By Jefferson Siegel
Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music
Faber & Faber, 272 pp., $24
A “park privatizer” underwent an exorcism by Reverend Billy in what turned out to be a staged event.
On a warm summer evening last Wednesday, crowds filled Union Square Park and its surrounding plaza space, relaxing on benches, lying on the park grass and strolling through the Greenmarket.
There was also a special picnic being held at the park’s north end, near the Abraham Lincoln statue.
Led by anti-consumer performance preacher Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping, the event was dubbed a “Push Back” picnic to protest what the demonstrators call the privatization of Union Square Park. Recalling “the tens of thousands of people who surged and marched here in the north plaza” of Union Square, Reverend Billy a.k.a. Bill Talen excoriated the city, the Union Square Partnership business improvement district and restaurateur Danny Meyer for their attempt to build a private restaurant in the park’s pavilion. The pavilion, they said, was built with public money for use by the public and should not be converted into an exclusive restaurant.
“The pavilion is our center for free speech,” Billy said to a gathering crowd in the Greenmarket. “Mike Bloomberg has privatized the parks that have rich people living around them.” A dozen green-robed “acolytes” sang the words to the First Amendment before leading the protest onto a grassy lawn inside the park for a picnic that included watermelon and song.
In the midst of all the revelry, something caught Billy’s eye, causing him to become almost frantic. In the summer heat a man in a business suit relaxed on a nearby bench reading The Wall Street Journal. “Could that be Danny Meyer?” Billy dramatically wondered aloud. “There’s one of the privatizers!” he yelled as several chorus members ran over to the startled-looking man. Tearing away his newspaper, the chorus members, wearing yellow construction hardhats, led the man onto the grass and surrounded him, pushing him to his knees as Billy prepared to perform an exorcism. “Quarterly reports, out of him!” Billy yelled as the man threw off his jacket and tie, his angry expression slowly evolving into a beatific smile.
Before long, it became obvious that the suspected “privatizer” was in on the joke. Kurt Opprecht — who also goes by Thurston Howell IV as a member of Billionaires for Bush — thanked Billy for saving him before the pair ran off, hand in hand, dancing through the park. If Billy hadn’t gotten his point across by then, there was still more theater to come. Climbing onto a soapbox, he conducted a fake auction of the park’s assets. Saying he was quoting Mayor Bloomberg, Billy intoned, “The park must pay for itself,” before “selling” a frieze on the center lawn for $10,000. Twelve trees surrounding the picnicgoers also were “sold” for $300,000. Assuming the southern accent of a tobacco auction salesman, Billy then called for bids for the BID, the Union Square Partnership. The bidding started at $10 billion and, after some spirited back and forth, the BID sold for $26 billion. In the service’s final hymn, Billy and the choir knelt in front of several small trees, symbolizing the trees they said were threatened by the ongoing construction, as all sang a paean to the park’s flora. The group then picked up the potted trees and several rolls of sod and started marching west. Their destination was one of Meyer’s renowned restaurants, the Union Square Cafe. Walking through the front door, Billy and several choir members managed to get just inside the restaurant before being told to leave by two plainclothes police officers. The group knelt in front of the restaurant, yelling “Push Back, this park is not for sale” before returning to the park. There were no arrests.
