In the last six weeks, the Dance Palace Community
Center in Point Reyes Station has been vandalized four times. Vandals
have spread peanut butter all over the dressing room, poured cooking
oil on the floor of the main space, spread dishwashing liquid all over
the kitchen and poured soda on the floors, said Executive Director of
the Dance Palace Carol Friedman.
The juvenile nature of the attacks has led Sheriff
Deputies to believe that the vandals are teenagers.
"It’s probably kids," said Deputy Ron
Fode, "because I don’t know any adults who would climb through
a window to smear peanut butter on a wall."
But that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily
a local teenager," said Fode. "It’s possible it’s
not a local kid. It could be a group of kids coming in from the Valley
on a road trip."
The Dance Palace holds a theater, concert hall, after-school
classroom for children, and dance and martial arts studios.
Peanut butter and soda pop
The vandals began their assault on the Community Center
about six weeks ago with a peanut butter attack upon the dressing room,
said a cleaning lady who did not wish her name used. Three weeks ago,
she discovered soda pop sprayed all over the same dressing room. Last
Saturday morning, she again found peanut butter smeared all over its
dressing room. An almost empty jar of peanut butter was sitting in the
middle of the peanut butter covered floor.
On Sunday, Pam Ferrari of Ferrari Catering and
Event Planning walked into the Dance Palace to set up for a wedding
with 200 guests. Ferrari said she found dish soap spilled on the floor
of the kitchen, with tea bags torn apart and sprinkled in the soap,
and a 10 x 10 foot area of spilled cooking oil in the Dance Palace’s
main room. Ferrari and her staff cleaned up the mess in time for the
wedding with help from Inverness resident Scoby Zook, who has just finished
his yoga class.
"It was minor vandalism," said Ferrari
about the incidents, "but if somebody didn’t see it they could
have slipped and broken their neck." Of the inconvenience, she
added, ‘It’s just ridiculous when you’re trying to set
up for 200 people."
Police to pay more attention
Deputy Ron Fode met with Friedman at the Dance Palace
on Monday while she filed a report. He said that the deputies will patrol
more often, especially on weekends when less people are present. The
Dance Palace will be "spotlighted" more often, a technique
where deputies drive by at night and shine spotlights on the Dance Palace
building.
Friedman said that the Dance Palace is open a lot
to encourage use by the community and that the Dance Palace staff, "basically
operate on trust."
In the past, said Friedman, there have been other
periods of vandalism at the Dance Palace, including the loss of expensive
stereo equipment a number of years ago and broken windows. "But,"
she said, "this is different. Peanut butter? This is quite new
and innovative."
Because of the childlike nature of the incidents,
Friedman agreed with Fode that the guilty parties were probably teenage
boys between the ages of 13 and 15.
She added that for now, she doesn’t want a police
investigation into what happened, she only wants to create a record
of the events in case the vandalism continues or escalates.