City of Chicago pulls head out of ass
Guess what? Having the security detail at Millennium Park shoo away photographers… Not a good idea. And the city has finally realized how incredibly stupid of an undertaking it was. As of Tuesday, Millennium Park is a photography free for all again if you have a crew of less than 10 people. Seems fair and logical.
Here is an excerpt from an article in The Trib in which the city tries to rationalize their totally ridiculous behavior…
Permits were initially priced at $350 a day for professional still photographers, $1,200 a day for professional videographers and $50 an hour for wedding photographers.
Doria said Millennium Park followed practices used in the Chicago Park District and heavily trafficked parks in other cities, notably New York’s Central and Prospect Parks. Doria, a former Chicago Park District official, acknowledged that enforcement of such permits in the vast park systems is relatively lax. She stressed that permits were a way to maintain public accessibility to the popular park sites.“We weren’t trying to make money,” she said. “But we needed to know how many people were going to be at elements of the park.”
$350 a day for photographers?!?!?! Just so you could keep track of how many people were going to be at the park? Yeah, that’s not trying to make money.
If the city was really being as benevolently responsible as they would like us to believe, they would have hired a dude with one of those clicky couter things like they have at the pool and clubs. That would be the way to count the number of photographers at the park. Idiots!
i say we head over there with 11 people. if they call on it, we can just say “oh he’s not with us,” and point to one of us randomly.
btw, i seem to recall them backpedaling like this at the end of last summer, too.
woohoo! couple that with ny lifting the ban on subway photography and it looks like we’re back to ruling the world.
Good news for Photogs and Suburban sight seers!
It’s suprising how often the blogs have been wrong about this. The only blog that bothered to contact the city and find out the story was chicagoist last year here: http://www.chicagoist.com/archives/2005/02/17/millennium_park_photography_the_official_scoop.php
I don’t think anything in this post was written erroneously. The fact of the matter is, the official policy was just enacted on Tuesday. Regardless, trying to backpedal rationalize and say that ridiculously expensive permits were simply used as a way to monitor traffic is preposterous. Wanna count how many photographers are using the park at what time? Make them register with the city and get a permit… for free. Give them a scheduled time in which they re allowed to shoot. That is a logical way to monitor the numbers and flow of traffic. An exorbant fine, not so much.
flowfeel thinks the city still has its head stuck in its ass!!!