Mary had a little lamb a la Tchaikovsky
Garrett Harris 10:11 p.m., May 23
Mark your calendars: on Saturday, August 11 from 11:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. of Sunday, August 12 nearly 400 participants join in the 2nd Annual Midnight Water Gun Fight in Balboa Park!
"We will meet at the large fountain in front of San Diego Natural History Museum at 11:45pm (near Park Blvd.). First "squirt" will be at the stroke of midnight and then it is a free-for-all of water gun madness!!!" states the invitation page. Participants are encouraged to wear costumes, swimwear, and bodypaint. The event is free.
Comments
Jack76 Aug. 12, 2012 @ 3:01 p.m.
Gee, what a swell time was had by all as they trashed the plants around the lily pond and broke a drain pipe resulting in a bunch of dead Koi and a bunch of dead water lilies. They must be so proud. Will there be another event next year?
SurfPuppy619 Aug. 12, 2012 @ 11:44 p.m.
Who was the Rocket Scientist in the gov that allowed this?????? The lily pond has had it's maintenance deferred for several decades now, and fore the life of my I cannot figure out why-it is by the most beautiful part of Balboa Park IMO.
PattheRat Aug. 13, 2012 @ 11:45 p.m.
The San Diego Reader needs to step up and pay a substantial portion of the costs of investigating the crime, cleaning up the mess and repairing the damages. And you should also pay to have a 24/7 security guard protect the park from this type of future vandalism. How did you possibly think it was okay to advertise vandalism to the public at large??? Unbelievable. You should require your "journalists" to take a few ethics classes while you're at it, too.
Burwell Aug. 12, 2012 @ 5:49 p.m.
Self-indulgent sociopaths.
Hardcover Aug. 13, 2012 @ 1:11 a.m.
Not nearly as destructive as the Irwin Jacobs plan for the Park, and 45 million cheaper. How this could not be noted by the police is a mystery. But so is the ignorance of the average person regarding the Jacobs plan.
fredjones2005 Aug. 13, 2012 @ 7:51 a.m.
Google cache information of those who organized Water Gun Fight http://youtu.be/7GM6CDk9Ilk
http://youtu.be/t7tN00d9XqQ
The organizer of the 2nd Annual Water Gun Fight in Balboa Park, Ken St. Pierre, was the Sales Director at San Diego Gay and Lesbian news, which is owned by Jonathan Hale (partner of Carl DeMaio), and he's helped both Carl DeMaio's mayoral campaign, and Todd Gloria's city council campaign. In fact, SDGLN even reported on the event beforehand (http://www.sdgln.com/entertainment/2012/08/09/jim-winsor-out-about-cityfest-festivities-sunday ).
Organizers of 2012 Watergun Fight that destroyed the Lilly pond.
PattheRat Aug. 13, 2012 @ 11:49 p.m.
Had this damage been caused by a group of homeless persons, they would have been thrown in jail so quick it would have made your head swim. But it's okay for a bunch of spoiled rich brats to do it? Every person who attended should be charged with trespassing. The organizers and anyone advertising this vandalism party should be charged with inciting a riot. All of them should share equally in the costs of investigating the case, cleaning up the mess and repairing the damage. And they all should be fined a substantial amount that could be used to hire a security guard so this never happens again. And tack on about 2,000 hours of community service to be spent at the park so that they learn what type of work is required to build and maintain a park,, with the hope that they will think twice before they decide to trash it!
Letter to the Editor Aug. 13, 2012 @ 9:03 a.m.
As a substantial promoter of the Water Gun Fight held in Balboa Park August 12 in the early hours, an event held without a permit and not controlled by the organizers, where the crowd caused damage to the Lily Pond and surround area, your paper has a responsibility to make it right.
Take responsibility, do that!
Arthur C Burdett III
ursulak Aug. 13, 2012 @ 4:25 p.m.
I am furious. I saw the restoration of this iconic lily pond a couple of years ago by a team of specialists done entirely by hand. This might even be the first summer where there were baby turtles again. I am surprised this tourist/organizer didn't take his all night lord of the flies style event down to Fiesta Island where the only item that would be damaged would be the sewage. Everyone must pay the price. And what's next? The lobby of the Hotel Del Coronado? Really? Go back to Massachusetts, Mr. St. Pierre and take all of these douchebags with you.
dwbat Aug. 13, 2012 @ 8:57 p.m.
For those not familiar with the pond and the wonderful koi, here's some video footage I shot there sometime back. Why anyone would want to trash this site baffles me. Let's hope it is restored to what it looked like before. A memorial for the deceased koi would be an appropriate plan. Their lives brought a lot of pleasure to those who have watched them over the years.
Koi Fish at Lily Pond in Balboa Park, San Diego
SurfPuppy619 Aug. 14, 2012 @ 12:46 a.m.
Beautiful vid fo the Koi........
afanofthelittleguys Aug. 13, 2012 @ 11:02 p.m.
You killed the Koi! You selfish idiots! What were you thinking? You killed the Koi. Those aren't just cheap little goldfish. You destroyed the water lillies. You trampled the landscaping. You broke the law!
If this so called party had been at your own home, that you actually owned, not rented, and all the damage was done to plants and landscaping that you had worked hard to plant, then only you would be hurt.
But for you unthinking, selfish, immature so called party goers to do all this damage to someone else's property is so beyond making any sense.
You should have gotten a clue when you trampled plants. Why were you damaging plants that were not yours? You should have gotten a clue when you stepped into the lily pond. It was not your pond and it had living animals in it. Why in the world would you think that could possibly be ok? You should have gotten a clue when you scooped water out of the pond, How in the world did you expect the water lillies and the fish to live without water?
I hope that by now you realize what totally inexcusable damage you did and have nightmares about it being your own property with your koi that had been living in your pond for years. I also hope that you are mature enough to step forward with money to pay for the damage, that you apologize, and that you have the guts to accept responsibility for your unthinking actions.
That party was wrong in every sense of the word.
Now grow up.
Ponzi Aug. 13, 2012 @ 11:26 p.m.
This is something I found on UT San Diego. It's interesting that it was on Yelp for weeks and it was not a "flash mob" as has been reported.
Here's the social media event poster from Yelp. His name on Yelp is Chun P., a so-called “Elite Yelp” member. He posted the event weeks ago. However, today he modified the even posting and removed most of his personal photos. The links I have posted are from cached Google searches and they show Chun P. posting the event and his remarks about it in a Yelp chat room. Cut and paste these links:
Chun P. posting the event. http://i46.tinypic.com/24xjomx.jpg
His comments about the event: http://i45.tinypic.com/mwaz2w.jpg
His photos on Yelp. He recently deleted them because of this controversy, but these are cached in the Google search engine.
http://i49.tinypic.com/14o8wtu.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/141s9r5.jpg
The UT San Diego did not ask Erica Phung, who was quoted in the UT San Diego story, how deep her involvement was. It turns out that Erica Phung is the wife of one of the promoters of this event. The irony is she was married to the man who posted the event on social networking site, Yelp. And now she has posted a picture of the lily pond (in better days!). The irony. Her and her husband were married there and years later he posts the event that trashes it!
http://www.facebook.com/erica.phung
SurfPuppy619 Aug. 14, 2012 @ 12:50 a.m.
The City knows who organized this, we all do it is right here on the thread they should bring at the very least CIVIL charges against them, hold them accountable for their criminal conduct.
They could probably make some criminal charges that would stick to-but the civil charges would be easy to prove up with a much lower standard of proof.
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