A couple days ago, I mentioned the self-selected support for Bele Chere that had been shared. Following the festivities, the local daily sort of bid the festival good riddance. As a volunteer, I’m usually out of there before dark. Reportedly what follows is lewd, decadent, disrespectful, unsanitary, bacchanalian, violent – anything but sweeping. Thus saith the local daily:
On Friday and Saturday, city police made nearly two dozen other arrests, according to arrest warrants at the Buncombe County magistrate’s office.
Eleven people were charged with intoxicated and disruptive, four with resisting public officers, two with simple assault and one each with indecent exposure, trespassing, open container of alcohol, providing alcohol to someone under 21, fraudulent identification, panhandling, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.
Besides the fact that fiscal conservatives chant the mantra, “The city shouldn’t be in the festival business,” with no possible understanding of why it could make sense not to make the working-poor taxpayer subsidize fun he has no hope or intention of attending – maybe the city chose to defund Bele Chere instead of, say, Art Museum renovation, for a number of reasons, not the least of which would be threats of lawsuits over the annual preacher/gay drama and business owners’ complaints about losing business and having to clean piles of filth.
