Ny suburbs busy with christmas light wars
NEW YORK: US homeowners festooning their front lawns with thousands of twinkling lights, massive inflated Santas, candy canes and reindeer to spark smiles are instead igniting ornament wars, enraging neighbors over traffic, pollution and safety concerns. Over-the-top Christmas displays have turned normally quiet neighborhoods in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut into tourist destinations - and pitted neighbour against neighbour in a battle of privacy versus holiday cheer. Amid the bedazzled homes in the Dyker Heights section of New York’s Brooklyn borough, December crowds from as far away as Japan are expected to top last year’s 100,000 gawkers, said Fran Vella-Marrone, president of Dyker Heights Civic Association. Tour buses arrive nightly from Maryland and elsewhere during peak season from 15 December to 1January. Eye-popping photographs posted on social media have lured multitudes, twisting the once-charming local holiday event into an out-of-control block party, said Josephine Beckmann, district manager of the local community board. Neighbors blamed hot chocolate and popcorn vendors for blocking driveways, creating mountains of trash and polluting the air with their idling food trucks. This year Dyker Heights organisers sought a permit to ban vendors and secure sanitation and extra police services, but city officials rejected their application. In Fairfield, Connecticut, police stepped in to cool tempers and negotiate a compromise after 40 neighbours signed a petition protesting parking problems created by hordes viewing Gene Halliwell’s holiday electrical extravagance on Roseville Terrace. As part of the deal, neighbours agreed to a temporary parking ban on one side of the street. The homeowner agreed to turn off the lights an hour earlier - by 9 pm local time on weekdays Some neighbours - and even potential neighbours - remain delighted by the flashy exhibit.