs are just trying to please O'Reilly...

trying to show him that their great city has just as many right-wing storm troopers as the rest of the US

[MADem]

3. That snippet is just the tip of the iceberg--the whole article is HORRIFIC

That wasn't a fight, it was a premeditated assault. A couple of punches? One kids jaw got cracked...man...that's dreadful.

[HeavensHell]

4. Its sickening

The scum bag called his friends to help beat these young men down.. It was a vicious attack, an anti-gay attack all because they were singers and sported preppy clothes. What has this country become? The repukes and their crowd have certainly brought forth quite an amount of hate. Way to be American.

[LeftCoast]

7. What really pisses me off is the police response (or non-response I should say)

Really looks like they were covering for these kids because of who the parent was.

[MADem]

8. You might be right--if the kid was Punky Anybody from Lousyneighborhoodville,

and his beatdown friends were Poorkid, Schmuck and Loser, they'd be in jail with no bail toute suite.
It's always a case of 'who ya know' when we hear these sorts of 'justice delayed/denied' stories. It shouldn't be, but it is, it seems.

[LeftCoast]

10. The only consolation may be that mom has DEEP pockets

and I'm sure that those kids will be getting lawyers very soon (if not already).

Have also heard that the Mayor is pretty upset by this and is looking for answers. The whole thing just reeks of 'fajita-gate' which was a local scandal involving the police and rowdy behavior that they covered up a few years ago. Does not look good for the SFPD.

[sniffa]

9. i wish i was around for some these events

i give new meaning to the term gay bashing.

[LeftCoast]

11. Bashers are cowards at heart...

They attack only in numbers that they know will overwhelm their victims, or do so in drive by attacks. If you can fight back, you'll find that they rarely will bother you.

My partner and I had some fuckhead who would drive by and shoot a pellet gun into our windows. Lost the window in the back of the jeep and three of the four front windows over a two month period. The attacks magically stopped when we installed a camera. Again, cowardly fucks, every single one of them.

[sui generis]

13. yup; it's "weakness" they despise, so they do this

self appointed "cull the herd" crap. Mostly, people who do this are reacting to their own social position; kind of like how pack animals try to establish a pecking order. They're not alpha so they make sure to keep what they perceive as the least desirable the lowest in the social hierarchy. At least until they run into an alpha queer like me.

They are cowards though - I have actually chased down a car full of teenage asswipes who were regularly going out of their way to drive down our street and throw beer bottles on our spectacular flawless lawn (there are actually six gay families on my street), to get their license plate number. In Texas you can look up anybody's address from a license plate so when I called the police I could actually file a police report, give them a name, address, vehicle owner, driver's license number, and descriptions and insist that the police visit them and speak with them before I did, for their own protection.

The little shits don't even drive down my street any more.

[LeftCoast]

14. That's great! Only time I've ever heard of a license plate database being used for a good purpose!

Stay safe though!

So what was the result of your action? We were never able to get our guy, but I'm glad he's not coming around any more.

[sui generis]

17. We're strapping big muscley boys

(not overbaked though)

And we work in the yard a lot - and we take care of our aged neighbours up and down the street who are home all day and who have 911 on speed dial if the mailman is on the front porch for longer than 15 seconds.

Mostly, kids who throw beer bottles don't have guns, and I'm not at all worried about anything else. The main thing was, they knew what was going down as soon as I got their license plate and snapped the cell phone cam. If they'd been taking potshots at the car or house that's another story and I wouldn't have gone all Rambo on them; that's what police tactical units are for. I did get a call from a city detective (we have a 3-1-1 system here that allows for non-emergency complaints) who said they had spoken with the family; and apparently the mother claims she didn't know her son and friends had taken her car for a joyride, which the cop was sceptical of but he also mentioned that he thought she seemed extremely angry with her kid.

Just a few blocks from my neighborhood is a pleasant old fifties "white flight" neighborhood that is now a slowly emerging middle class Mexican immigrant neighborhood (that's probably anywhere in Dallas inside the 635 loop at this point), so it was probably also fortunate to have homemaker Mamacita clout her boys for being a bad neighbor. We're the guys the neighbors bring kids to literally by the busload for Halloween, we buy all the hokey highschool and middle school event and sales stuff, return lost pets and grandparents, and we wave and smile to everyone.

Mostly you just have to show that you don't put up with that crap. Also, it made big news here ten or so years ago (in Pleasant Grove, Texas) some kid who had been vandalizing somebody's vehicle repeatedly (like, eight times in a row, caught on camera, etc.) got shot by the homeowner, who then came out, reloaded his shotgun and shot the dead kids arms and legs off. It may have even made the Darwin awards.

Finally, we have all the 21st century urban reclamation stuff: motion activated security lights & motion activated property cameras broadcasting to a web address. We can tell you exactly when the squirrel threw that pecan in the pool, how often the bats drink from the pool, and if the mailman scratched his right nut or his left nut on the porch, and for how long, plus signage for the less observant, so we've never really had a problem with crime even when the nearby neighborhoods were somewhat "rougher" several years ago.

[bicentennial_baby]

15. I remember that

:hug:

[LeftCoast]

16. Thanks! You were so supportive at the time!

Many other DUers as well! Thanks again!

[dsc]

12. Simply outrageous

Those thugs should be in jail and since they evidently picked on the wrong family they might well be there.