Blame It On The Bait Man

A month ago today, the Gloucester Times ran a story that really rubbed me the wrong way. For those who aren’t aware, Raf the Bait Man was given the boot from his Commercial Street spot in order “to ease congestion in a heavily trafficked part of the city's downtown.”

This is what I refer to as ‘bullshit.’

I find it a bit sickening that Mayor Kirk and the 9 Dwarfs (a.k.a. Gloucester City Council) actually have the balls to tell a man who is trying to earn an honest living selling bait out the back of his van that he can no longer do so. And I’m curious as to how being parked in a parking spot on the side of the road fucks up the vehicular flow in that part of town. I’m sure that the 5-way intersection at Tally’s has nothing to do with the “congestion” on a typical summer day in a city that thrives on beach traffic. Nah. The real scapegoat here is the Bait Man; a genuinely good person who sells reasonably priced fresh herring and fishing tackle in America’s oldest seaport.

I truly believe that Gloucester residents laugh at the leadership of this city just so they don’t cry. Why fix the water mains that are centuries old and break every other week when we can dump millions of dollars into “preserving” City Hall, which could realistically topple over at any moment in time? And why fix the sinkholes around town when we can spend our time running the harmless Bait Man out of town?

Let’s continue to eat away at the local charm of this city until it fails to exist. I bet Smokin’ Jim will be next on the chopping block because the fumes spewing from his grills are too intoxicating to passer-bys.

But there’s a deeper issue here than what’s on the surface. This had nothing to do with traffic; this was about removing someone that our great city leaders deemed as an ‘outsider.’ This man had a permit to set up shop in that spot and conduct business, just like the woman that sells flowers near the rotary, and these morons revoked his permit. So from now on, I guess I’ll head to Winchester’s and pay a dollar per fish that I can’t even use the day I buy it because it’s a frozen block. They can blame it on the Bait Man now, but come summer, who’s the next victim?

-Coon