By Sara Schieron
Every Sunday between 11am and 2pm, a group of swing dancers meet in Golden Gate Park for a free dance they call Lindy In The Park (LitP). Over the last 13 years the group, which has grown from a few dozen to 100-200 weekly attendees, have only inspired one complaint (that they know of). Sunday, June 28 at 1:15pm, Park Ranger Raymond Wong came to organizers Jen Holland and Ken Watanabe and alerted them of a sound complaint. The complaint, which was vaguely worded, was formidable enough to close the event down for the day and possibly for good, as this free dance is now, after over a decade, being required to attain a sound permit; a cost that threatened to shut them down. Without that permit, Lindy would no longer be welcome in the Park.
Watanabe reports, “Ranger Wong first said there were a lot of complaints and then, when we pressed him, he said it was the staff at the DeYoung.” As the group has been meeting at the same place for over a decade, hearing that the DeYoung — a fairly soundproof museum — was finally offended seemed questionable.
When the dance was shut down, Watanabe alerted the dancers, many of whom had just appeared impromptu, lured in by the free lesson offered at noon. The regulars, however, rallied quickly and a petition style list of addresses and phone numbers was circulated. At the final count, there were 40-odd addresses, indicating the event regulars were sturdy in number.