Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:25 on 2022-08-01 Permalink Reply  

• Blork 09:54 on 2022-08-01 Permalink

  So much wrong here. The one inch I’ll give on the side of the complainers is that maybe blasting their sales pitch through a bullhorn all day wasn’t a great idea. But otherwise, WTF is up with the cops not having anything better to do, and being not particularly friendly or neighbourly about it when then showed up?

  The fact that the kids selling the lemonade appear to be non-white is also interesting to think about. Would the cops have been so unfriendly towards white kids doing the same thing? (I have no doubt they would have responded to the noise complaints, but I have a feeling the tone of it all would have been very different.)

  Side note: what’s up with all the lemonade stands? I’ve seen at least five of them set up around my neighbourhood this summer. That’s so 1950s! (In my case there were no bullhorns, and no cops.)

• steph 10:27 on 2022-08-01 Permalink

  “Nuisance calls” are resolved by the path of easiest resistance. Either you get the complaint withdrawn, or you ask the kids to stop. Maybe the police tried the first option without success.

• Ephraim 10:47 on 2022-08-01 Permalink

  Busybody neighbours are the worst! Gladys Kravitz was a really bad role model

• Emily 11:18 on 2022-08-01 Permalink

  The man swearing at the kids should’ve gotten in trouble, not the family.

• Uatu 15:41 on 2022-08-01 Permalink

  These cops busted these kids like they were dealers in an episode of The Wire. I’m surprised they didn’t flip the table and haul everyone downtown for questioning

• H. John 22:32 on 2022-08-01 Permalink

  Clearly, I’m a grumpy old man.

  I watched the original CTV coverage, and I was impressed by the two young boys.

  But I also thought: thank god, I don’t live next door to them.

  It’s not the lemonade stand that made me think that, it was the bull horn.

  Think about having a kid next door to you for hours each day screaming into a bull horn.

  What parent buys their child a bull horn and is then surprised it bothers neighbours?

  I also thought about an article in this week’s Economist, How Magicians Won Facebook.

  I found it interesting that when CTV’s reporter arrived, another man had just dropped by to give the mom flowers and cash since he’d already read about the kids.

• Kate 10:07 on 2022-08-02 Permalink

  H. John, in my immediate neighbourhood there’s a kid who’s pushed outside and runs around going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA sometimes for hours. He doesn’t have a bullhorn, admittedly, but it can get a little wearing. But unless he was doing it at midnight it wouldn’t occur to me to call the cops.

  I think I understand why his parent(s) push him outside, though.

  I don’t know whether there’s anything wrong with the kid, or if he just likes filling the street with his voice.

• dwgs 14:14 on 2022-08-02 Permalink

  So why don’t the cops show up and say “lose the bullhorn or we shut you down”? Easy peasy.

• Chris 09:15 on 2022-08-03 Permalink

  >So why don’t the cops show up and say “lose the bullhorn or we shut you down”?

  dwgs, did you read the article? They did exactly that.

  “…Massa refused to shut down the stand…” “[Massa] insisted on continuing to use the megaphone…” “…They simply asked her repeatedly to stop using the megaphone…”

• dwgs 09:43 on 2022-08-03 Permalink

  The story must have been edited since it was first published, I read it the day the story broke.

• Chris 23:56 on 2022-08-03 Permalink

  dwgs, you are 2/3 correct. 🙂 Looking at the Wayback Machine, 2 of the 3 phrases I quoted were indeed added later, between July 31 and Aug 1. It seems CTV first published without getting the police side of the story, as the sentence “Montreal police (SPVM) have yet to respond to CTV News’ request for comment.” was also removed.