Machine Politics vs Beaver Boys, May 2011. Photo by Bruce Carver
Hey Polo-istas,
We here in East Van are thinking more and more about legitimizing our tournaments and seeking parks permits to book our regular court for tournaments. There are issues such as insurance and availability. Our regular court at Grandview Park is a public tennis court and not usually available for booking unless you are a non-profit society or associated with a community centre (we meet neither of those two criteria).
We are however, well established as a Saturday presence at the courts, to the extent that people not playing our game refer to the park as "Polo Park" - yes we secretly love this designation!!
Just curious how many of you tournamnet holders have gone through the proper channels to get a permit to secure your space for the day(s), purchased insurance ("because if anyone gets hurt its you that's getting sued"), and secured a liquour license???
If you've had to argue your case to make this happen, how did you win the powers that be over??
Inquiring minds wanna know!
Cheers,
L'il Miss Used
(hope to see all y'all in East Van in September!)
A event license for liquor in Calgary is cheap ...insurance is not as cheap .. I would sooner sign a waiver before I set foot on a court somewhere then pay a retarded registration fee to pay for the insurance ...we have even thought about that for our gold sprints setup ...
...BallAholics...
In Minneapolis we recently held our first tourney. We approached our local Park and Rec board and asked. They said yes and rented the court to us for the day. Simple as that. I love my park board. In Minneapolis they are almost completely autonomous from the city council and mayor's office and as a result I dare anyone to suggest they have a better park system in their city.
We play in a hockey rink. We compete with roller hockey players and soccer players(who don't even use the fucking boards!) for use of the court. We reserve a few hours every Sunday to guarantee that we are guaranteed playing time. We also go when we know its not reserved and use it. Fortunately the price per hour of rental is cheap.
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In Minneapolis we recently held our first tourney. We approached our local Park and Rec board and asked. They said yes and rented the court to us for the day. Simple as that. I love my park board. In Minneapolis they are almost completely autonomous from the city council and mayor's office and as a result I dare anyone to suggest they have a better park system in their city.
We play in a hockey rink. We compete with roller hockey players and soccer players(who don't even use the fucking boards!) for use of the court. We reserve a few hours every Sunday to guarantee that we are guaranteed playing time. We also go when we know its not reserved and use it. Fortunately the price per hour of rental is cheap.
there is a such thing as indoor soccer..
Why would soccer players want to play on a hard court with boards anyway?
to practice indoor soccer.. INDOOR soccer is played with boards, not unlike hockey rink boards..
look up indoor soccer and you'll see what i mean.
If you read my comment, you'll notice I point out they don't use the boards. As far as I know, indoor soccer players use the boards.
The group I'm talking about is old men who don't want to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds.
>old men who don't want to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds.
bastards!
If you read my comment, you'll notice I point out they don't use the boards. As far as I know, indoor soccer players use the boards.
The group I'm talking about is old men who don't want to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds.
HA then they shouldn't be playing soccer.. which is based on running.. ha
tips I have learned
1. Insurance- yes most parks will require you to have it to receive a permit, find a local business that already ahs a policy and see if you can get a weekend add on for your event...then make that business a sponsor...this way is way cheaper than getting an individual policy for the weekend.
2. actual permit for place--this varies from city to city but here in mke the park has been willing to work with us to get permits although special event permits run in the 350-500 per day range. picnic permits which allow the consumption of alcohol but not the sales of it are cheaper at around 70$ but ther ehas to be a picnic site close by the spot u are trying to use.
3. Become a part of a communtiy center or local group that is established or bring them on board as a sponsor. then wortk throuhg them as a group umbrella to gain access rights.
city to city things are different so just set up a meeting with you local park reps and try to persuade them that polo is a growing trend and that tourneys are also tourist events and attractions...cities love tourism!!!!
We just had our first big tourney in Atlanta
1. Our courts on on the GaTech campus so we reserved the space that with the university for free. It took having a bike friendly student organization do it for us but it was free.
2. I looked into reserving a sweet public park for the event but it cost so much it turned us off from the idea. Just to get the park would have cost us $500 or so, if we could find a non profit to reserve the cour then it might have been less. That could only be done 90 days or less before the event. To be able to legally have booze we would have had to get a liquor permit which we have to get at least 90 days before the event, so we could get the permit for booze but not the one for the park, which really drove me crazy. That would also have cost us a chunk of change. Also when we were investigating, the parks lady didn't like the idea of bike polo and doubted that we'd be able to get the permit approved anyway.
3. I want to be rich and have my own courts somewhere.
We play polo in the ATL
where are you for this topic ryan???
you need to say what you went through in pensacola for your tournament.
i got denied straight up from the City of Aurora, Colorado. no bikes on their precious roller hockey courts. but the City of Golden gave me a permit no questions asked, and no fees required
for naccc in 2007 we got a parks permit in sf. there was no insurance requirement, but they made us create a release form which had to be preapproved.
in la at the winter polo picnic they had their street hockey court reserved too - i think. dont think they had insurance, cuz they only had us fill out release forms midway through, after a girl learning to ride a motorcycle tried to intervene in our game by driving her boyfriends sportbike through the fence and onto the court. they got taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and then it was time to fill out release forms. and then someone spilled too much beer on the court and alex used the release forms to clean it up. so they came in handy.
Thanks for the feedback folks. Keep it coming. It fuels my fire for my yet to be scheduled meeting with the parks board!
Brian can speak to this too, but in Ottawa it's pretty easy. We rent the whole park (greenspace, washrooms, and court) at a very subsidized fee. We arrange everything through City Allocations.
This year we also had a letter of non-objection from the Ward Councillor, though they were more concerned about BBQs and beer than Polo. I had to put in writing that we wouldn't have any BBQs or Beer (we ended up having both!!)
My advice: if you can bypass the elected officials and just deal with your city's administration, you'll fair a lot better. A lot of times the two don't speak to each other, so you can EASILY fall through the cracks.
Remember: It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission!!
Thanks lady. I'll see Brian again this weekend and will follow up with him.
scheduled meeting with the parks board!
We just had a meetin this mornin with ours. It went well and they are very supportive. They want us to have insurance and they'll give us time on existing space, as a ligitimate club (non-profit) they'll be willing to seriously work with us. We've got numbers!
So this is the route we're gonna try. Legitimate. It's very scary but seems like what we'll have to do to make our sport happen here. We rode the under ground for awhile and it was great, part of what polo has been. I'm ready to move up and willing to do the work. I don't want polo ever to get out of our hands and i'm too old to be arguing with cops. This thread def has some great feedback, i'll post anything we figure out and if anyone has some solid "insure info" i'd be greatly appreciative!!??
p.s. Canada's just great! Free health care and bomb ass polo spots! I wish i wasn't scared of brakin my wrist or the cold! Damn!
Polo for Life!
So we've made it to first base with Rec & Parks. We have a place to play. I believe they want to see us become an established league, where we have a standing reservation at a multi-use spot. One challenge will be finding/creating this multi-use spot.
They were encouraging when I asked about the possibility of a tourney. Tourism is #1 in this city, even little events are part of that. They want us to host big huge tourneys. They will find or make us space. Permits are the catch. It's going to be tough...budgets are getting slashed and fees are going up. All we want is to have food and beer for our day in the park. Beer permit at a polo tourney? Crazy talk.
Insurance has always been the thing that's stopped me from doing things legitimately. The lacrosse box that we used for the past two years in Victoria doesn't have the imitations on booking that Grandview does, which is fortunate, it only requires insurance and then the rental fee is quite small. However, it costs a few hundred dollars to get the insurance to rent the space, and all that does is protect the parks board from any possible lawsuit in case of injury, it doesn't protect the tournament holders in any way. At least, not the insurance contracts that I looked at, though there may be better ones out there.
And since we've recently had a lot more trouble getting the courts on the days we want - a group of hockey jocks actually rented it out form under us on our regular days... unfortunately we don't seem to hold the same kind of rep as you folks do ;-) - I would seriously look into formally renting that space for any events that we hold in the future so that we don't run the risk of having to compete for the space with other users when people have come into town for a tournament.
And yes, I'll see you there (though hopefully sooner too)