Apparently the only local volley fired in the annual War On Halloween
via our friends at the neighboring SPTimes
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/31/State/Halloween_decor_draws.shtml
HALLOWEEN DECORE DRAWS FIRE
To a tavern’s owners, it’s part of a ghastly tableau. But some say it depicts a lynching.
CRYSTAL RIVER—Rich and Chantal Dolata try to decorate their Softails Tavern bigger and better each Halloween.
This year, the dim orange and black watering hole in Crystal River is full of body parts, corpses and even a coffin.
But a new decoration has raised the ire of a handful of passers-by.
From a tree out front, the Dolatas used a thick rope noose to hang a life-sized dummy, barefoot and dripping fake blood.
“It’s just a Halloween decoration,” Chantal Dolata, 40, said Tuesday.
The Dolatas say the body is white. Others say it looks black.
It has been there for three weeks. But Sunday, two women riding home from church saw the body and complained to the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office.
“There is a body of a man with rope around his neck and his hands are tied,” said Mary Ulyat. “That is not a Halloween decoration.
“That is a lynching.”
Ulyat is white, 70 years old and a native of Ireland who lives about a mile from the bar.
“It’s racist,” she said. “I thought those days were over.”
Her friend and neighbor, Elvia Dickerson, also complained to the Sheriff’s Office. Dickerson, 79 and African-American, moved to Crystal River 16 years ago from Philadelphia.
“It’s very insensitive,” said Dickerson, who helped integrate two schools in the 1950s.
Her grandparents were from the South and they told stories about what it was like. They wanted to move “so their girls wouldn’t be raped and their boys wouldn’t be lynched,” she said.
Dickerson said there will never be a time when a decoration like this will be okay—not given the country’s history.
Four other people have called the Sheriff’s Office to complain. Deputies went out to the bar at least twice to check it out. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Heather Yates said they contacted the state attorney, who said the decoration is covered under freedom of expression.
With no crime, deputies could not force the Dolatas to take it down. They asked them to, but the Dolatas refused.
“We don’t want to turn this into a big deal,” Chantal Dolata said Tuesday afternoon. “This is NOT a racial issue.”
The Dolatas feel frustrated, as if people are making an issue out of this because they run a biker bar. They emphasized they have patrons of all races, plus multiracial couples who are regulars.
They talked about the things they do for the community: parties for the Boys & Girls Clubs at Christmas, a toy drive, free cookouts every Sunday afternoon. They want parents to bring their kids in to see their haunted house decorations.
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