This article made me wonder, as I’ve never lived next door or close to one of those folks you see on the evening news with enough lights to fry a small dog at 20 paces.
On one hand, it’s the right of the property owner to do what they want, but OTOH the neighbors have rights to avoid the excess traffic and not be ‘Ho’d’ at every evening for a month.
I actually live very near the scene of the crime. It’s a sad tale…
The guy is a big philanthropist, and people DO come from miles around to see this display. The kids love it, and it is a real holiday treat.
On the other hand… The guys lives on a cul de sac, so there’s no way for traffic to just flow thru. If I were a neighbor, the month long traffic jam would be tough to deal with.
Monte Sereno is a tiny, tony town of only about 4,000 people. It’s all residential-- no businesses at all. The roads leading to this guys house are also really, really narrow. Maybe if he opted for limitted hours and limitted days he could’ve worked out a compromise with the neighbors. There also are any number of parks that he could donate money to for the same purpose and where the decorations could be just as magnificent.
Call me a Grinch, but I’m kinda with the town on this one…
AMEN
A modest display is one thing (I can forgo the garishness and entailed labor). If a modest 200 amp distribution center is too small for house and display, forget the display. Maybe they are exhibitionists at heart!
Would it be so very hard for the decorators to rent a patch of land on a visible corner, away from the residences and set up his display there?
I’m thinking not. He’s unwilling to see this from anyone else’s view point and pays a chunk of money for a company to custom design a Grinch (copyright violation anyone?) to sit on his front lawn and point at the neighbors who started the petition.
He’s a jerk.
I’m with the town. It’s one thing to decorate, it’s another thing to constantly assault people’s eyes and ears with Christmas Land 3000. And it’s really shitty if the constant traffic and gawkers prevent the neighbors from having their own little parties or get togethers.
As for the enormous Grinch… yeah. That’s the holiday spirit you were talking about, dude. Act like a sulky little passive-aggressive bitch when the City Hall asks you to tone it down out of respect for your neighbors.
:rolleyes:
I’m reeling from the sheer amount of money that these idiots spent.
150k on decorations?
*50k a year * – a YEAR!!! – to set up and keep the display running?
2500 for a damn Grinch statue? As in, two thousand five hundred dollars?
This serves as a good example that some people have too much #%#(%*# money.
I’m with the town on this one too, but I gotta say at least the display, from what I gather from the article, sounds tasteful. Some people around here decorate for Christmas in what could only be described as “Vegas whorehouse.” And do they wait until the Christmas season to decorate? Oh, no. IF they don’t leave Santa and the giant blue blinking snowflakes up year round, they’ll put everything up around, oh, October 1st and leave it up until Valentine’s Day. Baby Jesus crying indeed …
Yeah – I’m with the town as well. I love Christmas and I like Christmas decorations, but, please… I think it’s pretty clear that these people’s ‘right’ to decorate their home ends when it becomes a huge problem for the neighbors. And the $2500 Grinch pointing at the people they blame for shitting on their Christmas, even though the petition had 90+ signatures? I think the Aert’s are assholes.
Baby Jesus? Baby Jesus!?
What the fuck does Baby Jesus have to do with Christmas decorations?
…
Oh, yeah.
Nevermind.
But oh! oh! oh! Think of the children, who got a whole $10,000 last year in donations from people who visited Santa’s Palace!
I lost all sympathy for the guy when he started crowing about that. If Toys for Tots is so damn important, pony up some of your own obscene holiday lighting budget for it, jerk.
Does anyone else get the irony of using the GRINCH to protest people complaining about ostentatious Christmas displays?
After all, the message of The Grinch was about how Christmas ISN’T about all the fancy, superficial trappings and displays-it’s in your heart. (Blah blah blah, sappy corny stuff).
Damn, so WHAT if it raised money for charity? If he had taken the money spent on the displays in the first place and given that to charity, it probably would have been even more than what was donated!
Ted Geisel is rolling in his grave.
Yeah, put me on the list of people who think Aert’s a jerk. Philanthropy is one thing, but to hijack your entire neighborhood to celebrate your own sense of inner goodness stinks. If you want to have a Kapital of Kitch, use the bucks to rent a parcel that’s zoned appropriately and knock yourself out. OK, maybe the people who flock from miles around won’t realize that it was your great generosity that afforded them their entertainment, but that isn’t the motivation for your philanthropy, right? Right? Oh.
Amen, sister.
:rolleyes: So much said with so few words.
There’s a house down the street from my parents who decorate their lawn so bizzarely that even Tom Cullen would shake his head at it.
There should be a law limiting the number of plastic Nativity scenes a household can display. I’m thinking something like one per acre.
What an asshole. Is it really that hard a stretch to see that your right to decorate as you see fit ends where your neighbors’ right to use their own street and homes begins?
Reminds me of my father, not much into decorative junk, but he installs lights with wild abandon; I fear one of those days a plane will take the house for a runway and there´ll be a royal mess around here.
Speaking as one who has had disputes with neighbors whose right to do as they pleased superseded my right to some peace and quiet in my own home…
…yeah, I find myself in agreement with most everyone else in this thread.
If it were simply a big, garish, tasteless display, I could live with that.
If it were a huge, big, monstrous garish thing lighting up the sky for miles around, a Disneyland shoehorned into someone’s front yard, requiring special power feeds just to keep it going, and drawing tourists and gawkers for miles and miles and miles around who drove endlessly up and down my cul-de-sac at all hours, interfering with my ability to enter and leave my own neighborhood at will, and even my ability to enjoy my own private property while sitting on it…?
When come back, bring perspective.
Man, would this be a great thing to send in to their local newspaper letters to the editor.
Perhaps the comment was in reference to this SNL skit.