Hudson River Park Performer Fired For Making Entitled Kids Feel "Unwelcome"

David Ippolito performing at Pier 47 at Hudson Square Park via DNAinfo / David Ippolito

Who will stand up for the children in the $550 strollers? The Hudson River State Park Trust. Singer and guitarist David Ippolito, who has performed at Pier 45 at Hudson Square Park for a decade was fired last month "in response to repeated complaints from park users that he made them feel unwelcome and embarrassed them by singling them out over an open mic when they or their children made noise in the park," according a statement from the Trust. Take THAT, musician who asks for a modicum of public decency while performing!

DNAinfo spoke to Ippolito, who goes by "That Guitar Man" when performing, and he gave them a taste of some of the vile things he said to the children. WARNING: these aspersions are GRAPHIC:

When a toddler ran back and forth in front of the stage making noise during his performance on June 24, Ippolito backed away from the microphone and "used my standard line, 'I think he's getting a little bit late for the playground.'" A few days later the trust got a complaint against Ippolito for "kicking out a child."
On July 15, a game of tag erupted, and a mother "chased her child" around as Ippolio was singing. The child then tripped on a monitor cable and Ippolito stopped playing. "Hey parents, can you just make sure your kids are not being inconsiderate to the people around them?" he said over the PA. The families left, and he said the remainder of the performance was "one of the most fun nights we had." For whom, David, for whom?

Of course, even Hitler had his apologists, and thus Andrea Sluchan, who claims to have seen Ippolito perform "at least a hundred times," sees the whole ordeal differently: "I can assure you, I've never seen him be rude to anybody." Ippolito gets in one last shot against the poor patrons of the Hudson River Park: ""There are rude and inconsiderate and entitled people, and there always have been. If the Hudson River Park Trust is going to acquiesce to these people, who wants to work for them anyway?" He added: "You remember when you read a while back in People magazine about The Me Generation? They grew up and [had] kids, they're raising the next generation of rude people."

Mercifully, Sinclair Jennings Jr. & Max Gallico Acoustic Soul Duo will take Ippolito's place this Friday at Sunset on the Hudson. Show your support by playing tag at their feet. To get an idea of Ippolito's brash style, here he is performing in Central Park.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Christopher Robbins in News on August 3, 2011 6:06 PM

Comments [rss]

canofpeas

. "Hey parents, can you just make sure your kids are not being inconsiderate to the people around them?" How dare he expect the rich to be considerate to the rest of the world, doesn't he know royalty when he sees it?

Gwinny

TEAM DAVID

Wilson St Pierre

Douchebag got what he deserved.

higg1ns

You must be one of the parents.

Holmesian

So, inconsiderate parents, who think their child is special and allow them to run rappant got this guy fired. Where are the other parents that thought, "THANK GOD THAT FAMILY LEFT!"
As shameless as his self- promotion is, I side with the performer on this one.

Sinchy

why is self promotion shameless for a musician / performer. If he doesn't promote himself he will wither in obscurity.

TheOtherBob

Me too. I've seen this guy perform twice -- and he's generally good-natured about people walking right through the stage or holding a loud cell phone conversation three feet from the microphone. So whatever these kids were doing must have been pretty bad to get him to even say anything.

It sounds to me like the parents wanted that particular patch of grass, and if they couldn't get it they were going to do whatever they could to ruin the experience for everyone else. (The next patch over? Nope -- their special angels deserve this one.) And if anyone dared say anything...well, then.

They wanted to take the park away from everyone else so that it could be dedicated to their special little beauties, and they succeeded. No matter what you think of this guy, or his music...that blows.

Dean Love

Amazingly, they had a kids event at the same time on the next Pier but what fun would that be for these parents? They would rather drink their wine (illegal in the Park) and ignore their kids. In fairness to the parents, the Nannies had gone home for the day, what could they do?

Rocknrope

Oh wow, it's illegal to drink wine in the park? I hope you called the cops on those scofflaws!

Theose

If its distracting him, then he has every right to. The parents should know better. YOUR KID IS NOT SPECIAL!

birdtird

He sounds sorta like the Jimmy Buffet of the uws parent scene

Rocknrope

Talk about entitled, you should read his Wikipedia page. Don't you love it when you read a wiki that is obviously written by the person whose page it is? Completely gross.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

TheOtherBob

Dude, this is totally random, but...he didn't write his Wiki page. I did. (Seriously, check the history and go all the way to the beginning.)

Now, it's gotten a lot less factual and more "glowing" since I first wrote it, but...if you knew the people who watch this guy, it'd make sense. It's really not this guy, it's his fans.

(They're...painfully sincere people.)

cr17

I feel you on that one brother. The movie "Patch Adams" made me want to take hostages...

Investigate-NWO-globalists

Prima Donna!

PFOOMA

Kids.Ruin.Everything.

eflash

Welllll, that sucks for Mr. Ippolito
I went to see opera in the park there last year and a family in front of me was standing up, walking around and talking loudly during the quietest part of an already quiet performance. I just don't understand why they need to attend this kind of event in the first place if they have no interest in watching it.