So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

^^^ I take it they don't have an HOA in that neighborhood.

They don't need one. They've got the Garden and Yacht Clubs.

Pikers. This is a Spite Fence:

Inside that 40' tall fence is the house of Nicholas Yung. He wouldn't sell to allow Crocker the own the entire block so Crocker had the fence built to all-but-completely shut out sunlight from Yung's house and garden.

Connie Mack's Spite Fence, 1929



After the Philadelphia A's won their first pennant since 1914, owner Connie Mack got fed up with the fans in the rowhouses across Lehigh Avenue from Shibe Park selling out space in their front rooms to people at less than his own ticket prices. A 40 foot corrugated steel wall solved the problem -- but some of the neighbors never forgave the A's.

LizzieMaine said:

Over the years I've talked a bit about the kind of ridiculous bourgie antics that dominate daily life here on the Coast Of Maine, and I imagine some might thought it all a bit exaggerated. Well, this news item from our local paper kind of sums it up.

State high court says Camden spite fence of trees must be cut
By Stephen Betts | Aug 15, 2019

Camden — The state's highest court has upheld a lower court ruling that orders a Camden woman to remove some trees and cut back others that were planted to block the view of a neighbor.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court issued its ruling Thursday, Aug. 15 on an appeal filed by Patricia Arcuni-English. The justices had heard arguments on the case on June 26.

The case has been in the courts for more than three years.

The justices ruled that Arcuni-English's planting of trees was done with malice and constituted a spite fence and a nuisance. The high court said the lower court ruling crafted a fair and limited remedy that allows the Camden woman to maintain her privacy on her Harbor Road property....

Click to expand...

Petty vindictiveness, malice aforethought, and deliberate intent clash sylvan riparian rights,
and the high court settled fairly evenly all things considered.
Here in Chicago, neighborly conflicts have been settled by court ordered property sale.

Harp said:

Here in Chicago, neighborly conflicts have been settled by court ordered property sale.

Click to expand...

There's only one way to settle this:

Harp said:

Petty vindictiveness, malice aforethought, and deliberate intent clash sylvan riparian rights,
and the high court settled fairly evenly all things considered.
Here in Chicago, neighborly conflicts have been settled by court ordered property sale.

Click to expand...

The new neighbor started off their relationship with trespass and theft, yet the high court "settled evenly" by telling the lady to cut trees on her own property, because she's "petty and vindictive"? That's a strange sense of justice; I guess they do things much differently in that part of the country.

"Petty and vindictive" would have been tearing down his shed for firewood, and leaving him a note that you would return it someday, but it would still be more just than that decision.

Woodtroll said:

The new neighbor started off their relationship with trespass and theft, yet the high court "settled evenly" by telling the lady to cut trees on her own property, because she's "petty and vindictive"? That's a strange sense of justice; I guess they do things much differently in that part of the country.

"Petty and vindictive" would have been tearing down his shed for firewood, and leaving him a note that you would return it someday, but it would still be more just than that decision.

Click to expand...

The lower court considered all relevant facts; including the new neighbor's admitted initial trespass,
and all subsequent acts that followed, reaching an equitable resolve which the high court validated.
Your conclusion is visceral and erroneous as to the facts of the case my friend.

The feeling of foolishness when you instinctively swat a mosquito on your left forearm, forgetting you have a tree saw in your right hand...

This happened to a friend.

LizzieMaine said:

Connie Mack's Spite Fence, 1929

After the Philadelphia A's won their first pennant since 1914, owner Connie Mack got fed up with the fans in the rowhouses across Lehigh Avenue from Shibe Park selling out space in their front rooms to people at less than his own ticket prices. A 40 foot corrugated steel wall solved the problem -- but some of the neighbors never forgave the A's.

Click to expand...

For whatever an anecdote is worth: I did attend one of those rooftop parties on Waveland across from Wrigley once. The view was nowhere near as good as inside the park, but food and beverage options were a lot better.

I'll give That South Side Team this: the food has always been better there. Although there's a lot more pretty females that watch the Cubs. When both teams are in the cellar and losses are almost daily, one finds consolation where one can.

Harp said:

The lower court considered all relevant facts; including the new neighbor's admitted initial trespass,
and all subsequent acts that followed, reaching an equitable resolve which the high court validated.
Your conclusion is visceral and erroneous as to the facts of the case my friend.

Click to expand...

Yes, my reaction is admittedly vsiceral, and is well-earned due to living in the same rural area all my life, and recently being surrounded by (mostly) white-collar professionals that move to the country to find that tractors make noise, manure smells, and travel is hampered in severe weather. This requires that a complaint be made to some "legal" official, of course, and time and resources must be wasted to address the fool's complaint and determine what is "legal. I am sure you may have access to more details of the case than are revealed in Miss Lizzie's post, but based on what I read, my reaction is justified.

Increasingly in this country, what is "legal" does not equate to what is "right" or "just", from any perspective you want to view it - moral, ethical, basic respect for others, or just plain being human.

ChiTownScion said:

For whatever an anecdote is worth: I did attend one of those rooftop parties on Waveland across from Wrigley once. The view was nowhere near as good as inside the park, but food and beverage options were a lot better.
Although there's a lot more pretty females that watch the Cubs. When both teams are in the cellar and losses are almost daily, one finds consolation where one can.

Click to expand...

When the Ricketts rolled into town and signage obstructis was adjudicated forthwith the learned judge cited
a lack of consideration as to plaintiff standing pursuant to said issue; though it always seemed a bit adversarial possession
and across the damn street no less, res ipsa loquitorism precinctis.
I hadn't considered any disparity in pretty girls however. Always thought the Sox were fortuned by gorgeous gals
like the Cubs are but solace must be found whenever including at the Cork n' Kerry, a notorious Sox pub where a few
years ago I seriously considered hanging a goat carcass outside its front entrance. After what happened last night in Philly,
I believe another goat curse has been flung.

Woodtroll said:

And here I thought going to the theater was supposed to be about seeing a show. Guess not. Someone who is tempted to spit in your face, I think, wouldn't think twice about spitting in a WAY overpriced bucket of popcorn, which is another reason to never buy concessions. Wonder why DVDs and streaming media are such a popular option these days? Thank you just the same, I think I'd rather stay home and eat my own popcorn.

Click to expand...

DVDs and streaming have long presented a threat to the cinema in these days of improved picture quality, great content quality, and, inevitably, they are cheaper. There was a time I was somewhat taken aback by the price of concessions, but then getting to know people in the industry and seeing it from the inside I became very aware that the ticket price really only keeps the doors open, and they only make money on the concessions. It's a rare film that itself turns a profit. I can see that a lot of people may choose not to pay those prices, but the way I have seen people react when reasonable asked not to bring their own in beggars belief. I've seen it all, from accusing doorstaff of "stealing it for themselves" to the couple who claimed "we run an influential blog, and we will DESTROY you if you don't let us take our own drinks in." My favourite was the woman who tried to claim it was okay under their rules for her to bring in her own ice-cream because she didn't buy it elsewhere - she made it at home. (A more cynical observer might consider this incredibly cheap behaviour from someone who clearly had the ready cash to afford something as trivial as a home ice-cream maker.)

Funny thing is that the people who say "they should just charge what the ticket needs to be so they can make money" would always be the first to complain about "rip-off prices". My other favourite was always those who accused the cinema of "profiteering" - as if cinema were a service to which they were entitled.

LizzieMaine said:

What gets me are the people who complain and whine that there are no amenities in their town -- but then when they get an amenity, they go out of their way to try and chisel it. It's not just theatres, it's any operation that provides a "service" -- these people want the experience and the prestige of that experience, but they'll be damned if they'll pay what it's worth. And then when the place closes down they whiiiiiiiiiiiine and whiiiiiiiiiine that their town has no amenities.

Click to expand...

Yip. A few years ago in part of North London there was a campaign of local people to save a North London cinema that a charismatic / non-denom mega-church were trying to buy. Thing was, the reason it was for sale was because that same community hadn't supported it. (In part, inevitably, it was also to do with wanting to block the megachurch as it was one of the type that are particularly aggressive and entitled in their evangelism, but nonetheless had they supported the cinema it wouldn't have been available for those folks to buy...).

We in the service sector don't serve the consumer public because we love them so -- we do it to scratch out a living. When the public rips us off, they're showing how much respect they have for us and what we do. To such ones I say -- if you want "respect" from clerks, servers, drivers, attendants, and all the rest of us, then you'd better see to it that you behave in a respectable manner.

Click to expand...

Respect is to be earned, not assumed as entitlement. There's something particularly nasty about entitlement born of the notion of "I'm the one paying the bills". Reminds me of the Bullingdon Club, an Oxford University drinking society made up of only the very wealthy, and whose MO is to book into various restaurants and dining establishments under false names, turn up in their uniform tailcoats (bespoke, three grand a pop for the sole purpose of helping to keep out the proles), and proceed to smash the place up while getting as drunk as possible. When they are done, they will pay for all damage caused, clearly believing that because they "pay their way" this entitles them to behave as they choose. (Sadly Oxford, for whatever reason, has consistently either failed or refused to deal with the Bullers and others like them for many years.)

When I eat out, I make sure the waitress knows I'm on her side. Class solidarity is the only solidarity that counts.

Click to expand...

Quite so.

tonyb said:

I can’t say I’ve stayed on top of the news regarding the health of the movie showing business. But with the price of pretty darned spectacular big-screen TVs plummeting and a proliferation of ways to acquire content, well, that certainly prompts the movie theater business to adapt or die. They simply must offer the customer something other than the movie he can see at his own leisure in the comfort of his own home on a screen the size of a queen-size bed.

Going out to the movies differs from watching the same content at home, in ways good and maybe not so good. Theaters will be forced to highlight and expand on the good. Or they won’t survive.

Click to expand...

Back in the middle eighties many UK cinemas shut down, and it was widely believed that the industry would eventually die at the hands of home video. The tail end of the nineties and into the 2000s then saw a boom in cinema attendance. I imagine this is now dropping again owing to the economic slowdown currently being experienced by the UK, with a recession looming. The big market for cinema here is less adult punters and more mid-teens: the big value certificate they all want, I'm told, is a 15 for the kids who think they're above a kiddy film but can't get a good enough fake ID to get into an 18 picture. They seem to be more prepared to spend their disposable cash on the cinema than many adults.

LizzieMaine said:

Basically, any functional adult should know you follow the rules. If someone can't follow the rules, if someone insists on doing it THEIR WAY at all times, then we prefer that they stay home. Somehow we'll survive without their business.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I've always thought it must be positively exhausting being as self-entitled as some folks are all the time, but somehow they seem to keep going!

Fading Fast said:

Having been on both sides (as most of us have in our lives), I do what you did when I get exceptional service and call / fill out surveys / etc. to, hopefully, have that person's efforts acknowledged. I know I appreciated it when mine have been.

Click to expand...

This is becoming increasingly important, too, in our online-reviews driven culture. (Just a shame they can also be so easily unfairly gamed: I know one cafe in London which is run by the most dreadful man - racist, sexist, wholly unafraid to force his prejudices on his patrons.... their trip advisor reviews are a stream of appalling reviews (which he would never learn from as he's one of those "If they don't like it they are wrong" types).. every the or four bad reviews or so they get a fawning five star review which is blatantly them or one of their pals under another false account. This sort of thing sadly makes us all cynics and harder to believe these things. For that reason, if it's possible I tend to try and pass on compliments about an individual to their boss if I can, or word of mouth.

tonyb said:

That fellow was fortunate he was dealing with you and not me.

People who don’t need wheelchairs or have never lived with people who do generally have NO IDEA how many things wheelchair users just can’t do because of all the public places that remain inaccessible. Even when accommodations are made, such as accessible parking and seating, the wheelchair user too often still finds him- or herself excluded on account of those accommodations having been already taken by those who don’t really need them.

It makes my blood boil. Again, that fellow doesn’t know how lucky he was to be dealing with you and not me.

Click to expand...

"Invisible" disabilities can be a challenge too. Herself has had joint troubles cause by psoriasis at times, and the hassle she's had - people pushing, yelling at her (including, recently, one very nasty person who had a visible disability and refused to accept that she couldn't move out of their way just immediately), even one woman who deliberately stamped on her toe with her full weight in a stiletto heel because she got to a seat first and said woman had to sit opposite instead of beside her pal... (it was, owing to a bad hand, the only seat Herself could have sat in). Weirdly, when she carried a stick she had better luck. That said, a friend who, in his early fifties, has had to have a knee replacement and is having terrible trouble with his legs due to early-onset arthritis, carries a stick and often needs it has received terrible abuse on public transport, everything from people accusing him of being a "benefit-scrounging cripple" (at 8am, on his way to work) to having his stick kicked out from under him and thus sustaining a bad fall because some impatient so and so wanted past and wasn't prepared to even excuse themselves. It's unbelievable./ Since June 2016 there has been a very significant rise in all sorts of hate crimes in the UK, but in some ways the most shocking has been the sudden rise in attacks on the disabled. Clearly by pathetic, little people who need to make themselves feel superior.

LizzieMaine said:

You'd be enraged at how much of this we run into. We have a unisex accessible restroom on the main floor, clearly posted with a sign reading "IN CONSIDERATION OF (handicapped access symbol) PATRONS, USE DOWNSTAIRS RESTROOMS IF YOU ARE ABLE." And yet perfectly able-bodied people who are simply too lazy and self-absorbed to go down a flight of steps constantly tie it up, while people in wheelchairs, or who are otherwise unable to use the stairs, are forced to wait. The mind doesn't boggle, it beats its poor aching self against a wall and cries.

Click to expand...

More than once we've left a big brand fast food chain branch because Herself needed to use one of the handful of seats on the ground floor but they were all taken up by able bodied people. Same sort who it in the disabled seats on the bus then very determinedly look out the window when they see someone who needs those seats boarding.

tonyb said:

I’m surprised to find that I’ve pretty well adjusted to reading on a glowing screen the news and comment and most of the other stuff I used to read in the paper — the genuine paper paper.

Still, though, we humans engage with different media in different ways, and I find print on paper much more conducive to deep engagement. Online media all but beg the consumer to jump around. I can’t help but think that makes for a more superficial understanding.

Click to expand...

I think it can be a good thing. Offline, people only tended to read one paper; online, you can instead tend to pick the stories that interest you and read from several (if, due to subscription websites, not all) sources. The online world can indeed encourage the echo-chamber, but it also makes it easier to escape if we want to.

tonyb said:

It’s the unfortunate tendency among us humans to run to the neat, easy explanation. People in general really don’t want their assumptions and worldviews challenged.

It’s why the echo chamber works.

Click to expand...

Quite so.

tonyb said:

You know that revolving door connecting legislative bodies and lobbying firms? There’s another door just like it between news outlets and PR firms and the like. Several folks of my acquaintance who were once reporters and editors are now working in the “communications” departments at various businesses. I find it hard to fault them for it, seeing how the newsrooms have been pretty well gutted and these guys and gals gotta put bread on the table somehow. So they bang out copy and field phone calls from reporters, putting as good a face on the company’s position as they can.

Click to expand...

We have a similar door in the UK that connects one particular political party with 80% of the press. And still we sneer at the communists in the manner of dirty kitchen utensils exchanging insults.

MisterCairo said:

The feeling of foolishness when you instinctively swat a mosquito on your left forearm, forgetting you have a tree saw in your right hand...

This happened to a friend.

Click to expand...

A one-armed friend?

Edward said:

...
Back in the middle eighties many UK cinemas shut down, and it was widely believed that the industry would eventually die at the hands of home video. The tail end of the nineties and into the 2000s then saw a boom in cinema attendance. I imagine this is now dropping again owing to the economic slowdown currently being experienced by the UK, with a recession looming. The big market for cinema here is less adult punters and more mid-teens: the big value certificate they all want, I'm told, is a 15 for the kids who think they're above a kiddy film but can't get a good enough fake ID to get into an 18 picture. They seem to be more prepared to spend their disposable cash on the cinema than many adults.
...

Click to expand...

About 20 years ago I had a friendly enough acquaintance with the general manager of a then-new three-screen movie house built on the footprint of a much-loved but falling-down neighborhood movie theater that had been there for, like, 80 years. (They had to build up rather than out — three floors.)

This made the owner of the place something of a hero in the eyes of many by keeping a movie theater in the district and helping to further revitalize a commercial district that was already pretty well into gentrification mode.

I credit that owner (the scion of a family of some long-established local renown) for taking a significant financial risk (there were muffled grumblings of the looming death of the movie-showing business even then) and for putting a bunch of that money into interior finishes and customer amenities. It was pretty, the individual auditoriums small but the seating commodious, the restrooms and elevator gimp-friendly. As best I know, the place is still doing pretty well.

I recall the general manager telling me (this is almost verbatim) “15-year-old girls run the movie business.”

Kids, especially teenage girl kids, go to the movies, he said. You can still count on that.

I went to the motion-picture show myself this afternoon; took in a matinee screening of “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” (highly recommended, by the way). I was reminded of the one big way in which taking in a film in the theater differs from watching it at home, no matter how large and spectacular the flat screen in the “home theater”: You see the film uninterrupted, start to finish. You don’t answer the door or entertain your spouse’s inquiry as to what you’ll have for dinner or take a look at the messages on your smartphone. That makes for a more immersive experience.

All you have to do then is time the screening so it's not full of teenagers answering their own smart phones.... When we went to se the last Avengers picture, there was a guy there who tokk thre separate phonecalls, loudly, from his dad.... and read all the subtitles aloud. I think he was a bit on the spectrum, but still....

We had a silent picture a couple of years back, and an audience member complained angrily that a patron reading the subtitles aloud to her friend was RUINING THE SHOW. The patron's friend was blind.

Edward said:

All you have to do then is time the screening so it's not full of teenagers answering their own smart phones.... When we went to se the last Avengers picture, there was a guy there who tokk thre separate phonecalls, loudly, from his dad.... and read all the subtitles aloud. I think he was a bit on the spectrum, but still....

Click to expand...

I haven’t gone out to the movies more than two or three times per year on average over the past few decades, so my sample size is so small as to be insignificant.

So, with that said, I haven’t noted much by way of cell phone use during the movies. There are typically signs outside the auditoriums reminding patrons to turn the things off or at least silence them, and not to use them during the show. And they always play at least one spot between the previews saying the same thing.

Media in Germany is dismantling the "myth" of Woodstock 1969, actually.

Is that a good or a bad thing? Woodstock was loooong before my time.

tonyb said:

I haven’t gone out to the movies more than two or three times per year on average over the past few decades, so my sample size is so small as to be insignificant.

So, with that said, I haven’t noted much by way of cell phone use during the movies. There are typically signs outside the auditoriums reminding patrons to turn the things off or at least silence them, and not to use them during the show. And they always play at least one spot between the previews saying the same thing.

Click to expand...

Alas, over here if you coincide with a teenage crowd (and even some actual adults), it's rampant. People taking calls is rare, but you get an awful lot of twits using them to text or go on the interent, oblivious to the fact that the little blue light around them is annoying for other people. It's almost as hateful as those ninnies who take out their mobile phone during their own wedding in order to immediately change their marital status - and film themselvesdonig it so they can seek attention on youtube.

Middle age is making a Sartrist of me...