Posted on 01/15/2014 12:17:56 PM PST by moonshinner_09
Shortly after New Year’s Day, Man Hyung Lee, 77, was nursing a coffee in his usual seat in a narrow booth at a McDonald’s in Flushing, Queens, when two police officers stepped into the fluorescent light of the restaurant.
Mr. Lee said the officers had been called because he and his friends — a revolving group who shuffle into the McDonald’s on the corner of Parsons and Northern Boulevards on walkers, or with canes, in wheelchairs or with infirm steps, as early as 5 a.m. and often linger until well after dark — had, as they seem to do every day, long overstayed their welcome.
“They ordered us out,” Mr. Lee said from his seat in the same McDonald’s booth a week after the incident, beneath a sign that said customers have 20 minutes to finish their food. (He had already been there two hours.) “So I left,” he said.
“Then I walked around the block and came right back again.”
For the past several months, a number of elderly Korean patrons and this McDonald’s they frequent have been battling over the benches inside. The restaurant says the people who colonize the seats on a daily basis are quashing business, taking up tables for hours while splitting a small packet of French fries ($1.39); the group say they are customers and entitled to take their time. A lot of time.
“Do you think you can drink a large coffee within 20 minutes?” David Choi, 77, said. “No, it’s impossible.”
And though they have treated the corner restaurant as their own personal meeting place for more than five years, they say, the situation has escalated in recent months. The police said there had been four 911 calls since November requesting the removal of the entrenched older patrons.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How is the economy in NYC?
Can they pool their resources and rent their own place to meet and chat and play mahjongg?
If its the pic someone posted, the place is tiny
You seem to be confused about the term welfare. I shall enlighten you. They seek the private property of others in order augment, improve, or supplement their standards of living. Welfare need not involve the tranfer of cash property from the government to be welfare. They are bums, and I don’t care if they’re retired.
even when you’re 74? I mean 77?
While they are not welfare bums, they are oblivious to property rights. I’d say the restraining order is the best plan. I don’t care if they have been abusing the restaurant for one month or five years, they have no right to use the space against the wishes of the property owner.
A lot of seniors have coffee at McDs and hang out. But staying til after dark is extreme. In fact by lunch the tables need to go to lunch customers.
Why don’t they go to Barnes & Noble? The hippie, left wing, derelicts at mine plop down on an easy chair for hours.
That's no longer how it's done.
See my post @ #15.
They’re simply being rude and inconsiderate, but after all, this is America and they have their rights! They should all be trespassed from the premises. A few arrests and having to bail themselves out and they may not mind going to one of their community centers , , ,
Some people just don’t have consideration.
From the article:
“Yet there seem to be no shortage of facilities that cater to the elderly in the neighborhood. Civic centers dot the blocks, featuring parlors for baduk, an Asian board game, and classes in subjects from calisthenics to English. Mr. Lee, who comes to the McDonald’s from Bayside, passes several senior centers en route. One is a Korean Community Service center in Flushing, which recently changed a room in the basement into a cafe with 25-cent coffee after its president, Kwang S. Kim, got word of the McDonald’s standoff.
No one has come.
“I think I have to go to McDonald’s and ask why they’re there,” Mr. Kim said.”
Calling the police is unwarranted. The police are to be called for crimes. This is not a crime. If you call 911 for this, you should be arrested.
The restaurant owner can ask them to leave, and hope that the Koreans don’t tell other Koreans who then avoid your restaurant altogether.
You call the cops on me for sitting too long in a restaurant, and I’ll make sure that you wind up begging for customers.
Doesn’t look like they are splitting a small packet of FF.
I know Flushing Queens and have been to that McDonald’s many years ago.
I recall one on Main Street a few miles away had a shooting many years ago.
I assume they hang out there because its cold outside this time of year.
Whatever happened to hanging out in the mall, that’s what oldsters used to do. Had a neighbor that did it every day, go to the mall around 9:30 and just sit on one of the benches and stay there until 3 or 4. Malls have a bit more space to spare.
Next they will claim the “American’s with Disabilities Act” was violated and collect huge sums of $$$.
South Korea has a capitalistic economy. Perhaps you are thinking of communist China?
They ARE committing crimes. When somebody tells you to leave private property, and you do not leave, you are guilty of trespass in, I am sure, every jurisdiction in the universe. BTW, I wonder what would happen if I (white male) ever tried to pull that stunt. Read the entire article. Cops come, Wo Chin Fat leaves, cops leave, and We Kwong Fu walks right back in. Try it sometime. YOU WILL GO TO JAIL.
Just play the same 10 songs all day in the dining room.
Just another example of the mindset that there really isn’t or shouldn’t be any concept of private property — those booths are for the public, just like in a park or in front of the county library.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.