onlydrinkhighlife

Every year, the city I live in has a week long festival featuring a carnival, live music and entertainment, and a fireworks display to cap off the event. This event is called the Livonia Spree. And it is fucking awesome.

When you are little kid you live for this thing. The rides seem epic and the cotton candy is endless. It was the next best thing to Disney World, and the best part was that if you were lucky you got to go multiple times in that week. Usually once or twice early in the week, but always on Sunday to meet up with friends and family to watch the fireworks. It was like a giant picnic with snacks and pop for the kids and coolers of beer for the adults and 14 year olds. If anyone wanted to burgle the hell out of Livonia they should do it the night of the Spree Fireworks. Outside of the viewing area for the fireworks show, the city is a ghost town and all the cops are busy controlling traffic.

When you're a teenager and everything sucks and is boring, the Spree still offers you something. It's one of the first places - besides the mall - that your parents will let you go to by yourself. Hanging out there with your buddies without any supervision is awesome...until the kid in the Larry Johnson Hornet's jersey by the punching bag machine hears you make a joke about him and asks if you've got a problem with him. Then you begin to wish someone - anyone - in a position of authority was there to prevent your face from getting broken. Or you wish that your friends weren't such big pussies and that they'd stand up for you so you wouldn't have to stand up for yourself. But I digress.

Even now that I'm in my twenties I still enjoy going to the Spree. A couple of years ago I slipped a fiver to the guy running the "Himalaya" (pictured above) and instructed him to make the ride "the best ever." It was the best five dollars I've ever spent. He started out the ride at full speed...in reverse. It was unprecedented. The ride lasted forever - I swear he let us go through like three Poison songs. The kids and whiggers in line to be next were booing because they had to wait so long. It was just awesome. With the exception of one or two Carpet Slides, it was the greatest ride of my life.

Now I'm not saying that the Spree is the best thing ever, just that it is still capable of providing a lot of people with some good times and some good stories - even to cynical dickheads like myself. I know a fair amount of people hate the Spree. That's fine with me. Don't come. They'll be less of a line at the Pirate Ship and Beer Tent. I don't have any illusions that the Spree is greater than it is, but it is a long-standing tradition and it is something to do in a city whose population laments daily about the lack of anything ever going on.

What I'm trying to say, is that I've never felt the need to defend the Spree from its detractors. I liked it well enough and I didn't really give a shit if people didn't like it. That was their problem. Then I read a letter in the local paper bitching about the Spree. And it enraged me. Even now, days after I initially read it, I'm still getting upset just thinking about the asshole who wrote it and how badly I want to tell him to eff off. After reading it, I decided to submit my own letter to the editor about the letter that got my panties in a bunch. The offending letter is below, followed by my response. I'm hoping that it makes this Thursday's edition.

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Dreading the Spree

Hee haw! Ma and Pa Kettle, grab the young-uns and head to Lirvanna town's premier, annual cultural event - Whee! The Spree! (Simpleton entertainment for the "great unwashed"). Yes, here again comes that dreary event - the one which defines the city for what it truly is - someplace little better than a backwoods borough (despite how it attempts to put on Bloomfield Hills-type airs).

How I dread each June that brings the Spree. It really lowers what few standards Livonia has. To begin with, most people aren't aware of the low character of the carny folk camping out at Ford Field. Stroll through their camp-grounds and you'll find all the "empties" tossed out around their living quarters/trailers (many of which are occupied by "shack job" couples).

During the carnival itself, you'll find lame amusement rides (St. Mary's Polish Country Fair looks fun in comparison), plus over-priced, small portioned food and "watered down" beverages. Sadly, now gone are those cultural icon exhibits, Machine-gun Kelly and the Great Lakes (fake) wrestlers, and the Chinese midget acrobats. Horrid, loud music blares from loud-speakers at this over-crowded event, where pick-pockets troll for targets, and gangs of unsupervised, under-aged youth gad about as they indulge in illegal use of booze and drugs.

As regards the fireworks, we don't even seem to know when July 4th is since we shoot 'em off in June! Anyway, you've seen one firework, you've seen them all - BORING! Fireworks also frighten most dogs, and startled nesting birds often bump their young out onto the ground. The show is also over-crowded, with people filling up any vantage point (streets, parking lots, private property), which they litter. You'll see the yahoos sitting on car-hoods, on lawn-chairs, with beer coolers etc, in colorful, trailer-park trash fashion.

Leo Weber

My Response

This letter is in response to Leo Weber's letter on 6/1, in which he essentially blames the Spree for being too popular, killing young birds, and providing unsatisfying food in too small of portions. One would think that if the food wasn't any good, one wouldn't request to have more of it.

Mr. Weber also laments how the Spree lowers the city's standards because of the crowd it attracts. Mr. Weber should feel lucky that Livonia's standards are so "low" that his fellow citizens put up with his elitist and cantankerous attitude instead of running him out of town for his frivolous and ill-informed complaining about an event that brings revenue to the city, fosters a sense of community, and provides enjoyment to so many.

While I will admit that the Spree does have some negative aspects to it, I think it more than redeems itself by forcing the humorless grouches in the city to stay inside their ivory towers (or are they glass houses?) for a week to avoid encountering the "unwashed" masses who have the gall to try to have fun in a family-friendly environment.

Someone should inform Mr. Weber that the people who work at and attend the Spree are not on his lawn, and that he needs to stop yelling at them to get off it.

JFunk

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God, do I hope they run that in the paper, just so I can ruin that old fart's day like he ruined mine.