Gramercy Park, the only private park in Manhattan, is famous for excluding all but the most refined aristocrats, who occasionally slide open the gates to their elegant oasis with the help of their highly-coveted keys carved from the bones of slain Wobblies. No one else is permitted in the park unless accompanied by a sacred Key Holder, each of whom resides near the park and pays dearly for its maintenance. As any fraternity member with a copy of Atlas Shrugged in the glove compartment of his Lexus will tell you, this exclusivity is only fair. The Key Holders earned it! Yet now the sanctity of Gramercy Park is under attack by the prying eyes of the Internet.
Some knuckle-dragging interloper named Shawn Christopher recently gained access to the park and has exposed it to the entire world like an upskirt urologist. How did he do it? By renting a nearby apartment through Airbnb. The Times reports that the individual renting out the apartment is a Key Holder, and this traitor offered up the key to Christopher as part of their arrangement. For money. And not only did Christopher soil the air inside the park with his unworthy presence, he also recorded photographic images with his "Photo Sphere," a Google application that lets the rabble take 360-degree photographs inside Gramercy Park, where this sort of photography is strictly forbidden.
Now these crass photos are on the Internet for all to see, and Gramercy Park suddenly has as much mystique as Kim Kardashian's backside. (For any Key Holder reading this, Kim Kardashian is an American television and social media personality who recently exposed her derriere on a magazine cover.) Go ahead, look around Gramercy Park, it's all hanging out now like some drunk prom queen flopping out of a limo's moon roof on the Sunrise Highway. Our nation's fragile decorum hasn't been violated this crudely since Andrew Jackson let every mouth breather in America into the White House on his inauguration.
"The park is for pleasant enjoyment," Arlene Harrison, president of the Gramercy Park Block Association, tells the New York Times. But how can the privileged few enjoy the park now that anyone with a Google.com website account gizmo thingy can see inside? For the embattled Key Holders, this is even worse than the time those youths managed to get inside the park. Please pray for them (to the Protestant God of your choice).
Might as well just start renting the park out for heavy metal concerts at this point.
