This week my friend Meredith came up with a great idea for a fundraising event - a cakewalk outside a downtown Metro station. My hometown church used to have a carnival with a cakewalk. People pay $5 to walk around in a circle while you play silly music, and when the music stops someone wins a delicious cake. What's not to like? I was making plans to acquire top-hats and other circusy props when I realized there might be rules about this sort of thing. I might have to keep the music to a low volume so as not to disturb our hard-working lobbyists, or worse, I might even need a permit.Since there's nothing that kills a carnival atmosphere faster than angry police officers, I decided to check up on the rules. First I called Metro, our transit authority. They said as long as I was 15 feet away from the station entrance, I was on public property (aka the city's problem). Next, I called the city government, which really lived up to its incompetent reputation. I kept getting transferred around, and everyone told me different things. At least one person blatantly lied to me - guess it's the end of the day on a Friday and she didn't feel like doing her job.
Soooo... given that no one in the DC government seems to know what the rules are, I'll just have to rely on my winning smile if anyone challenges me. Wish me luck!
P.S. I know I should apologize for the awful pun in today's title, but I don't actually feel bad about it at all.
2 comments:
when are you going to do it? can i bake a cake?
I'm not sure when - probably a Friday morning pretty soon. I'd love for you to bake a cake! It would have to be in a disposable container though. We were talking about doing a mix of homemade cakes and pies, and also see if we can get CakeLove, Sticky Fingers, Harris Teeter, etc to donate any.
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